I Can't

Merry Christmas, everybody!
As our year draws to a close, I've been looking over what I've learned this year, both in school and in my Bible-reading room. It has been a lot!

At the beginning of this year, I was just about to start on my first semester in my program at college. I would be taking 14 credits that spanned over five classes. I knew I'd be busy and in school a lot, so I was worried. I thought I wouldn't have time to spend with God in the mornings, and I thought I wouldn't have the brain power to learn spiritual things while I was cramming in so much school information. God reassured me and told me that I didn't need to worry about learning from him. He'd let me off the hook in that department. That was pretty comforting to me.

But I think I either misunderstood, or he was testing me. Because the fact that I determined to focus on school and push God into the background was what started the misery that was to overshadow me during that semester. My life became infested with worry, fear, and a drive to gain perfection on my own. The weird part is, I spent twice as much time doing devotionals during that spring semester as I did this past fall semester. I think it was because I was trying to get in a whole day's worth of spiritual growth in an hour.

I already spent two blog posts talking about what happened that spring, and what changed over the summer. So I'm not going to go over it again. If you need a refresher, you can read my posts "Losing Perfection...Finding Peace"

So, now to the point of this post, and why I entitled it "I Can't."
I recently read a meme on Facebook that quoted some famous person I don't remember. He (or she) said something on the lines of, "Don't limit your dreaming to something you can do by yourself (i.e., without God's help)."And I realized that I had been doing just that. I am more likely to discard an idea without prayer if I think I can't do it. I sometimes look at things through the lens of "If God doesn't come through, at least I can do it without him." But that's not something we, as Christians, ought to do. We need to be willing to say "I can't, but I will anyway." God may well call us to do something we cannot do without him, like walk into an inferno without dying. And there's a good reason for him to do that. He's teaching us, especially me, to rely on him wholeheartedly. He doesn't want us to have any reason to put our trust in ourselves.

The world says the opposite. They say, sometimes literally, "Never say the words 'I can't.'" They teach you to pursue the highest dream imaginable, but understand your limits. Even before you can read, they're telling you the story of The Little Engine that Could. And sometimes, we get confused. Like I did this spring. I compromised without knowing it. I said, "I'll get God's help." But I never fully relied on him.

We pray for God to give us the strength to do what needs to be done. There is nothing wrong with doing that, but we need to be sure that we have the right motives when we're doing it. We need to be doing it from the perspective of "God needs to do this, not me" instead of "I need to do this, but I need a boost."

That's the black and white version of that prayer. However, I find that I'm most easily deceived in the grey area. Like "I need to do this, but I can't do it alone." My advice is this: Stay in the white area. Trust God. Don't be afraid to say, "I can't" and mean it. Then, when God asks you to do the impossible, you can relax, knowing that he will take care of you.