We have all been there. When you know what you should do and feel like you can’t! It’s a miserable feeling I know.

 

You want to get up before your kids but they still wake at midnight every.single.day and you feel like you just can’t.

 

You want to be gracious all day long, but then the impatience wells up torrential again and you feel like you just can’t.

 

You wish you could work out every day, have 7 home cooked dinners a week, excel in a hobby, but you just CAN’T!

 

The I want to, but I can’ts of life get in the way of discipline.

 

And as much as America wants us to believe that if we just think happy thoughts there will be happy realities we all know that’s a lie even if we want to believe the lie.

 

Freedom comes in confessing, “Lord, I can’t!” He comes reminding, ” Glad you see, but I CAN!” As long as we’re bound in what we aren’t, what we can’t accomplish and will never be able to do, we will hate all talk of discipline and cast everyone aside as a legalist who tells us otherwise or secretly despise their perspective.

 

He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength.

Isaiah 40:29

 

 

There’s freedom in telling the truth. The truth is I can’t. I can’t do any of the things I want to do…Paul couldn’t either. I don’t want to do the things I am supposed to do, Peter didn’t either. But for all our CAN’Ts there is Christ and He CAN.

 

But how do we let Him?

 

Here’s the thing life is never going to go right if you’re not in the Word. You can’t discern the will of God without it. You can’t grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus apart from it. If you don’t have some discipline aimed toward growing in His Word life will not go well. I want you to hear this all plain. YOU (and me too, desperately) NEED to be IN God’s Word so God’s Word can get IN us.

 

And you might be frustrated looking at this screen, bemoaning my idealism, but this isn’t my ideal…

 Let the word [spoken by] Christ (the Messiah) have its home [in your hearts and minds] and dwell in you in [all its] richness.

Colossians 3:16

 

We work in what the Lord is working out (Philippians 2). We feel like we can’t…I get it, I know, but we CAN. Jesus makes a way for us.

 

And most people won’t tell you that, because they want you to feel better right now…. They will say… “Well, I understand. When you get to the next season, then you can…” They will say, ” Don’t feel bad, everyone is going through this (and they are right everyone is going through this and you shouldn’t feel bad, but delaying obedience is not helping you).”

 

 

I want to be liked just as much as the next girl (shy smile) but I am not going to lie to you…we can all wallow together in our misery bemoaning sleeplessness, busy days, final exams, trying toddlers, hard to handle teenagers, and the like, but if we don’t get on with it and persevere in His Word we are never going to grow into maturity, because life’s pressures never cease. They are unyielding and the next season is just going to give way to more I CAN’T(s) because…. And we’ll end up living our whole lives in unbelief waiting to see a break that is not coming.

 

Discipline yourself now! Let Jesus work in you to do this, NOW. Now is the time to know Christ. Right now in these fleeting seconds. I know what it is to bend toward legalism and I reject that. I know what I am saying may seem hard to you single college student working two jobs, young mom hands full with 5 or more or less kids, single mom with little or no help… I understand that me telling you to be in the Word of God every.single.day. may seem out of reach, but I promise the Word is near….And I am not asking you to do 20 pages of homework a day. I am asking you is there a way Christ CAN in your I CANT? I am asking you to see if treasuring perhaps 1 or 2 verses a day is possible or more if you can? I am asking you if believing 1 chapter a week is possible? I am asking me is letting 1 truth work in and out of you day by day something that actually can happen?

 

 

And the answer is YES, because His wounds still heal.

 

He sent his word, and healed them, and delivered them from their destructions.

Psalm 107:20

 

The Father sent His Word and healed us (John 1)… He keeps sending the Word… He keeps offering the healing… And sometimes we foolishly stiff arm Him. We can be “in the Word” and the Word not live in & through us. Being in the Word isn’t the end goal, the incarnate, God Man is…. Satisfying our life with the Lord our portion, our cup.

 

But we will never see the truth if we don’t believe that He can….well, do the impossible all.the.time. He raises the dead. And I kid not that He can raise you out of bed, out of fear, out of shame, out of guilt, out of pain, out of all sorts of peril. He causes dead things to live. He breathes life into us…. Then, He sends a breathing Word… Breathing life into the lungs of the soul again and again…always making His children live. How could we think we can’t…in Him?

 

Christ CAN.

…but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint. Isaiah 40:31