Our Limitations
Space for God
I hate limitations! I am not the most intelligent person but I have a strong will and I will work or push through anything to accomplish what I want! Well, I came face to face with my limitations last night and today. My body was destroyed from trying to reach a new summit hiking everyday since last Wednesday. Except for Mass I didn’t leave the house today. I’ve been vanquished by my limitations and I am angry, sad and depressed. I have limitations, I hate that I am finite. This is the very trap the devil fell into.
Teresa of Avila writes: I believe His Majesty desires to bring us along this way (the way of suffering, trials, crosses and difficulties) for our own good so that we may understand well what little we amount to. The favors that come afterward are of such great worth that He desires first that before He gives them to us we see by experience our own limitations so that what happened to Lucifer will not happen to us. Life 11:11
Because he has no physical body, the devil did not experience his limitations through suffering. Therefore, he thought he was without limits, that he did not need God, so he did not want God and made no space for God in his life. That is why he is in hell. He made allowed no space for God in his life.
A Gift If We Recognize
If we had no limitations, we would be full of ourselves and there would be no space for God to fill with His divine life. Our limitations therefore may be our greatest asset because it creates a space for us to be filled by God and divinized – that is – made God-like. And when we become God-like we surpass our limitations infinitely! Our limitations are unique. It may be physical, psychological, it may be that your kids are growing up and leaving you behind so to speak – you can go with them or keep them with you – it may be the death of a spouse, old age and infirmity; it may be that you are a gifted professional and you take on too many opportunities, clients, or patients and the weight is now crushing you; or you may just find that you face circumstances you cannot change. These are our limitations. They are a gift. Why? Because you cant do any more to overcome it by your power alone! You cant do it. Oh you can make it worse, that’s for sure, by forcing your will or your way, but you cant remove your limitations by your will power. This is a great blessing and the devil missed it completely. See, you CAN have your limitations removed and obliterated completely by
A) accepting them with trust in God
B) surrendering them to Jesus
C) letting God fill that space of perceived loss or frustration with Himself
D) when God fills that Space with Himself he raises you up to a divine level – Divinizes you!
Stronger Than Disease
This is what God did to St. Faustina and Maximilian Kolbe. God allowed both Faustina and Kolbe to face the limitation of TB. She accepted it with trust and God raised her up to become the Apostle of Mercy around the world for the last 100 years. Kolbe accepted his limiting illness with Trust in the Mother of God and he formed the largest monastery in the world, 700 young men, and then duplicate it in Japan, and produced a daily periodical to evangelize with a distribution of over 1,000,000 copies regularly. Then he offered his life for another man in Auschwitz, they denied him water and food for 14 days at the end of which he was latterly glowing with divine light and he wouldn’t die so they had to give him a lethal injection. Kolbe accepted his limitations, God filled that space with the His divine presence and made Kolbe free and powerful and almost indestructible!
Full of His Divine Life
The devil wants us to focus on the limitations, the loss, the frustration, fear and sorrow. then the devil wants us to hate God for this. Focus instead on God filling your limitations, the space He is carving out, with Himself, making you God-like, free, powerful, beautiful, and full of His divine life.
Stop Fighting Against Him
Develop your gifts, maximize your potential, do arduous things, and live life to the full. Then when God allows you to face your limitations, recognize that God is using them to carve out a space that He will fill with His life, love, power and beauty, if you surrender to him and work with him – stop fighting against him; trying to force your way back to the way things were before or where you want to go. God is stripping and emptying you to fill you – let Him.