Prayer For LifeSample

DAY SIX: The End of My Own Strength

One night after preaching, I couldn’t sleep. I’d start to drift off and suddenly feel as if I were falling off the end of the bed even though I wasn’t.

When I went into church on Sunday, my head felt as if it were splitting open. I was short of breath, and I had no energy. This went on for at least six months. Eventually I realized I was having a physical breakdown.

When I felt I couldn’t take it anymore, I screamed:

“Is this how You reward those who serve You? I’ve given You the best of all the strength that I have. And You respond by taking away my strength. Do You get some kind of delight in doing this to Your servants?”

If God had said to me in that moment, “I’m going to turn you to ashes,” I would have said, “Go ahead.”

I knelt down, broken and empty. Then He spoke to me: “I love you.”

That wasn’t what I expected. I melted at His words. It was what I had always longed for my earthly father to say, and now God Himself was saying it.

“Carter,” the Lord said to me, “I only want you to do what I ask you to do. You’ve done many, many things that I didn’t ask you to do.”

“I will do as You say, God.”

About three weeks after, a guy came up to me and said, “Pastor, I feel so much hope in your preaching these past few weeks.”

He was sensing that I had turned my control and striving over to God. I had come to the end of my own strength. I needed God’s strength in my life, and it had produced in me a joy that I hadn’t known.