0604 WHERE MY STRENGTH COMES FROM

WHERE MY STRENGTH COMES FROM

Have you ever been to the end of your strength? It doesn’t happen too often, but perhaps you have reached that point where you really believed you could not go on.

I remember being in a track event in high school. It was a quarter mile run, just one time around the track. Four of us were competing. I set out at what seemed to be a comfortable pace for me, about the pace of two of the other runners. But my friend Mark took off at a sprint. I thought he was going too fast to keep up the pace, so I didn’t panic. Bide my time and make a move when we get to the final bend. But Mark kept flying, opening up quite a lead. When we got to about 100 yards to go, I turned it on, trying to time my catching him so that I would have the element of surprise and momentum with me. It was working perfectly. Except that the crowd noticed my move and started yelling, and we still had 50 yards to go. Mark looked back over his shoulder and from somewhere deep within, turned on the afterburner. The last 30 yards, the two of us were pushing ourselves to the limit, but neither of us was pulling ahead. Toward the finish line, I reached down in me to give it more than I ever thought possible. But Mark met my efforts and at the end, he edged me out as I lunged toward the line. Sure enough, the ribbon of the finish line was draped across his chest, while I stumbled and landed on my hands and knees in the cinders.

It was some minutes before I regained full consciousness. Then I was able to go over to the stands and sit and drink some water, feeling more expended than I ever had before. I had left it all out there on the track, as they say, and it was the first time in my life that I truly felt there was nothing more to give.

This is the moment of coming to the end of ourselves that we look to heaven and ask if there is anything from beyond that can help us.

To borrow a valid question from the psalmist, “I lift up my eyes to the mountains— where does my help come from?” (‭‭Psalms‬ ‭121:1‬)

We look up at those big mountains and see that something is stronger than we are. Is there anything beyond those hills that can come to my aid?

He then provides his own answer: “My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.” And he says how the Lord will rescue him and help.

The apostle Paul came to the end of his own resources in many ways that I will never understand. And in his weakness, when he was at the end of his rope, he held on to Jesus. As the song says, “The arm of flesh will fail you. Ye dare not trust your own.”

Paul says it this way back in chapter 4: “But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.” (4:7)

It’s ironic, isn’t it, that the God who rules the universe should choose to interact with his creation to help us in time of peril and need? But it is one way for him to remind us that he is above, he is beyond, he is higher and stronger and infinite and unlimited. And so we fall on him, we cast our cares upon him, we rest in him, and we find our strength to be in him, even when it is not in us.

Paul revisits this theme other times throughout the book of 2 Corinthians. He says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (‭5:17‬ ‭NIV‬‬) And he adds, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (‭5:21‬ ‭NIV‬‬).

Whether it is physical strength, moral resolve, insightful wisdom or spiritual power, we rely on Christ, who is our strength, our example, our counselor and our victor. He has gone before us and made a way, and in the end, he will usher us into heaven itself. 

When you reach the end of your ability to keep going, he invites you to let him be your escalator. Then you can we still. And you can know that he is God. Amen.