Tuesday’s Trust - Your Power Works Best In My Weakness? / The Way Appointed ~Elisabeth Elliot

Tuesday’s Trust

Your Power Works Best In My Weakness?

and

The Way Appointed

~Elisabeth Elliot

Your Power Works Best In My Weakness?

Your power works best in my weakness?

You do more through me with a thorn in my flesh?

This messenger sent from Satan to torment me, to make me powerless—

Will be the very tool You use in me—You, myself, and others to bless?!

Your thoughts are indeed much higher than ours

Your ways far beyond what we can imagine:

Through every torment Satan sends to weaken, Your Spirit us empowers;

His inflictions sent to mar Your work, You redesign by Your own fashion

To be cords in our life’s tapestry to interweave Your Life more deeply in ours

As You weave bindings to bind each hurt with Your Healing Love and Compassion.

Effectively entwining our hearts to Thee

Despite our blinding pain, You give us new eyes to see…

Thank You Lord, that You will not be stymied whatever Satan may do,

For though Satan rips holes

in our tender souls,

You interlace Your love into each tear so that Your Love in each, shines through!

Satan’s holes

open my tormented soul

to the light of God’s grace

that I, and others,

–through my brokenness–

more clearly may see

His face.

*****

The Way Appointed

~Elisabeth Elliot

ONE ASPECT OF THE MYSTERY of God’s sovereign will is how the calculated evil of men is not only permitted, but actually becomes a necessary part of the divine plan. We are tempted to think of the wrongs done to us as hindrances, frustrations, interruptions.

“What has this got to do with the will of God?”

we ask, irritated and, we suppose, justifiably impatient with human interference. But the truth is that both our time and our way are in God’s hands—they are “appointed.” Surely it is so for all his sons as it was for the Son of Man. When He was on the verge of being “handed over for crucifixion,” and betrayed by one of his own disciples, He said,

“My appointed time is near…. One who has dipped his hand into this bowl with me will betray me. The Son of Man is going the way appointed for him.”

[Mt 26:18, 24 NEB]

Out of the deepest depths of human evil the good God brought salvation—the very salvation of man whose sinfulness killed the Son He sent.

Nothing can reach us, from any source in earth or hell, no matter how evil, which God cannot turn to his own redemptive purpose. Let us be glad that the way is not a game of chance—it is a way appointed, and it is appointed for God’s eternal glory and our final good.

*Highlights, mine

Tapestry of a Heart Picture, thanks to FotoSearch

Poem – Your Power Works Best In My Weakness? – Angie Bennett Prince – 6/13/08, edited 9/12/2008

Elisabeth Elliot in ~A Lamp for My Feet: The Bible’s Light for Daily Living

NEB: New English Bible Translation of The Holy Bible