on partnering with God...

Once upon a time, there was a mouse and elephant, who were best friends. They hung out together all the time, the mouse riding on the elephant's back. One day, they crossed a wooden bridge, causing it to bow, creak, and sway under their combined weight. After they were across, the mouse, impressed over their ability to make such an impact, said to the elephant, "We sure shook up that bridge, didn't we?"

- Intercessory Prayer, by Dutch Sheets, p. 104

When we partner with God, we do see crazy things happen. When we allow him to move and work through us, we do see lives transformed, mountains moved, and bridges built. And the invitation to us is always to partner with God: to throw our gifts, our weight, and our passions in with his and to allow him to move powerfully in and through those.

Unfortunately, our tendency is... when cool things happen, we give ourselves far too much credit. All of a sudden, the focus is off of God, and on to our gifts, our weight, our passions, our prayers even. We consider ourselves the elephant, the movers and the shakers, the heavyweights, if you will.

We-- I-- need to remember who is the elephant and who is the mouse.