(This week’s devotions are based on Sunday’s message: Win the Day…Cut the Rope – LISTEN HERE)
Elisha Otis had many people for years speak of the lack of safety in a lift. He perhaps, like others, could have thought, “There’s no way a person is going to ride a lift,” and allow the lift to continue to be used for material goods.
Every invention to one degree or another lets go of real or perceived limitations and breaks through them to advance a new idea or a new product or in the case of Otis, a new confidence in people riding in elevators.
But you have to let go of the limitations.
While this truth has practical life application, it also has spiritual applications.
The spiritual battle we wage daily is seeing and operating in life based on our human limitations. When WE don’t see a different way…when WE can’t think of another solution…when WE think a path forward is impossible, we are simply limiting our thoughts and perspectives to our experience.
I hate to say this, because I don’t want to hear it, but that’s the sin of pride.
Pride leads us to think and believe that we have ALL the answers, ALL the solutions, ALL the needed abilities, and ALL the limits of possibilities.
It’s time to cut the rope of pride. Pride limits life to our own perspective, our own capabilities.
An example is in Mark 4. Jesus is with the disciples on a boat in the Sea of Galilee when a squall comes up that threatens to swamp the boats. The experienced sailors saw the limits of their capabilities. They couldn’t calm the winds. They couldn’t still the waves. They couldn’t bail water fast enough. Their conclusion? They were going to drown.
Jesus on the other hand was asleep, seemingly undisturbed by the wind, waves and water coming in the boat.
Why?
Jesus had a different perspective which afforded him different possibilities.
Mark 4:35 That day when evening came, he said to his disciples, “Let us go over to the other side.” 36 Leaving the crowd behind, they took him along, just as he was, in the boat. There were also other boats with him. 37 A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped. 38 Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke him and said to him, “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?”
39 He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, “Quiet! Be still!” Then the wind died down and it was completely calm.
40 He said to his disciples, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?”
41 They were terrified and asked each other, “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!”
The limits of man’s capabilities were the beginning of God’s possibilities. The disciples couldn’t calm the wind and the waves, but Jesus did. The disciples couldn’t prevent the boat from sinking, but Jesus did.
Here’s what happens when we cut the rope of our own human limitations…we begin to see and experience the vast reality of God’s possibilities.
Apply: What obstacles are you facing today? What limitations are you feeling or experiencing? What happens when you ask the Lord to deal with the obstacle not with your human limitations, but with God’s possibilities?
Prayer: Lord forgive me for relying solely on my own capabilities. Help me have a heart of faith that always lives in the space of your possibilities. AMEN.