Old Steps Renewed

It always amazes me how much you can learn from an animal's behavior,and in this case it was the dog. One early morning a couple of weeks ago Francis the dog, who is almost 14 years old, refused to climb up 2 steps. The dog will run around the yard, take a giant leap from 5 yards away onto a 2 step porch with no fear, but inside the house he didn't want to go up a lousy 2 step staircase. These 2 steps he sometimes has trouble with even though he is in perfect health, so my guess is fear and being protective of himself not wanting to get hurt at his old age was his reaction to those two steps. I eventually used the dog leash to help coax him up the steps.

As I was now gone for a week of work in St. Louis, the dog was free from taking those two steps that lead to my bedroom where he would normally sleep at the foot of my bed. Of course when I came back, that fear was still in him for two days,and then it happened. He was back to his normal self, taking that 2 step leap of faith.

Sometimes when us humans get older we may have that initial fear in taking steps we may have taken in our younger years. It could be in something we enjoy doing like: biking or running long distances, snow boarding or skiing,or scaling a tall mountain. It could also be changing jobs or just driving on snow and ice. What we are actually doing is protecting ourselves from getting hurt. This also could pertain to some of us who have been been believers in Christ for many years. We kind of get that momentary lapse of faith when a situation arises to disrupt our life and we have forgotten our identity in Christ.

I thought it was ironic that in the past couple of months my Pastor has been teaching on renewing our mind with the Word of God so we don't fall into that trap of having a lapse of faith; and a couple of weeks ago I also found myself sitting in on a conversation on the word "power".

Renewing our mind with the Word of God and power co-exist. Thanks to biblegateway.com I was able to easily do a word search on the word power and came up with 335 verses. And over 50 of those verses are directly resulted in us believers having that power within us to use at our disposal. God has given us easy access to Him through prayer. Sometimes we underestimate or minimize the power of God. That's when it is time for us to renew our mind with His Word.

For the kingdom of God is not of talk, but of power. ((1Cor.4:20)

One of the greatest verses to remind ourselves daily is:

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. (Phil.4:13)

The next time you find yourself in a quandry or a lapse of faith, tap into God's power by renewing your mind with what God says about the situation you may be in.