Recently I saw a sign on a church that said, "Trust in God, believe in yourself and you can do anything." That is not correct.
There was a time in my life when I would have seen that sign and said, "Amen!" But not anymore. You and I really cannot do anything we want to do. We cannot do anything or everything that everyone else is doing. But we can do everything God has called us to do. And we can be anything God says we can be.
We must get balance in this area. We can go to motivational seminars and be told with a lot of emotional hype, "You can do anything. Think you can do it; believe you can do it; say you can do it - and you can do it!" That is true only to a degree. Carried too far, it gets off into humanism. We need to speak about ourselves what the Word says about us.
We can do what we are called to do, what we are gifted to do. There are ways we can learn to recognize the grace gifts that are on our life.
I have learned this regarding myself: When I start getting frustrated, I know it is a sign that either I have gotten off into my own works and am no longer receiving God's grace, or I am trying to do something for which there was no grace to begin with.
Don't Frustrate the Grace of God
God has not called us to frustration. "I do not frustrate the grace of God..." (Gal. 2:21 KJV).
Each of us is full of gifts and talents and potentials and abilities. If we really begin to cooperate with God, we can go for the very best that God has for us. But if we get high-minded ideas and set goals that are beyond our abilities and the grace gifts on our life, we will become frustrated.
Excerpt permission granted by Harrison House Publishers