Where Do I Find Spiritual Strength?
When we face hardships, when we dwell on the past, when we are not being good to ourselves, we can feel weak.
And yet hardships are not possible to avoid.
The past cannot be willed away or ignored.
We are not good to ourselves for a lot of complex reasons.
In general being in our heads is often unhelpful. Sometimes I say that the worst coordinates on the planet are in my head.
Feeling weak is a common human thing. But that’s not what matters.
What matters is that we are not alone. I grew up convinced that I was alone. Completely alone. I grew up with zero idea that there was any option other than to struggle with being alone and to struggle with making sense out of a life which did not, at a core level, make sense, or even matter.
That was before something happened in my life. Something that completely changed everything in my life. At around 17 years of age, I first learned about God’s love. I learned about God’s love expressed in Jesus.
In Jesus who showed what God is like and what God says and does; and then in this same Jesus who went to the cross, giving His life for me. To bring me healing, to bring forgiveness. To bring life where there was just existing.
I guess the difference can be described as the journey from existing...to truly living. That might be a good way to talk about the spiritual journey we are all on, going from just existing to a place of truly living.
And one of the things we need, in order to do more than just survive, is to find strength. To find strength is to place our trust where we won’t be disappointed, to place our trust in something or someone proven reliable and good.
And this is where trusting God comes in.
Psalm 20:7 says: “Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God”.
This ‘trust’ that King David is referring to is about what we place our confidence in. Will we put our trust in things that are material and appear to provide us safety?
David himself was a military commander and he witnessed first hand how those entering into battle with chariots and horses would often perish with those chariots and horses.
Though they seemed like sources of protection, they would fail. The darts and arrows of life, which we never really see coming, require us to have much greater protection.
So David learned to place his trust in God, in the name of “the Lord our God”, he said. And placing his trust in God, who David knew as One Who is loving, gracious, patient, full of goodness AND immensely powerful...placing trust in God proved the key to David’s joy and success in life.
What are some of the things that God gives back to us when we give Him our genuine trust?
“For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control”. 2 Timothy 1:7
When we go to God in faith, there is a beautiful exchange. He gives us in place of fear (which a lot of people live in), “power, love and self-control”, which when you think about it goes a very long way to meeting our deepest emotional and practical needs.
In the book of Isaiah, chapter 61, God’s promise is to make an exchange: he gives
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the prisoners, 2 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor
and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, 3 and provide for those who grieve in Zion—to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.
comfort (to) all who mourn,
a crown of beauty instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. (Pause)
Comfort (to) all who mourn
One of the worst experiences in life is to lose those you love. I lost my brother to cancer 13 years ago,and my parents to old age, 9 and then 6 years ago. Mourning is a deep and complex state of being. It is unavoidable in life, but it is not necessary to live constantly in a state of mourning.
God, who cares about us deeply, gives us comfort; he cradles us, enfolds us into His love, holds us tightly in his embrace, if we let him. Soothes our sorrow and heals our memories. Our memories can cause us to mourn. God Gives the comfort of His own presence to sooth our pain.
A crown of beauty instead of ashes
Ashes also refers to mourning the hardships and losses of life. People would put ashes on their head to show they were in deep grief. But instead of that overwhelming sorrow, God promises us a crown of beauty instead. He makes us beautiful as we trust him. He makes our lives beautiful as we put our confidence in His goodness and love.
The oil of gladness instead of mourning
He even transforms our grief into joy and gladness BECAUSE OF HIS presence in our lives, as he lives in us through faith in Christ. Oil was a sign of blessing and hope, of anointing for good things.
And a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair
The spiritual life as it grows in us creates a complete turnabout in a person. I was deeply depressed and morose when I had no hope and knew of no reason to have hope. You can’t be thankful when you’re in that state. But God lifted me from hopelessness as I took baby steps and started to trust him. That quickly morphed into gratitude. Then praise. Then worship. Gratitude, praise and worship truly lift up the heart, and takes you far from the confines of your own head.
One last thought: Jesus identified a very real problem of trying to live life as though God were not a part of it. He said: "I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. John 15:5
So there’s great difficulty, at the very least, in trying to experience transformation apart from God.
The Apostle Paul, who started out as the greatest enemy of the church and eventually became a major leader within it, said this:
I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. 12 I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. 13 I can do all this through him who gives me strength. Philippians 4:11b-13
So Paul identifies that no matter the situation he’s found himself in, good or bad, he can do all things through God. His relationship with Jesus gives him access to capabilities and capacities and strengths that he was humble enough to admit he didn’t have on his own. He didn’t need to, because he wasn’t intended to do life on his own, without God, and neither are we.
So the spiritual life can be seen as a beautiful exchange between us and God. He gives and he gives and he gives and he gives. And in exchange, he wants our love and our trust.
The same way a parent wants the love and trust of their children, God, who Jesus taught us to think of as “daddy”, wants our love and trust. And giving that love and trust is the very core of the spiritual life. God loves us. We love God in return. A beautiful exchange.
