Inadequacy

God,
I love your secret little gifts. Gifts that only you, who search my heart and know my mind would give. They are subtly sweet, like an inside secret between the two of us. A whisper of encouragement. These melt my heart.

The past few weeks I have been struggling with parenting a three year old. Feeling lots of condemnation and total inadequacy. To be perfectly honest I was not enjoying my son and was sick of parenting. This led to tons of guilt and depression. And oh my goodness did my enemy take all of that and run with it. Feeling way too guilty to come to God to free me, I surrendered instead to the attack I was under and the horrible attitude I had. There were quite a few days I would just wake up in tears being so overwhelmed by the inadequacy of my abilities to do anything well. I felt so discouraged.

Finally after a couple weeks of damage, The holy spirit tugged me in and I cried to God and begged himfor his help.  ( I also had a lot of apologizing to do. )

He quickly comforted me with two verses.
 Romans 8:18- "I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us." God was saying "Dawn, it's okay. Your struggle right now is nothing compared to the Glory I will live out in you. Stop focusing on  yourself,  and look at me!"

Romans 8:26-"the spirit helps us in our WEAKNESS. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the spirit himself, intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express" He said, "you have help" The spirit himself pleads to God for me in accordance to his will. I have the holy spirit, who is in high position with God working om my behalf. I would definitely call that help.

Feeling refreshed by my conversation with God I felt much better, however, I am still struggling against my bad habits. God encouraged me with a couple of presents today.

My attitude with my son this morning was so completely different than it had been all week. I didn't do anything particularly different, I just felt free from the darkness I had been sulking in. As we were getting ready to leave for the day Gabriel said to me "I had fun at my house this morning" This stopped me right in that moment. Please understand the weight of those words. The mornings had been the absolute worst between me and Gabe and when my attitude was the ugliest. So Gabriel's sweet little voice saying those words to me was such a gift from God. Like a kiss on the forehead from my father. It really lifted my heart.

Then, a few hours into my work day I felt the need to stop and pray. I only had a couple minutes so I hung my head and felt such a great need for Jesus's help because I am a total spiritual wimp.  So I prayed and talked to God about my inadequacy. Then I opened my bible to look back at Romans 8, but on my way there God stopped me another page. I had written a note from a study I had done a few months ago. At the top of the page was written:

"You have to know your inadequate to be effectively used by the Holy Spirit"-Larry Crabb

Amen, what an encouragement.

So the cure to my inadequacy isn't to become adequate. It is to be filled with the Holy Spirit because Jesus is adequate!
I had it totally backwards! Thinking I needed to work really hard to become a better christian. The point is, as Romans 8:18 says, Look at Jesus!

It really is all about Jesus!