Real Strength

I like strength and power awes me. Doesn’t the raw power of things like earthquakes, strong undercurrents, and other natural phenomena just amaze you? I want strength to overcome my trials and tribulations in this life. I want power to conquer my temptations and crush the sin that so easily besets me under my feet! I want to be victorious! I want to stomp and trample sin, death, temptations, and hardships under my feet and stand on the crumpled heap singing the song of triumph over all that is and ever has been against me! Can I hear an AMEN!?

But wait a minute. Do you notice anything a bit unusual or strange in those statements? Do you see the overuse of the word ‘I’? Of course I am doing all the mentioned things because of the power of God in me, right? Wrong. Oh, I used to think that way. After salvation, I have the power of God living in me, helping me to live my life in the strength and power that God gives to me. Strength and power to crush the enemy! Yea! But look at what the Bible has to say:

Not by might, and not by power, but by My Spirit, says the Lord. (Zech 4:6)

Apart from Me, you can do nothing.(John15:5)

In Him all things hold together. (Col. 1:17)

Power belongs to the Lord. (Ps.62:11)

In John 5:19 and 30, Jesus says that He can do nothing of Himself, and nothing of His own initiative. If this is true of Jesus, the Son of God, how much more so is it true of us?

I used to think it was God’s power and might that He gave to me, to enable me to live my life. In reality, however, it is God’s Spirit that lives within us, and when we cultivate our relationship with the Spirit of God in us, we cling to Him, and He takes care of the problem for us!

We do not defeat Satan. Jesus did, and our relationship with Jesus in us helps us to keep that fact in focus. By our staying close in fellowship to the Holy Spirit in us, Satan can not trick us into thinking that we still have to fight with him for our salvation, and he may win if we don’t. The truth is that Jesus fought and defeated him long ago on a wooden cross outside the city limits of Jerusalem, and our job is to surrender ourselves in our relationship with Jesus, so that we are not seduced by Satan’s deception. Jesus does not give us power to zap our adversaries. He is our power. The more we allow Him to live His life in us, the more power for living that will reside in us. Not our power, but Jesus himself, who is the embodiment of all power and strength to begin with.

Paul says that when I am weak, then I am strong. When I realize that apart from Jesus I am a complete nothing ( pretty weak if you ask me) and we live daily in that reality, then Christ in me has free access and reign to act powerfully within me without me trying to be His power or powerful on my own. I only have strength as I allow the Spirit of God to live in me. I have none of my own (none that is effective, anyway). Only as we “let go and let God” as the popular saying goes, do I have any strength within my life.

Only as we stay close to the Lord within us, talking to Him, listening for Him, acknowledging Him in everything, knowing that every breath and step we take is because He is holding us together, (He, in fact, is holding the entire world together( Collosians1:17)) is God free and able to be strength and power within us.

The Psalmist did not say God will give me a shield and some strength. He said God is my shield and my strength. (Psalms 28:7,8; Psalm 18:1,2; Psalm19:14; 2 Sam. 22:3, are just a few). God himself did not say to Abraham that He would give Abe strength and a great reward, He said He was Abe’s strength and very great reward. (Gen 15:1) Jeremiah 16:19 speaks also of the Lord being our strength.

So, I have changed my thinking. I no longer want strength to overcome my trials. I want my relationship with the Spirit of the living God within me to be so close that I allow Him to be my strength. He is the strength. I no longer want power to conquer temptations and crush sin. I want a close relationship with my Redeemer, who will remind me that He is my power, He has crushed sin (that is way too big of a job for me to do), He has paid a great price for me, and the more I say no to my own selfishness, the more He is able to be powerful in me. In the words of Max Lucado and Rick Warren, it’s all about Him. Jesus stomped, trampled and crushed sin, death and temptation under His feet. Now we just have to walk in that victory.