Fighting Powerlessness

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by:  Staci Stallings

My “word” for 2014 is “inspiration.”

Each year around Christmas/New Year’s I choose a new word.  In the past my words have included:  Faith and Healing.  This year, the word is “Inspire” or “Inspiration.”

In short, I want to inspire as many people as possible.

Well, here it is April (can you believe it?!), and inspiring has taken on all kinds of forms I hadn’t planned or realized it would back in January.

For example, many more of my books are in people’s hands than were in January, and people are responding by contacting me via Facebook and email to say how much they enjoyed the books and how much they’ve gotten out of them.

Then there’s Sunday school with my kids (my kids and my students).  Every week it seems I see more and more lights going on with them.  One of the things I’ve noticed specifically is my students’ desire to “help.”  One week in January when it was icy outside, we went to leave the church as a group.  My students have been inspired to look for ways to help other people out, so as we were leaving, a couple of them asked to carry my bag.  A couple others asked to roll my notebook suitcase.  And one said she would carry my COAT!  BWHAHAHA!  She was a little nonplussed when I told her I thought I would keep my coat, but thanks for asking!

The interesting thing I have learned, however, is how easy it is to inspire and how mightily inspiration can fight powerlessness.  You know powerlessness, that feeling we all get that the situation is just too big.  It’s just too overwhelming, and there’s nothing we can do about it?  Yeah, that feeling.

What I”m learning is the truth of a quote I saw the other day, “The devil just needs people to believe they are powerless.”

Oh, how true!

“What difference can I make?”  ”This is pointless.”  ”I give up.”  ”They’ll never even know we did anything.”  ”This won’t even help.” “What’s the point?”

And when we get convinced of these, what is the next step?

To do NOTHING!

Think about that.  If we decide that our $10 isn’t going to help anyway, we might well decide not to give the $10!  And thus, Satan wins.

Well, I, for one, am not interested in letting Satan win.  So if there’s something I can do, I’m going to DO IT.  And by my doing it, I might inspire others to join me.

Then my $10 and their $10 equals $20 and now maybe we’re getting somewhere!

I love this little video of an elderly woman who was stuck in her house.  She didn’t have really much of anything to use to inspire people.  She didn’t have money to donate, nor could she “get involved” by physically being at school events.  But she didn’t let her perceived powerlessness win.

No.  She did what she could, and she ended up inspiring a whole school (and nearly 2 million Youtube viewers as well)!

Watch and see what doing something can do…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1wWhLzDRIY

A smile and a wave, and you can inspire a whole generation.  Amazing how a little inspiration can take on powerlessness and obliterate it completely!