Spiritual Strength

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.