strength

“oh Father, I do not have the strength for this day…but You do! please help me…”
I don’t know where I first heard or read it, but this simple prayer is one I have used time and again. Often my lack of strength hits me before the day has even quite begun. In the dark of morning I find myself reviewing what I expect to meet me this day and when I am overwhelmed I find solace in crying out to God admitting my own inadequacy. Sometimes it is physical weariness that defeats me, other times it is emotional strain that makes me feel unable to meet the day. The certainty and uncertainties of our future can both be disheartening.

This use to be a once in a while prayer for me but lately I’ve been praying it more mornings than not as my days get busier and my infirmities multiply for this season. I’ve found myself discouraged laying in bed staring up at the knot holes in my wood ceiling telling the Lord that I yet again lack the strength for this day. But then it struck me…why should I be discouraged when I have to rely on God for my strength? Isn’t that what the Christian walk is all about? In fact God even tells us in His word that apart from HIM we can do nothing.

It’s O.K. if on our own strength we can not get through the day, we aren’t meant to do it alone! As comforting as this is I still find myself drawing back from it sometimes. “But I want to be able to do it on my own” my pride says “I want to be strong” Yes, I am discovering that one of the reasons I shrink from my trials is because I don’t like having to trust the Lord so completely in everyday ways.
          Yes, we may say we trust the Lord for our daily bread but what if that were literally all we had and each and every new day we had to wait on Him to provide our food?
          We may say all we do is in the Lord’s strength but what if we had a physical ailment that meant each and every day we had to trust the Lord for strength to complete the simplest tasks, like walking?

 It’s a lot closer to home when we truly run out of strength and have to lean completely on God morning after morning after morning… But dear sisters that is what we are suppose to do anyway! God does not lead us into these intense periods of dependence because He wants to scare us, or because He is mean. No!! He brings us here because He knows that the only trustworthy thing in our lives is Him! He knows that we can never be secure or have peace even when things are going good if we are relying on something or someone other than Him to take us through. And sometimes the only place we learn these thing if when “we pass through the waters“.

Thus says the Lord, “Cursed is the man who trusts in mankind and makes flesh his strength, and whose heart turns away from the Lord. For he will be like a bush in the desert and will not see when prosperity comes, but will live in stony wastes in the wilderness, a land of salt without inhabitant. “Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord and whose trust is the Lord. For he will be like a tree planted by the water, that extends its roots by a stream and will not fear when the heat comes; but its leaves will be green, and it will not be anxious in a year of drought nor cease to yield fruit. Jeremiah 17:5-8