LIVING WORD DEVOTIONAL
By Pastor Mensa Otabil
Thursday 25th August 2022
I CAN
Scripture Reading: Philippians 4:10-20
I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Philippians 4:13
The Apostle Paul had a ‘can do’ spirit. When the Lord Jesus called him into the ministry, Paul faced so many barriers. His task was to take the gospel beyond the Jewish community. That task required Paul to break several barriers – spiritual, mental, physical, racial, social and gender. He had to deal with rejection, scarcity, hunger, and severe persecution. Faced with all these challenges, Paul still proclaimed, ‘I can do all things’.
Barriers of impossibility confront us daily. Some of those barriers are physical realities, but many of them are mental barriers. After we have faced impossibilities for so long, and seen others fail, we accept failure as our reality.
For so many years, the record for the mile in athletics hovered above four minutes. Many people said the limits of physical capacity had been reached; and that it was impossible to break the four-minute barrier.
In 1954, Roger Bannister broke the tape at 3:59.4. And what was the result? Well, as soon as the myth of the “impossible barrier” was dispelled, the four-minute mile was attacked and pierced by many with apparent ease. In almost no time, the four-minute achievement was bettered sixty-six times by twenty-six different runners! Bannister broke the myth of the four-minute mile and created an atmosphere of possibility for successive runners.
Christ has broken all barriers of impossibility so that we can also break barriers in life. When we come into a relationship with Christ, He becomes our new reality. His word becomes our mandate. His grace becomes our strength and His power our source of energy and action. What He says we can do, we can do! What He says is possible, is possible.
Let us live with these two realities.
• Christ is my strength. The Lord gives us power to do what He has done.
• I can do all things through Him. Through the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit, we have divine ability to overcome barriers.
We cannot serve an all-powerful God and continue to make excuses for our non-performance. He is there to empower us if we will just accept His word as it is and act on it with faith.
Prayer: Heavenly Father, I receive the fullness of your ability in my life and boldly step out to break barriers. In Jesus’ name, Amen._