I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me (Philippians 4:13).
You and God make a majority; you can not fail.
From the moment I realized the truth of this statement my life began to change.
I grew up in the church, and knew the power of God to be real, but knew also that to trust His power and to allow it to live in and through me meant experiencing it for myself. With God on my side, I began to look for spiritual challenges. It did not take long to find them.
For me those challenges came in the form of wanting to live. Raised by a father and mother who excessively disciplined me to the point of abuse, finding the desire to live was very difficult. I was suicidal until I was thirty, was verbally abusive to my wife, and at one point lost everything I had.
Alone, one Christmas, I stared at the veins in my arms and wondered if my children would find my body should I finally decide to end my life. But, instead of reaching for a knife, I reached out to Christ and began to read my Bible.
As I read, the Lord guided me to Ephesians 4:30-31: “And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice.”
In an instant, the Holy Spirit began to speak to me, and revealed to me that for years I had been carrying the pain and hurt of my past. I sobbed uncontrollably. I needed to forgive my parents, especially my dad, for the pain that had been inflicted upon me. But how could I when spiritually I was so weak, and so broken?
Armed with the revelation of my need to forgive, I sought out the comfort of some close friends. Together, over the course of the next year, I prayed, soaked up the wisdom of God’s word, and began to find the strength to forgive my parents. In time I put my past behind me, and left it there.
Today I serve as a pastor, and help people who sometimes find themselves weak and without hope. In Christ I have found not only the strength to forgive, but the strength to live life each and everyday by the might and the power of God.
By accepting Jesus as your Lord and Savior, believing that he died for your sins, you too can find strength in Christ to overcome all things. In Jesus there is life, and hope, and a reason to live. God has made you for a purpose, and with Him you are in the majority. You can not fail.
And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us (Romans 5:5).
