Big Boy Pants
Stop messin’ around and put on them big boy pants
Is your life going smoothly? If so, would you mind trading places with me for a week?
YOU KNOW THOSE DAYS when you pause to take a panoramic view of what’s going on around you and all you see is disintegration. Addictions. Children die. Marriages implode. Cancer strikes. Kidnappings. Bombings…on and on.
THE CRUD that life hurls our way often overwhelms our hearts and occasionally crushes our spirits. I’m tempted to disappear with a plate of cookies and tune out the madness.
*I grab the snickerdoodles and quietly crawl under my blanket*
MY SUBCONSCIOUS unloads the verse I’ve memorized, and a still small voice yells:
“I thank God continually, that when I received the message of God I welcomed it not as the word of men, but as it truly is, the Word of God, which is effectually at work in me, exercising its superhuman power because I adhere to, trust in, and rely on it.”
Superhuman! Does that relate to big boy pants?
*I peek out from under my cozy blanket*
LIFE IS TOO HARD. It’s true! We weren’t designed to survive on our own strength and wisdom. We were created to rely completely upon God to get us through every day. When He is not the center of our existence, we end up with plan B: looking to lifeless sources of “power” to fill us with significance and security. Which makes living richly an IMPOSSIBILITY.
KNOWING JESUS DOES NOT make my life easier by taking away all my troubles. No, an intimate relationship with Jesus fills me with the fullness of God in all power and authority of His kingdom so that I have the strength and power—the big boy pants—to overcome. Jesus told His followers, “Take (My) courage, for I have overcome the world!”
*Throws off the stuffy blanket … eats one last cookie*
BUT WHY NOT trust in myself?
Simple. No one else but Jesus Christ has ever overcome:
Overpowered
Incapacitated
Disabled
Surmounted
Conquered
Defeated
Rose above and
Prevailed over all darkness, death and evil
So take His courage! He doesn’t call me to follow Him and then goes back to playing the holy harp to entertain the Father. He personally empowers me by the Holy Spirit to defeat the darkness in my own life. We don’t have to wait until eternity to have freedom. We just gotta put on them big boy pants.
The Courage of the Embattled Spirit
“I have told you these things, so that in Me you may have perfect peace and confidence. In the world you have tribulation and trials and distress and frustration; but be of good cheer [take courage; be confident, certain, undaunted]! For I have overcome the world. I have deprived it of power to harm you and have conquered it for you.” John 16:33
