Slow Learner

Friday morning was really rough for me.  I had a really good time in the Word, but then Shorty & I got crossways. =P  It really messes up my day when Shorty & I are "off".  Part of that is because of my sinful tendency to elevate my husband above the place God has established for him, and part of it is the "one flesh" principle.  It just doesn't feel right-- because it's not-- to be at odds with my other half!

I'm kind of a slow learner, at least when it comes to spiritual things.  God has to regularly make me revisit situations that stress a particular idol in my heart.  Sometimes He hits 2 or 3 at once! =/  Friday it was like that.  It took the wise words of a dear sister to encourage me to repentance & belief.  I had read Ephesians 1 in my Bible time & was struck by a particular passage, but as I shared with my sister, I understood what the Lord was telling me, it just "wasn't sticking"!

For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.
Ephesians 1:15-23

I had noticed in an earlier reading that the goal of Paul's prayer was that the Ephesian believers would KNOW God.  There are three specifics that will lead to better knowing God.  The thing that stood out to me Friday morning after having read the entirety of the letter to the Ephesians was that they were forgetting.  Paul prays that they will 1) remember their hope, 2) remember who they are in Christ, and 3) remember the greatness of the power of their God.  In my moments of trial, I was "forgetting" those same things even as they were running through my mind!  I was living as though I didn't know my hope, who I am in Christ, and the power of my God.

But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
2 Corinthians 12:9-10