A Strong Spirit Will Sustain You
26
I asked, “What? No.”
He said, “Yes. You can feed yourself and exercise yourself and still be weak.”
I asked, “How Lord? What?”
“Drains.” He said, “What if you have a lot of water coming into a tub, but there is just as much
going out of the tub, down the drain? It’s not going to fill up, right? Before you can fill it up, you
have to stop the drain.”
There are things that will drain your spirit. You can get built up good in a service. You can build
yourself up reading your Bible and praying in the Spirit. But there are some things you can do
that will just empty you, as if you didn’t even get built up.
Number three, you have to watch out for drains
.
Let me mention a few of them to you. Fear
will drain you. Worry will drain you. You can sit in the chair and worry about something, and
it’s like pulling the plug on your spiritual energy; it will just drain you.
Another drain is too many involvements, too many activities, doing all kinds of things the Lord
never told you to do. You’re running here and there, doing this, and staying on the phone all day
about nothing. You’re doing everything that everyone asks you to do. You’re getting involved in
every project and every program. It will wear you out, and it won’t be the Lord’s fault. He didn’t
tell you to do it. You didn’t ask Him whether you should do it or not; you just did it. It will drain
you and wear you out.
One of the biggest drains is strife. You can read all of Isaiah, Matthew, and Philippians, and pray
in tongues for four hours, and get so built up that you feel like you’re floating. But then when
you get into an argument with someone, fuss, and get intense and heated in strife for 15 minutes,
you feel like you’re so weak you can barely stand up. Strife will absolutely drain you.
The devil knows this. What if he can keep you in strife all of the time, and you’re not feeding
your spirit, either? It won’t take long until you are critically weak and easy prey for anything that
comes down the road. That’s why it is not the
love suggestion
, it’s the
love commandment
. You
do not have to fight and fuss with people. It takes two to be in strife, and you can be a
nonparticipating party.
We’re going to act on this, and something is going to happen while we are acting on this. Your
spirit is going to get supercharged. It’s going to get quickened. Just watch and see. Your spirit is
going to get life and quickening, because it’s in the Word.
Joel 3:10 says, “Let the weak say, I am strong.” Let the weak do what?
Think about
being
strong? No, “Let the weak
say
, I am strong.”
What if you are really, really lost? Believe in your heart that God has raised Jesus from the dead,
and say with your mouth, “Jesus is my Lord.” (Romans 10:9) What if you are really, really,
weak? Say, “I am strong.”
