When I'm weak He is strong
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This morning, our text reminds me about a song I learned as a child that sings with resounding truth that still rings true for me, for us today.
Jesus loves me this I know
For the Bible tells me so
Little ones to Him belong
They are weak but He is strong
Yes Jesus loves me
Yes Jesus loves me
Yes Jesus loves me
The Bible tells me so
This childhood truth reminded me:
I am weak but He is strong
He loves me:
How do I know this?
The Bible tells me
No matter how old I am He loves me
I may be weak but His strength will take one through everything I face.
This morning take a look at the book of Ephesians with me, as we sort through the appeal of Paul to the Ephesians.
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people.
Pray: Be strong in the Lord may the power of your might be instilled in our hearts.
This morning we are being admonished:
Be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might
Be strong not in ourselves but in the boundless resources of God
This command is echoes through scripture:
God commissioned Joshua as Moses’ successor to lead the nation of Israel - 3 times he was commanded to be strong and of good courage:
“Be strong and courageous, for you are the one who will lead these people to possess all the land I swore to their ancestors I would give them.
Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the instructions Moses gave you. Do not deviate from them, turning either to the right or to the left. Then you will be successful in everything you do.
This is my command—be strong and courageous! Do not be afraid or discouraged. For the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”
David said to his son Solomon:
David also said to Solomon his son, “Be strong and courageous, and do the work. Do not be afraid or discouraged, for the Lord God, my God, is with you. He will not fail you or forsake you until all the work for the service of the temple of the Lord is finished.
Paul prepared Timothy for his new pastoral role by telling him:
You then, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.
God came alongside people who felt weak and inadequate, ever felt like that?
Weak and inadequate means an absence of strength. He called on them to be strong.
This call in Ephesians is a call to stand!
Four times in Ephesians 6 Paul uses the language of standing to describe how to apply spiritual strength in v. 11, 13, 14.
We are called to be strong so we will stand in the victory that is already been won.
Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be courageous; be strong.
My friends we are being called to Stand Strong!!!
We have been called by God to fight by standing firm.
To take a stand so that evil shall not pass
We are given the courage and strength to do this through our faith
What happens when our faith is weak?
What happens when we have doubts?
Does it limit our beliefs?
Friends we may not always have clear purpose or know exactly where we will end up.
We often don’t know for sure who our enemies are.
We all face great challenges, each day we need to ask ourselves this:
Will I continue the fight and work towards the goal?
Or will I give up and fail?
When you are attacked in a way that exposes weaknesses what will you do?
Will you fight?
Will you endure?
Will you stand?
Take Paul’s words to heart and defend your ground by standing firm.
We fight by standing in the victory that is already ours that we have found in Jesus.
Simply stand in the power of God’s strength through Jesus Christ
Our text is a passage that talks about the armor of God and we will concentrate on that another time but today let’s focus on standing strong and the things to help with that.
Our God is a God of ultimate strength!
You, God, are awesome in your sanctuary;
the God of Israel gives power and strength to his people.
Praise be to God!
Trust in the Lord forever,
for the Lord, the Lord himself, is the Rock eternal.
If God is your strength and yet within you there is weakness what do you do?
You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.
You don’t have to beg God for strength and you don’t have to look for strength. God is looking to give His strength to those who need it and will receive it!
God has promised to give us His strength!
Do you not know?
Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary,
and his understanding no one can fathom.
He gives strength to the weary
and increases the power of the weak.
So do not fear, for I am with you;
do not be dismayed, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you and help you;
I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.
I can do all this through him who gives me strength.
God has all the strength we will ever need.
How do you access God’s strength in our lives?
Through His Word
Through Worship
Through Waiting
Through Weakness
Strength through His Word
Strength through His Word
We all have access to God’s word but how much time do we spend reading it?
Please seriously answer this question to yourself and before God.
How much time do you really read it?
As the pages of your Bible get darker with use your life will become lighter.
If your Bible is falling apart it usually means you are not!
I weep with sorrow;
encourage me by your word.
We need to look at our reading Gods word in this manner:
Think of it like a computer hard drive:
you have a word processor, accounting software and graphics
when you launch the application you download the program into the temporary memory
until it is used it sits unused on the hard drive
the program is just data waiting to solve a problem
you have to call on the data and apply access its power
How do you do this with God’s word?
read it
memorize it
listen to it
meditate on it
obey it
God’s Word is filled with great and precious promises
If the Bible is sitting on the shelf how are you getting any of those promises into your life?
None of that gets in unless it is moved from the shelf to your heart
His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.
Strength through Worship
Strength through Worship
When our hearts are caught up in worship of God something happens inwardly
Worship fills your heart with worthiness of God - it uplifts your spirit
Be exalted in your strength, Lord;
we will sing and praise your might.
You are my strength, I sing praise to you;
you, God, are my fortress,
my God on whom I can rely.
The King is exalted forever exalted on High and I will praise His name
He is the Lord and forever His truth shall reign
Heaven and Earth will rejoice in His Holy name
He is exalted forever exalted on high
Take a look at Habakkuk:
this prophet agonizes over God’s inattention to his prayers
he watches as a nation falls into sin and rebellion
why didn’t God judge this nation or respond to his prayers?
the Chaldeans were the most wicked people yet God was going to use them to judge His chosen people?
why would God do this?
we feel overwhelmed by the situation
in the third and final chapter of Habakkuk we see a prayer or musical instruction known as a song.
Though the fig tree does not bud
and there are no grapes on the vines,
though the olive crop fails
and the fields produce no food,
though there are no sheep in the pen
and no cattle in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
I will be joyful in God my Savior.
The Sovereign Lord is my strength;
he makes my feet like the feet of a deer,
he enables me to tread on the heights.
For the director of music. On my stringed instruments.
Habakkuk came to terms with his questions but he said I will trust in the wisdom and goodness of God NO MATTER what happens around me.
This shouted out to me Lord I will trust you even in a PANDEMIC
Don’t look back or around look up like Habakkuk did, even in the midst of conspiracy theories.
Sing the song of worship, stand firm in his word, rejoice in the fact that He is in control.
How do we follow Habakkuk’s example?
Worship the Lord - love and adore, raise up the name of God in worship and praise God’s name NO MATTER what is going on around us.
As we worship our life comes together in unexpected ways we overcome weaknesses with strength downloaded through worship.
Strength through Waiting
Strength through Waiting
No one enjoys waiting and we have certainly established our dislike of that in other messages.
The Bible says when we wait on the Lord we will find strength.
Wait for the Lord;
be strong and take heart
and wait for the Lord.
Even youths grow tired and weary,
and young men stumble and fall;
but those who hope in the Lord
will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint.
The essence of waiting is to accept the unfolding of God’s plan in HIS TIME
Preparing ourselves to hear His still small voice when He knows we are ready.
How do we wait on God?
Slow down - take time to consider how the frantic pace of your life affects the peace in your soul. To get strength from God we must spend time with God. Slow down, get quiet and pray.
This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel, says:
“In repentance and rest is your salvation,
in quietness and trust is your strength,
but you would have none of it.
Quiet - cease all activity
God wanted his people in Isa. 30 to stop their frantic activity in trying to solve their own problems?
Sound familiar?
We gain strength when we retreat to the quiet of His presence and wait upon Him.
Calm my soul and strengthen me for what is ahead.
2. Get quiet - so much noise in our world, so much competing for our attention which makes our souls chronically stressed. Learn to get quiet. Elijah looked for God in the midst of a powerful wind, great earthquake, flaming fire. But that was not the way. It was after the fireworks the world got quiet and Elijah heard God’s still small voice - the power of a whisper.
After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper.
In a book on leadership, Ken Blanchard said:
“Take the world off your shoulders for a time and interrupt your habit of constantly being in control of thinking we are in control”.
3. Pray - is the river through which God’s strength flows into your life.
Here’s a challenge:
Every day this month find 10 minutes to sit quietly and read God’s word silently and reflect on what He is telling you and end in prayer. Make David’s prayer your focus:
Have mercy on me, Lord, for I am faint;
heal me, Lord, for my bones are in agony.
But you, Lord, do not be far from me.
You are my strength; come quickly to help me.
After a while of doing this challenge your soul will crave the silence and will look for more.
Strength through Weakness
Strength through Weakness
Paul called out to God to remove his affliction, God answered him saying:
But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
How can weakness make one strong?
It is like a contradiction of terms.
Paul understood difficult circumstances teach profound truth.
God fills our weak and broken place with His own strength so that we are stronger in our weak place than anywhere else.
God has no weakness yet He asks us for ours and use it as an instrument in His own mighty hand.
Will you yield your weakness and receive His strength?
But the Lord stood at my side and gave me strength, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it. And I was delivered from the lion’s mouth.
“No one in the kingdom of God is too weak to experience God’s power but many are too confident in their own strength”
-John MacArthur
At the cross Christ identified with us in our sin - He identified our weakness.
For to be sure, he was crucified in weakness, yet he lives by God’s power. Likewise, we are weak in him, yet by God’s power we will live with him in our dealing with you.
By God’s power Christ was raised up again, enabling us to live by the power of the resurrection.
Our lives have been transformed. We have been set free from our sin!!!!
Conclusion:
Illustration - from the book Overcomer p.38
For a concert violinist, strength is four finely tuned strings; the absence of a string would put most violinists in a position of weakness. But Israeli-American violinist Itzhak Perlman is not most violinists. And Perlman knows something about weak- ness to begin with. Afflicted with polio as a child, he wears braces on both legs and walks with the help of crutches. Getting on stage and seated for a concert is no small matter. One evening in 1995, while performing with an orchestra in New York City, one of the strings on his violin broke and hung limp off the side of the instrument.
The loud Snap! ricocheted through the hall; it was obvious to everyone what had just happened. The audience, as well as the conductor and orchestra, assumed they would pause the concert while Perlman repaired, or replaced, his instrument. Instead, the great violinist closed his eyes for a moment while the audience waited in silence, then motioned to the conductor to begin the piece again. What would be impossible for all but a few human beings—playing a violin concert with four good strings—was translated into something perhaps no one else could have done: play the same concert with only three strings. As he played, in his mind Perl- man was adjusting, recomposing, innovating, and performing on the fly, turning a position of weakness into a performance of strength.⁸
That’s our challenge to develop resources we need to adjust, recompose, innovate and prevail when confronted with challenges.
That means knowing our source of strength which is God not ourselves. Not stopping when we are weak and broken - open our heart diligently to the Lord and ask for His strength He will fill you with it!
He will use your weakness to make you strong.
Be strong and take heart,
all you who hope in the Lord.
