Philippians 2:13

“for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”

Paul is writing to the church of Philippi here and is reminding them of their salvation in Christ. Right before this verse, Paul is encouraging and urging the church to work out their salvation in his absence because God is in them desiring to work through them for His glory. Paul is reminding them in this section that they are lights to the world around them becuase Christ shines in them and through them. Not too long ago I was in a class for the older girls at kids club that is called truth and lies class. This particular week, Gracie was teaching on the lie of not being useful and thinking that God doesn’t want to use us; the truth to combat this is that God desires to use us adn Philippians 2:13 was the memory verse that was given to the girls. I reckognized at the time that this was a lie I often fell into believing, but hadn’t necessarily struggled with recently. Fast forwarding a week after we had this class, I had a buildup of emotion going on inside of me and I couldn’t quite identify why I was feeling so sad and just wanting to cry. One of the girl leaders here pulled me aside becuase they could tell I wasn’t okay. As we talked and we walked a bit, I was trying to explain how I was feeling and why I was feeling that way and I realized that one of the root reasons was because I had been feeling useless in all that was put before me but I refused to reckognize it and pushed it aside instead of taking it to the Lord and crying out to Him. I have this thing that I do when I feel as though I shouldn’t feel a certain way becuase I know the truth in my head to combat my heart, I push the feeling aside and refuse to deal with it because I think that I shouldn’t feel that way. The Lord has been taking me through a season of reckognizing the fact that I’m a human being and that I’m not always going to feel the way I think I should feel. God doesn’t have any expectaions on me besides trusting in Him and bringing all things to Him and placing them in His hands. As I was feeling all of these things, I finally cried out to the Lord and He brought me back to this verse in Philippians. Not only does He live in me, but He desires to use me in all things He sets before me in each moment of each day. I’m continuing to see more and more of just how much I need Him and how imcapable I am on my own. Wihtout Him, there are so many things I wouldn’t be able to do in the capacity that they need to be done. Honestly, without Him, I wouldn’t be in Africa and I wouldn’t be able to see and meet the people and places that I’m getting to go to and on top of all that He is using me in each place for His glory! It’s honestly so much more than I could’ve ever even dreamt up for myself. The Lord really is making this time of me learning that I can’t just know things in my head, but that I have to let the Lord transfer the understanding deeper to my heart so that I know Him more and more and am diving into deeper intimacy and relationship with Him. My application is to write out each day this week, at the end of the day, how I’m feeling to the Lord and just bringing everything before Him thanking Him for using me even in the most seemingly useless situations.