I love you, Lord, my strength. Those who know your name trust in you. For You, Lord have never forsaken those who seek you. (Psalm 18:1, 9:10)
We live in a world where there is no dearth of presumptuous, delusional, misplaced affirmations and proclamations.
I am powerful.
I am pure, positive energy.
I am a woman. What is your superpower?
I am an unstoppable force of nature.
Conscious breathing is my anchor.
I am enough.
It is the anthem of the world – of a people who have nobody greater than themselves to trust in. A people who have not yet tasted the power and strength found in Christ Jesus. It is the battle cry of the lost. Had the grace of God not found me where I lay – in the dirt and sludge of my own doing – I would have championed the power of my “inner strength” and coaxed others into “looking within” to find their untapped power.
It all feels very glamorous and empowering – this business of finding one’s inner strength. And perhaps it is enough for those who merely follow the moral code of the world. However, in light of the standard of holiness that Christ has called you and I to, “channeling my inner self” sounds like a bad joke.
I think of the twelve, common Israelite men that Christ chose as His disciples. I imagine that they walked around with a certain feeling of self importance during the initial days. They must have felt that they did something right in order for the Rabbi to have chosen them specifically. A couple of weeks into following their Rabbi around would have change the name of the game. Having been present during Christ’s Sermon On The Mount, discovering the sacrifice required of a disciple, being privy to the kind of prayer life Christ had, and realising just how thorough a change God required within the human heart would have left them feeling grossly inadequate and overwhelmed.
Many of us can relate to that feeling.
I, for one, am much too familiar with that emotion. It is a feeling of utter helplessness and inadequacy in the face of my insurmountable failings. I fail spectacularly with alarming frequency. It can send me spiralling into dark bouts of depression if I am not careful. How can I face God when I was just pretending as though He doesn’t exist? How can I write a blog on discipleship when I lived only for myself last week? How can God use my words to shape and comfort others when my words were shameful and proud during that argument I had? In light of God’s standards, my shortcomings plague me and my own heart testifies against me.
What then can I do? How can my walk with Christ advance? I’ll let you in on a secret. It is a powerful word that has the power to change the course of your life : Trust. We use that word so flippantly and so often that it has lost all meaning. Trust is an emotion – your heart is tied to the outcome. But only “free falling” trust in God can save us from ourselves.
Cry out for help while fully believing that help will come. You are a drowning person on the edge of the ocean- now is not the time to show your bravado. If you depend on your own strength, the current will carry you away to your death. Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns away from the Lord’” (Jer. 7:5)
Instead, when our heart testifies against us, let us learn to pay close attention.
“Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts.”
You need redeeming grace. You need divine help. Take it seriously. Do not be presumptuous enough to assume that you can do this on your own. You cannot. The current will always be stronger. It’s only Christ who can pull you into the lifeboat. It is an absolute dependence on His strength that makes it possible.
In the words of C.S. Lewis, “You must ask for God’s help. Even when you have done so, it may seem to you for a long time that no help, or less help than you need, is being given. Never mind. After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up, and try again. Vary often what God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself but just this power of always trying again.” (Mere Christianity)
Beloved, run to God while you are is still weighed by the weight of your sin. When you are yet restless and are given to anxiety by your straying heart. Do not let your recurring transgressions mellow the voice you once heard loud and clear. It’s a fine line – this line of grace. It is because of grace that God continues to speak to your conscience. You can choose to ignore it, and embrace the general lack of the fear of God in the body of Christ today. Instead, choose to praise God for your turbulent heart. If the Holy Spirit chooses to stop sending our heart these signals of disquiet, and if we become comfortable in our sin, we are on the highway to hell.
As soon as you realise that something isn’t right, and I can’t stress this enough, ask God for help immediately. But when you ask, you must trust that help will come. Let us stop thinking of God as some abstract entity and believe that can feel Him tangibly in various areas of our life. Trust fearlessly and stand back to see His power shine through our weakness.
Trust is an intimate feeling. It is what helps relationships grow and thrive. It is an active emotion that takes God at His word. No faith is so precious as that which lives and triumphs through adversity (Spurgeon).
Perhaps you have been disheartened by failing one too many times. Perhaps you have a favourite sin that you cannot seem to shake. Please do not assume that God is not interested in helping you because you have “failed” him. If God does not do miracles for many of His children, it is not because they have failed Him in the past, but because they do not trust Him now. God is in the business of new beginnings. No sin is greater than Christ’s desire to forgive it. No conscience is too stained that God cannot wash it white.
Commit your way to the Lord; trust in Him, and He will act. (Psalm 37:5)