Because all I’ve got is a lot of weakness right now.

All I’ve got is irritable mood swings.

All I’ve got is a lot of failure under my belt.

All I’ve got is this longing to be Repunzel and get locked in a remote castle (where I can sleep all day!), at least until this baby’s born and my energy is restored and my hormones aren’t going crazy.

All I’ve got, and all I can give, and all I can do,

is repent.

But not the kind of repentance I was taught in my Southern Baptist high school those many years ago.

No, a life-giving repentance.  One that infuses real strength, in a really weak person.

“Real Repentance is hilariously exciting. It is facing the facts of life, recognizing how God made you, how you were intended to function, and then being restored to that relationship of mutual interavailability that the Lord Jesus enjoyed between Himself and the Father, a mutual interavailability in which you are prepared to let Him be God.  That is true repentance.

Real repentance happens the moment you genuinely admit,

“I cannot-and only God can.”

Deriving from that repentance is the attitude the Bible calls faith.  It means bowing to the fact that you cannot and only God can. It means acting on the assumption that this is true and exposing every situation to Him moment by moment, for Him to accomplish what you cannot while you tell Him, “Thank you!”

You give Him

your hands for Him to work with,

your feet for Him to walk with,

your lips for Him to speak with,

your eyes for Him to see with ,

your ears for Him to hear with,

your mind for Him to think with,

your heart for Him to love with,.

You tell Him, “Thank You for being my Creator within the creature. YOU are in business!”

Taken from: The Indwelling Life of Christ, by Major Ian Thomas

And this, my friends, is the real secret to real strength.

For the Strong One is doing all of the heavy lifting.