Revive me.

"Three different times I begged the Lord to take it away. 
Each time he said, 'My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.' 
So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me. 
That’s why I take pleasure in my weaknesses, and in the insults,
hardships, persecutions, and troubles that I suffer for Christ.
For when I am weak, then I am strong."
2 Corinthians 12:8-10 (NLT)

This passage has been laid on my heart in the past couple of weeks, and in turn has become one of my favorites.  

As I've said before, I love to lead worship.  One of my very favorite songs to lead is "You Revive Me" by Christy Nockels.  I love it not only because of the beautiful melody, but even more because of the lyrics.  I can very clearly remember the last time I led a congregation to worship with this song- I remember that I was so exhausted that morning, so emotionally strung out, that everything around me disappeared and the chorus became a desperate prayer, as praise songs often do.  The chorus goes like this:

You revive me- You revive me, Lord
And all my deserts are rivers of joy
You are the treasure I could not afford
So I'll spend myself 'til I'm empty and poor
All for you- You revive me, Lord

I think one of the biggest mistakes we (I) make as Christians is that we force ourselves to be empty.  That's something I see myself doing over and over again, and it's not healthy.  In Luke 14:27, Jesus says, "And if you do not carry your own cross and follow me, you cannot be my disciple."  A lot of people, including myself, tend to take that as an order to suffer for Christ... without His help.  But I simply do not believe that that's what we're really supposed to do.  For in Philippians 4:13, Paul, who writes a lot about suffering in the name of Christ, says, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."

I worry so much about things that I shouldn't.  Not just a mild uneasiness, either.  I worry myself into physical sickness on a regular basis.  This worry stems from insecurity, fear, doubting God... all things that I have written about on this blog because they are huge daily battles for me.  This worry leads not only to physical sickness but also to mental exhaustion.  If it goes on for long enough without me realizing the severity of its effects and surrendering it over to God, I end up feeling more than just mentally and emotionally exhausted-  I feel completely drained.  Numb.  Dead.

I used to read Scriptures about suffering for Christ and take them completely out of context, using them instead as some kind of reassurance that it was okay for me to feel so bad all the time with no purpose.  I would often ask God to be my strength, but there was some determination within me to continue to be emotionally tormented as He fought for me.  Even that day that I cried "You revive me" out to God, I walked off the stage and carried on with an nearly hopeless heart, feeling as if I could barely put one foot in front of the other.
What a dark existence.  No more.

As humans, we live in broken bodies in a fallen world.  My inclination to worry is a symptom of my brokenness, my weakness, and my lack of faith in the God who has never forsaken me.  But as God says in that passage from 2 Corinthians, "My grace is all you need.  My power works best in weakness."  When I finally truly believed this, I realized that I couldn't feel empty anymore.  God wants to fill me- with strength.  

I have sought fulfillment in so many things other than God.  I have had more faith in relationships, possessions, music, and appearance than I've had in God.  Of course, each one of these things let me down- over and over and over again.  With each disappointment, I would somehow lose more faith in God, thinking that He had forsaken me, when in truth it was not He who had let me down but rather these idols in my life.  So I would retreat back into sadness because I could not be fulfilled by these things in which I had placed too much worth.

Sometimes, sadness feels safe.  Emptiness feels like the only option.  And if not for the Lord, that would be true.  But since God did send the Holy Spirit to live within us, we can instead live full of strength even in this dark, fallen world.  That's the kind of powerful, merciful God we worship.

It is only because of Christ that I can say I no longer feel empty.  It is true that His power works best in weakness, and His grace is all I need.  The One who rose from the grave revives me, too.  I'm alive, and I am filled with the strength and JOY of the Lord.


Give me faith to trust what You say
That You're good, and Your love is great
I'm broken inside, I give you my life
I may be weak, but Your Spirit's strong in me
My flesh may fail, but my God, You never will

("Give Me Faith" by Elevation Worship)