February 16 The Inspiration of Spiritual Initiative
\nArise from the dead . . . \u2014Ephesians 5:14<\/p>\n
Not all initiative, the willingness to take the first step, is inspired by God. Someone may say to you, \u201cGet up and get going! Take your reluctance by the throat and throw it overboard\u2014 just do what needs to be done!\u201d That is what we mean by ordinary human initiative. But when the Spirit of God comes to us and says, in effect, \u201cGet up and get going,\u201d suddenly we find that the initiative is inspired.<\/p>\n
We all have many dreams and aspirations when we are young, but sooner or later we realize we have no power to accomplish them. We cannot do the things we long to do, so our tendency is to think of our dreams and aspirations as dead. But God comes and says to us, \u201cArise from the dead . . . .\u201d When God sends His inspiration, it comes to us with such miraculous power that we are able to \u201carise from the dead\u201d and do the impossible. The remarkable thing about spiritual initiative is that the life and power comes after we \u201cget up and get going.\u201d God does not give us overcoming life\u2014 He gives us life as weovercome. When the inspiration of God comes, and He says, \u201cArise from the dead . . . ,\u201d we have to get ourselves up; God will not lift us up. Our Lord said to the man with the withered hand, \u201cStretch out your hand\u201d (Matthew 12:13 ). As soon as the man did so, his hand was healed. But he had to take the initiative. If we will take the initiative to overcome, we will find that we have the inspiration of God, because He immediately gives us the power of life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
February 16 The Inspiration of Spiritual Initiative Arise from the dead . . . \u2014Ephesians 5:14<\/p>\n
Not all initiative, the willingness to take the first step, is inspired by God. Someone may say to you, \u201cGet up and get going! Take your reluctance by the throat and throw it overboard\u2014 just do what needs to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7],"class_list":["post-43174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-utmost","tag-my-utmost-for-his-highest","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wellsofgrace.com\/devotion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wellsofgrace.com\/devotion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wellsofgrace.com\/devotion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wellsofgrace.com\/devotion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wellsofgrace.com\/devotion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wellsofgrace.com\/devotion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43174\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wellsofgrace.com\/devotion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wellsofgrace.com\/devotion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wellsofgrace.com\/devotion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}