Finishing Strong

This week I had the privilege to minister once again at the nursing home. As I prayed that God would give me just the right devotion for those dear people, I ran across a book titled Finishing Strong. The title stuck with me and God gave me a word about finishing our lives strong, no matter how often we had fallen time and time again in the past. What a wonderful thing to be reminded of--that indeed we can finish strong despite the many starts of stops in our lives.

I shared the story of the thief on the cross who certainly spent 99.9999% of his life in sin, rejecting God. But indeed at the last moment he crossed the finish line with a burst of energy given to him by Jesus himself hanging next to him on the cross. Not only is this a beautiful portrait of God's grace even in the Eleventh hour (11:59 to be exact), but also a picture of finishing strong. I enjoyed sharing this message of hope to those sweet people. I should have guessed that I might be seeing my enemy again this week--he's not too keen on Holy Spirit messages being shared in places of strongholds.

So as I've shared in other posts, I've struggled with fear off an on throughout my life. Praise God for his mercy in overcoming that fear time and time again in my life. I should have known that the enemy would try another attack in that arena....

Last night the battle took place again. When the enemy jumped in front of me, I was taken aback by the fear that welled up inside of me. I looked up at God and asked "What happened here God?", why wasn't the fear going away?. I cried out to God. At first I was even fearful that the fear wasn't going to go away--that I would be stuck again. Panic began to set in.

I started quoting scripture and the enemy began to step back, but not all the way. Again, okay God what is this all about? The Holy Spirit is always very willing to answer that question and I felt the conviction of an old sin that had resurfaced this past week, I even remembered making light of it. Then, I realized that I had given Satan a space to jump back in front of me. Well, believe me, with fear and the enemy staring me in the face, I was on my face in repentance.I was able to stop in my tracks, say "get thee behind me Satan" and start down the race path again.

Then a funny thing happened, a realized that a song had been running through the back of my mind the whole time. Now I know what you are thinking--probably a worship song. If you are thinking that you would be mistaken. In fact, believe it or not it was a song from the musical movie Mama Mia. Strange, you may be saying, how could that be? It might be because several times a week my 2 year old granddaughter visits and that just happens to be her favorite DVD so we play it over and over again--dancing and singing along with the karaoke version--I swear the first words she'll be reading are "Mama mia, here I go again". Anyway, back to the song.


The song that was going through my head was "Lay all your Love on me". Again, you may be thinking how in the world was God speaking to me through this song during an attack of the enemy? Here are the words that ran over and over again in my head:

"Don’t go sharing your devotion lay all your love on me"


Okay God, I get it. When I allowed this sin to take hold of me for even a few minutes I was sharing my devotion with the sin--I was running to it for comfort in a moment of stress. In essence I had removed myself from God's arms of love.
It was interesting when I played the song to myself this morning that there was another line that jumped out at me.

"I feel a kind of fear when I don’t have you near"

Pretty interesting stuff huh? Perhaps the fear comes from putting something between me and God.
Hmmmm.....

One word of warning--not all the lyrics are applicable--it is a song written by Abba for goodness sakes. We're not going to be singing this song in home church this week--that's for sure.

BUT, God can use anything to speak to us can't He? As I've shared in past posts, most of the time God speaks through His Word, worship music etc. But today he chose to use something else.

He also reminded me off a great tool to use in times of stress and fear, but I'll share that in another post.


Here's a great scripture:


Job 11:13-20 (The Message)

13-20 "Still, if you set your heart on God
and reach out to him,
If you scrub your hands of sin
and refuse to entertain evil in your home,
You'll be able to face the world unashamed
and keep a firm grip on life, guiltless and fearless.
You'll forget your troubles;
they'll be like old, faded photographs.
Your world will be washed in sunshine,
every shadow dispersed by dayspring.
Full of hope, you'll relax, confident again;
you'll look around, sit back, and take it easy.
Expansive, without a care in the world,
you'll be hunted out by many for your blessing.
But the wicked will see none of this.
They're headed down a dead-end road
with nothing to look forward to—nothing."