Bringing Strength To Revival

Sometimes we don’t realize just how powerful words are. But they are powerful, especially ones from the heart.

My word last year was strength. The definition for strength is: Quality or state of being strong.

After looking at that, I decided to look up the definition for this years word, which is revival: An instance of something becoming important again.

Words like new production, reawakening, and restoration were also listed, but what got me most was the next definition under revival: An improvement in the condition or strength of something.

My word for 2017 is found in the definition of what my 2018 word is. Which got me thinking - The strength I needed last year is the same strength that brought me to this revival now.

Isaiah 41:10 says: "Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand."

I had to think of how I could take this strength that he says He’ll give to us and how can we use it to see a revival out of it. If I’ve learned anything at all, it’s that it is okay to not be okay.

One thing we often struggle with is being vulnerable and burying emotions. For me, after a couple of heartbreaks and hardships, instead of dealing with them head on and surrendering it all to God, I put up a huge wall as my defense mechanism. I allowed myself to become numb to any possible feeling so I never had to deal with the aftermath of it all. Not only was I having to deal with one tribulation, but multiple because I never allowed myself to process through them as they came. Everything hit me at once and I had no idea how to deal with it until I realized that I couldn’t do this on my own. I was in need of not my own strength, but His strength to pick myself up and bring about a revival.

How come it seems so much easier to to sweep everything under the rug instead of just dealing with it? But guess what?

There’s purpose in the pain. The things lost in one season, is just an intended gain in another season. It can be so hard to wrap our minds around the fact that when God takes something away from us, it just means that He’s going to replace it with something ten times better. It’s so hard to find ourselves praising Him when it feels like He’s against us, but that’s not the case at all. That’s why we need to praise Him when we don’t understand. We need to praise Him when it doesn’t make sense & we need to praise Him even when it hurts. We can set the unknown on the firm foundation of His love and His promises for us. He doesn’t promise that we won’t have trials, but He promises us His peace and He promises us strength in them. This foundation is just a building block for what’s to come.

Use this assurance and this strength He gives you to build up walls of love and grace instead of walls of insecurity and doubt the way I did.

We can take this foundation that I said and use it to build ourselves up in everything that He says we are, not what the world says we are. If we do this, it’s a firm foundation. If we build ourselves up on what the world says about us, it’ll be on a foundation of sand and we’ll just end up sinking deeper and deeper. The word of God needs to mean more to than the words of people.

Our strength and our worth is in exactly what it says about us in Psalm 139:14, saying that I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Use this assurance and this strength He gives you to build up walls of love and grace instead of walls of insecurity and doubt the way I did. The weak are made strong in Him and we can’t get stronger unless we’re stretched and broken down. Allow yourself to be stretched, so you can build yourself up in the strength He gives you and watch yourself become more & more of who He created you to be.

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About the author: Allison Honerkamp

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