One lie that we are tempted to believe is, "I don’t have what it takes to do what God’s calling me to do."    

If you are an honest and humble person you will find that adopting and working with children who are in crisis situations can often seem overwhelming.

Sometimes when we are feeling the weight of that pressure we feel like God hasn't given us the resources we need to actually respond to the pressure in a way that honors him. And that is a terrible place for us to be, because if we doubt that God has given us the resources to fight a battle, we feel like we have an excuse to give up on the battle altogether. We can say, “Hey, God, what do you expect me to do? I am in this war and you didn’t even provide what I needed to fight it. So what can I do but sin?”

Except that Paul says in Ephesians chapter 1:3, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.”

Every is a very comprehensive word, right? Paul is saying there is not a single spiritual blessing out there that you as a church do not have. So you are not just sort of supplied for this battle by God. Every single blessing that God could provide for us to fight this battle he has given us.

Now sometimes it doesn't look like that to the world. They look at the blessings and the resources we have and they sort of mock what we have as not much. When David went out to fight Goliath, Saul just didn't believe that trusting in the promises of God and these little weapons that David had, that they would be able to defeat that great giant Goliath. And so what did Saul do? He said, “No, this isn’t quite enough, David. You need to wear my weapons, my armor and use my weapons.” And David put that stuff on he is like, no, Saul, I don’t think this is going to work at all. I would rather just use the resources God has provided.  And sometimes in our own lives we are Saul. We are actually looking at our own lives in the battle we are facing and we are saying, “God, I think I need armor and I think I need resources that you haven’t provided.”

And what we need to do put on the helmet of salvation is we need to go back and we need to say, “No, I have been saved.” Let’s look at the salvation that God has provided. He has provided every spiritual blessing for me in Christ. I can, I do have the resources I need to live for Christ. And what are some of those resources, guys? We have the Word of God. God has spoken. We have the Church of God. God has, too, he has united us to people who will help us. We don’t only have the Word of God and the Church of God, we have the Spirit of God. God is with us. God abides in us and the Spirit of God is actively engaged in our lives opening our eyes to the Word of God, helping us put off sin. And so what we need to do if we are going to put on the helmet of salvation is in faith trust God. That is, salvation is as good as he says it is, that we do have the resources we need to fight the battle that we have been called to fight.

It's important you believe you are as rich spiritually as the BIble says you are.  Too many of us are acting like we are beggars.  What happens when a person thinks he is a beggar is he thinks that he doesn’t have a responsibility to give, to serve, to work, I am a beggar and because a lot of Christians sort of think of themselves as beggars, the calls to serve others in need, it feels like hey how can you ask me to do that, don’t you see how little I have here, but they need to start seeing themselves the way Paul does, as people with every spiritual blessing, we are people with incredible resources.