His sufficiency + our deficiency = Limitless Potential! “Your help has made me great"
2 Samuel 22:29-30, 36, “O Lord, you are my lamp. The Lord lights up my darkness. In Your strength I can crush an army; with my God I can scale any wall… You have given me Your shield of victory; Your help has made me great.”
David knew that it was not because he was great or extraordinary in himself that he was victorious in battle, rather it was the power of the Lord in His life. He stepped into overwhelming circumstances (2 Samuel 22:5) and when He was over his head, called on the Lord to save him (2 Samuel 22:4).
He didn’t hold back or stand back looking at his own sufficiency and disqualifying himself. Rather, he put himself into situations, not to test the Lord, but in trust of the Lord, that were over his head knowing the Lord would meet him in them. This pleased God greatly. David had tremendous faith in God.
A devotional that I am using in praying through the Bible this year for my work asks, “Are you resisting God’s plan for your life because you feel less qualified or prepared than someone else? Are you sitting on the sidelines because of a supposed weakness or deficiency? No one is inadequate in the hand of God. It is through those weaknesses that God’s shows His strength. Your deficiency may be the thing that God will use to demonstrate His miraculous revival working power.”
Some years ago, I had a friend that I was in a bible study with and he was telling me about his situation and it deeply grieved me. First, he told me that he had a deep desire to walk alongside and mentor youth. But, he told me, that even though there were opportunities available to him to do this, he couldn’t. He was not “there” yet. He needed to grow more and be mature in the Lord before he could do this.
He thought he was being humble, but what he was doing is disqualifying himself from letting God meet him where he was at. He wanted self-sufficiency, not God-sufficiency. Like Moses who disqualified himself for stuttering, he stood back from what God had for him in his own inadequacies while longing for more. This left him in want and lack, which makes one more prone to sin, while abundance and a rich, satisfying life was right there in front of him.
As with Moses who initially refused to go, this does not please the Lord, it infuriates Him. How often do we do this? Do we say to ourselves that we can’t because we want to see with our own eyes that we can and feel capable in our own strength to say yes to what God has for us? When God speaks, do we trust that God will meet us? For myself, with writing a book this was huge. The hardest part about publishing my books was not writing them but believing that God could use me in this way and shut off the voices that said I wasn’t enough and disqualified myself.
Mashawn Evans Daniels in her notes for Believing Bigger writes, “You are limitless! God has equipped you with His DNA and unlimited abilities. I’m asking Him to help you trust and embrace His great power at work in you.”
I am asking this for you. We have the Holy Spirit in us. We have unlimited possibilities through Him. It is not by might nor by power, but by His Spirit, says the Lord Almighty (Zechariah 4:6).
What really grieved me the most with this man was that he had also told me that he had divorced his wife; they had been told by their Christian marriage counselor that they were never meant to be together and so they wanted to make it right and correct their mistake. This broke my heart to hear this.
When I was a new Christian and my husband did not yet know the Lord, someone once told me something similar. Perhaps because I was at church alone without him, they told me that the Lord told them that my marriage to my husband was a mistake. As this past weekend we just celebrated our 30-year anniversary together, this lie that takes marriages apart still makes me shudder.
Another time I heard this was from a transgender man. He shared that he was married to his wife for over 25 years and raised a beautiful family with her. Then, later, feeling the pull to dressing like a woman, he left them all so he could live as he felt he was designed to be---as a woman. He said that his marriage was a mistake that he corrected. I didn’t know what to say. I just felt deeply heartbroken for him and his family.
There is a similar belief by some unbelievers that their lives change over time and they have to re-marry at least once to adjust for this change in perceptions, beliefs or desires over time. One of my old bosses who had married her high school sweetheart thought this; she later felt she outgrew her marriage and called her divorce and remarriage “upgrading” to position herself for success as her life changed. She married a successful, rich man who was in politics.
Here is the deal, God hates divorce. He hates the breaking of covenant. Malachi 2:16 says, ““For I hate divorce!” says the LORD, the God of Israel. “To divorce your wife is to overwhelm her with cruelty,” says the LORD of Heaven’s Armies. “So guard your heart; do not be unfaithful to your wife.”
The Lord does not say anywhere in the Bible that He hates that people marry the wrong person and that they should correct this. Here is what Jesus says in Matthew 5:30-31, “It has been said, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, makes her the victim of adultery, and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”
Marriage is holy ground to God. In Matthew 19:3 it says,
“Some Pharisees came to him [Jesus] to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?
“Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
“Why then,” they asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?” Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”
More than once, Jesus tells us that to divorce and remarry someone else is not “upgrading.” It is adultery. So what about all those difficult and unexpected situations?
What about when one of the spouses is an unbeliever and the other one comes to know the Lord? Here is what Paul says about this in 1 Corinthians 7:10-16,
“To the married I give this charge (not I, but the Lord): the wife should not separate from her husband (but if she does, she should remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband), and the husband should not divorce his wife.
To the rest I say (I, not the Lord) that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her. If any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever, and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy. But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so. In such cases the brother or sister is not enslaved. God has called you to peace. For how do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?”
My mother came to know the Lord after she was married and my father was an unbeliever. I saw this was a very difficult area for their marriage and created a great deal of conflict. At the same time, my mother remained faithful and I saw the Lord meet her powerfully at various turns because of her faithfulness. Eventually, my father came to know the Lord three days before he died of cancer.
What David knew and we need to know in our marriage is that God is a God of limitless possibilities. His miracle power is living inside of us. He has equipped us to walk victoriously in any and every situation we face. There is no situation that is beyond His help. There is no time that He will not meet us at our place of need and leave us to flounder when we look and trust Him. His sufficiency + our deficiency = Limitless Potential! It is His help that makes us victorious in everything we face.
“He’s gonna turn it all around, just wait and see. He is going to make everything beautiful, just in time.” Sings in the background.
While I am not speaking of situations where people are in harm in their marriage or already divorced, too often, we are quick to size up and manage our situations in our own strength and ability. I’ve seen people divorce over health issues because it changed the dynamics in their marriage, and it was not what they had hoped for. While my heart breaks for spouses that have a spouse that is ill or struggling with a health issue, the Lord never said that this is a qualifying factor for divorce.
I saw this happen with a friend and mentor of mine. They were leaders in the church but, when the husband got MS and could no longer work, the wife left him for another man. She hadn’t planned for this and couldn’t see another way. And as he was suffering so many losses physically, he was probably at his worst. How hard this has been for him and, I imagine, her and his children as well! They are good people who didn’t see any other possibility. Like Job's wife who told him to curse God and die in his immense pain, she wanted to be done with it.
With Jesus, we do not see Him arranging His life to experience what makes Him comfortable or what was most logical, made sense or practical. Rather, we see Him going to the cross in self-sacrifice for the ones that He loves. In Luke 18:31, Jesus tells his twelve disciples, “Listen, we’re going up to Jerusalem, where all the predictions of the prophets concerning the Son of Man will come true. He will be handed over to the Romans, and He will be mocked, treated shamefully, and spit upon. They will flog Him with a whip and kill Him, but on the third day He will rise again.’ But they didn’t’ understand any of this.”
Even at our worst in mocking Him and shouting ‘crucify Him,’ He didn’t change His mind. He still laid down His life for us. He gave His life so we could benefit at his expense.
Romans 8:31-32, “What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?”
The one who paid the ultimate price for us, how will He not, graciously, give us all things we need? Why do we assume we will be in lack and misery when we look at our circumstances? Why do we assume that in being faithful, God will not meet us in it?
While God does not promise us all ease and there will be difficulty in this life, nowhere does He demonstrate that it is not worth it and to just walk away. In Ephesians 5:25, Paul says, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” Here we are being told not to discard our loved one for being a burden to us but to love them with a self-sacrificing love like Jesus.
Some time ago, about ten or so years ago now, my husband found that he had a debilitating rare eye disease. They told him to re-arrange his life and expect to be totally blind in five years. In the midst of this, as I prayed about this, I felt God speaking about being foster parents. From a natural standpoint, it seemed like a crazy idea and not good for anyone.
In the midst of my husband losing his job, his driver’s license and his sight, we were bringing troubled kids into the mix who also had physical disabilities. But it all fell together so beautifully. God met us in it. We adopted those boys and God meets us in it every day. And to top it off, my husband never lost his ability to see straight forward. While he cannot drive or work, he gets around just fine at home and our kids help him get around at other places.
In all of it, God opened up door after door of blessing. While my husband lost his job, he is a wonderful stay at home dad and raising our boys has given him greater meaning and purpose. Ironically, as I was initially worried about finances with only one income, God took care of this too and we became completely debt free within a year.
In the midst of it, my mother fell and broke her back so she moved in with us too so we could care for her. Again, in natural possibilities, caring for my mother on top of the other responsibilities seemed crazy. But it has been such a rich experience. When everything shut down with COVID, I had my mom out for almost daily walks enjoying the weather. I was so grateful. These years have been our best, not our hardest. And yet, God still has more for us!
Had we looked at our lives and made decisions from our natural circumstances in a self-protective manner, we would have missed out on all this goodness God had for us in it! All that to say, while we cannot control other people’s decisions, we don’t want to underestimate God’s abilities or His willingness to meet us just where we are at. Knowing Him and trusting Him opens the doors to supernatural possibilities.
God's limitless promises are not just nice sayings that we are to hang on our wall. Rather, they are words from a God who already broke through all to rescue us and give us the victory (2 Samuel 22). No one who hopes on Him is ever put to shame. “All things are possible for those who believe!” (Mark 9:23) and, “What is impossible for people is possible with God!” (Luke 18:27)
At the same time as wanting to stretch beliefs about God's ability to meet us in a difficult relationship and helping us work it out instead of giving up, I also want to stretch our beliefs over there being peace when things do not work out. I have heard terrible stories of couples violently hurting each other because they stayed in a relationship that was unhealthy. Too often, we wear our "get it right" badges of honor and look down on those who don't get it right.
For myself, there are lots of areas that I did not get it right. My husband and I had our biological son before we were ever married. Then we divorced and remarried each other as we became more mature. I can go on and on about all the things that I didn't get "right" and earn my badge of honor.
Here is the truth on this: When all the religious folks (like us) were ready to stone a woman for adultery, Jesus looked down and said that the one who had not sinned should throw the first stone -- and everyone walked away. Not one was left standing with a stone. Jesus is the ONLY one worthy to break the seal. We all do not fulfill the law and why we need a Savior.
Being divorced does not disqualify someone. Being divorced multiple times does not disqualify someone. It makes us human sinners in a fallen world. Having an abortion or having a child out of wedlock does not disqualify someone. Your disqualifications are exactly what qualifies you! You are with the rest of us fallen folk who ate from the fruit of the wrong tree and have made some broken decisions. And it is exactly why we can be so incredibly grateful salvation is free and for us! We all need it!
Lord, You are the God of the impossible. When we come to the end of our possibilities, You open up a new way to us. Help us to walk in faith and trust You. Give us hope when we can’t see and strength to not walk away but to turn to You with open hands and open hearts. Thank You for Your possibilities when all seems lost in the natural. Open our eyes and show us the way! We want to see [from Your perspective]! Also, give us eyes to see others around us with your heart of grace.
2 Samuel 22:29-30, 36, “O Lord, you are my lamp. The Lord lights up my darkness. In Your strength I can crush an army; with my God I can scale any wall… You have given me Your shield of victory; Your help has made me great.”
David knew that it was not because he was great or extraordinary in himself that he was victorious in battle, rather it was the power of the Lord in His life. He stepped into overwhelming circumstances (2 Samuel 22:5) and when He was over his head, called on the Lord to save him (2 Samuel 22:4).
He didn’t hold back or stand back looking at his own sufficiency and disqualifying himself. Rather, he put himself into situations, not to test the Lord, but in trust of the Lord, that were over his head knowing the Lord would meet him in them. This pleased God greatly. David had tremendous faith in God.
A devotional that I am using in praying through the Bible this year for my work asks, “Are you resisting God’s plan for your life because you feel less qualified or prepared than someone else? Are you sitting on the sidelines because of a supposed weakness or deficiency? No one is inadequate in the hand of God. It is through those weaknesses that God’s shows His strength. Your deficiency may be the thing that God will use to demonstrate His miraculous revival working power.”
Some years ago, I had a friend that I was in a bible study with and he was telling me about his situation and it deeply grieved me. First, he told me that he had a deep desire to walk alongside and mentor youth. But, he told me, that even though there were opportunities available to him to do this, he couldn’t. He was not “there” yet. He needed to grow more and be mature in the Lord before he could do this.
He thought he was being humble, but what he was doing is disqualifying himself from letting God meet him where he was at. He wanted self-sufficiency, not God-sufficiency. Like Moses who disqualified himself for stuttering, he stood back from what God had for him in his own inadequacies while longing for more. This left him in want and lack, which makes one more prone to sin, while abundance and a rich, satisfying life was right there in front of him.
As with Moses who initially refused to go, this does not please the Lord, it infuriates Him. How often do we do this? Do we say to ourselves that we can’t because we want to see with our own eyes that we can and feel capable in our own strength to say yes to what God has for us? When God speaks, do we trust that God will meet us? For myself, with writing a book this was huge. The hardest part about publishing my books was not writing them but believing that God could use me in this way and shut off the voices that said I wasn’t enough and disqualified myself.
Mashawn Evans Daniels in her notes for Believing Bigger writes, “You are limitless! God has equipped you with His DNA and unlimited abilities. I’m asking Him to help you trust and embrace His great power at work in you.”
I am asking this for you. We have the Holy Spirit in us. We have unlimited possibilities through Him. It is not by might nor by power, but by His Spirit, says the Lord Almighty (Zechariah 4:6).
What really grieved me the most with this man was that he had also told me that he had divorced his wife; they had been told by their Christian marriage counselor that they were never meant to be together and so they wanted to make it right and correct their mistake. This broke my heart to hear this.
When I was a new Christian and my husband did not yet know the Lord, someone once told me something similar. Perhaps because I was at church alone without him, they told me that the Lord told them that my marriage to my husband was a mistake. As this past weekend we just celebrated our 30-year anniversary together, this lie that takes marriages apart still makes me shudder.
Another time I heard this was from a transgender man. He shared that he was married to his wife for over 25 years and raised a beautiful family with her. Then, later, feeling the pull to dressing like a woman, he left them all so he could live as he felt he was designed to be---as a woman. He said that his marriage was a mistake that he corrected. I didn’t know what to say. I just felt deeply heartbroken for him and his family.
There is a similar belief by some unbelievers that their lives change over time and they have to re-marry at least once to adjust for this change in perceptions, beliefs or desires over time. One of my old bosses who had married her high school sweetheart thought this; she later felt she outgrew her marriage and called her divorce and remarriage “upgrading” to position herself for success as her life changed. She married a successful, rich man who was in politics.
Here is the deal, God hates divorce. He hates the breaking of covenant. Malachi 2:16 says, ““For I hate divorce!” says the LORD, the God of Israel. “To divorce your wife is to overwhelm her with cruelty,” says the LORD of Heaven’s Armies. “So guard your heart; do not be unfaithful to your wife.”
The Lord does not say anywhere in the Bible that He hates that people marry the wrong person and that they should correct this. Here is what Jesus says in Matthew 5:30-31, “It has been said, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, makes her the victim of adultery, and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”
Marriage is holy ground to God. In Matthew 19:3 it says,
“Some Pharisees came to him [Jesus] to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?
“Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
“Why then,” they asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?” Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”
More than once, Jesus tells us that to divorce and remarry someone else is not “upgrading.” It is adultery. So what about all those difficult and unexpected situations?
What about when one of the spouses is an unbeliever and the other one comes to know the Lord? Here is what Paul says about this in 1 Corinthians 7:10-16,
“To the married I give this charge (not I, but the Lord): the wife should not separate from her husband (but if she does, she should remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband), and the husband should not divorce his wife.
To the rest I say (I, not the Lord) that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her. If any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever, and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy. But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so. In such cases the brother or sister is not enslaved. God has called you to peace. For how do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?”
My mother came to know the Lord after she was married and my father was an unbeliever. I saw this was a very difficult area for their marriage and created a great deal of conflict. At the same time, my mother remained faithful and I saw the Lord meet her powerfully at various turns because of her faithfulness. Eventually, my father came to know the Lord three days before he died of cancer.
What David knew and we need to know in our marriage is that God is a God of limitless possibilities. His miracle power is living inside of us. He has equipped us to walk victoriously in any and every situation we face. There is no situation that is beyond His help. There is no time that He will not meet us at our place of need and leave us to flounder when we look and trust Him. His sufficiency + our deficiency = Limitless Potential! It is His help that makes us victorious in everything we face.
“He’s gonna turn it all around, just wait and see. He is going to make everything beautiful, just in time.” Sings in the background.
While I am not speaking of situations where people are in harm in their marriage or already divorced, too often, we are quick to size up and manage our situations in our own strength and ability. I’ve seen people divorce over health issues because it changed the dynamics in their marriage, and it was not what they had hoped for. While my heart breaks for spouses that have a spouse that is ill or struggling with a health issue, the Lord never said that this is a qualifying factor for divorce.
I saw this happen with a friend and mentor of mine. They were leaders in the church but, when the husband got MS and could no longer work, the wife left him for another man. She hadn’t planned for this and couldn’t see another way. And as he was suffering so many losses physically, he was probably at his worst. How hard this has been for him and, I imagine, her and his children as well! They are good people who didn’t see any other possibility. Like Job's wife who told him to curse God and die in his immense pain, she wanted to be done with it.
With Jesus, we do not see Him arranging His life to experience what makes Him comfortable or what was most logical, made sense or practical. Rather, we see Him going to the cross in self-sacrifice for the ones that He loves. In Luke 18:31, Jesus tells his twelve disciples, “Listen, we’re going up to Jerusalem, where all the predictions of the prophets concerning the Son of Man will come true. He will be handed over to the Romans, and He will be mocked, treated shamefully, and spit upon. They will flog Him with a whip and kill Him, but on the third day He will rise again.’ But they didn’t’ understand any of this.”
Even at our worst in mocking Him and shouting ‘crucify Him,’ He didn’t change His mind. He still laid down His life for us. He gave His life so we could benefit at his expense.
Romans 8:31-32, “What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?”
The one who paid the ultimate price for us, how will He not, graciously, give us all things we need? Why do we assume we will be in lack and misery when we look at our circumstances? Why do we assume that in being faithful, God will not meet us in it?
While God does not promise us all ease and there will be difficulty in this life, nowhere does He demonstrate that it is not worth it and to just walk away. In Ephesians 5:25, Paul says, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” Here we are being told not to discard our loved one for being a burden to us but to love them with a self-sacrificing love like Jesus.
Some time ago, about ten or so years ago now, my husband found that he had a debilitating rare eye disease. They told him to re-arrange his life and expect to be totally blind in five years. In the midst of this, as I prayed about this, I felt God speaking about being foster parents. From a natural standpoint, it seemed like a crazy idea and not good for anyone.
In the midst of my husband losing his job, his driver’s license and his sight, we were bringing troubled kids into the mix who also had physical disabilities. But it all fell together so beautifully. God met us in it. We adopted those boys and God meets us in it every day. And to top it off, my husband never lost his ability to see straight forward. While he cannot drive or work, he gets around just fine at home and our kids help him get around at other places.
In all of it, God opened up door after door of blessing. While my husband lost his job, he is a wonderful stay at home dad and raising our boys has given him greater meaning and purpose. Ironically, as I was initially worried about finances with only one income, God took care of this too and we became completely debt free within a year.
In the midst of it, my mother fell and broke her back so she moved in with us too so we could care for her. Again, in natural possibilities, caring for my mother on top of the other responsibilities seemed crazy. But it has been such a rich experience. When everything shut down with COVID, I had my mom out for almost daily walks enjoying the weather. I was so grateful. These years have been our best, not our hardest. And yet, God still has more for us!
Had we looked at our lives and made decisions from our natural circumstances in a self-protective manner, we would have missed out on all this goodness God had for us in it! All that to say, while we cannot control other people’s decisions, we don’t want to underestimate God’s abilities or His willingness to meet us just where we are at. Knowing Him and trusting Him opens the doors to supernatural possibilities.
God's limitless promises are not just nice sayings that we are to hang on our wall. Rather, they are words from a God who already broke through all to rescue us and give us the victory (2 Samuel 22). No one who hopes on Him is ever put to shame. “All things are possible for those who believe!” (Mark 9:23) and, “What is impossible for people is possible with God!” (Luke 18:27)
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