Good News about God: The Lord our Strength

"The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in Him, and I am helped." Psalm 28:7

I think I used to believe that the more I matured in God, the stronger I would feel, that somehow I would gain a strength of my own through learning to trust in Him. Now I realize that the more I mature, the more aware I am of my weakness and that it is He who is strong in me.

One of my favorite pictures of maturity in the Scriptures is of the Shulamite in the final chapter of the Song of Solomon. Her entire journey through the story is one of reaching this glorious pinnacle of maturity: "...leaning on her Beloved." The outcome of her journey is that she emerges from a lifetime of walking with Him through the wilderness of affliction and difficulties as one who is wholly dependent on Him, not even able to walk on her own!

The objective of the Holy Spirit in our lives in this age is to lead us to dependence, and it takes a lifetime to learn this because it is absolutely contrary to the fallen and sinful human way of thinking and being. None of us likes to feel weak; we prefer the idea that maturity means we'll reach a point of feeling strong in the face of adversity and opposition and pain.

However, the understanding of the Scriptures is that God is my Strength and that it is in my weakness that He is shown to be strong and that I can, like the apostle Paul, boast (take joy) in my weakness (feebleness/frailty). He goes on to say that it is this embracing with joy of my weakness that actually causes the strength and ability of the Lord Jesus to rest or abide on me. Hebrews 11 says of the men and women of God that they were made strong out of weakness.

These are all truths that we know, but I believe that where we trip up is that we picture this as being people who are always sure of themselves and with no wavering or questions or confusion. This can cause us to deny the inner trembling of the soul and to act as though we are strong. I do believe that we grow in confidence in God's love and goodness and that we can experience increasing inner steadiness but any inner strength in us is His life in us, and we gain that by clinging to Him and living in simple obedience. This lifestyle of abiding and obeying leads us to more dependence, not to less dependence. The closer we cling to Him, the more we are aware that we must cling to Him if we are to experience Him as our strength in the midst of our weakness.

Again, it's Christ in you! Strength is a Person in you, not some thing you gain apart from Him. Boldness is simply obedience to Him in the face of weakness and fear; the feelings of weakness and inability may be there, but the Lord in you looks for the opportunity to manifest His strength through you when you obey Him.

Scriptures for meditation on this theme: Psalm 27:1; 28:7; 46:1; 63:8; 73:25,26; 84:5; 105:4; Nehemiah 8:10; Hebrews 11:34; Isaiah 40:29-31; II Cor. 12:9,10.