Knowing God Is Your Strength Isn’t Enough… You Must Do This Too

TODAY'S TEACHING

The Lord is my Strength and my Song, and He has become my Salvation; this is my God, and I will praise Him, my father's God, and I will exalt Him.
 —Exodus 15:2

There’s something I can believe with all my heart and still have trouble putting into practice.

God is my strength.

I know that. I've read it in Scripture, prayed about it, and reminded other people of it when they were going through difficult times. Then I have a particularly demanding day and catch myself acting as though everything depends on how much I can accomplish before I finally run out of energy.

I don't think I'm alone in that.

Some of us have become so accustomed to carrying responsibilities that we barely notice how much we're trying to manage without God's help. We pray in the morning, ask Him to bless our day, and then proceed to worry ourselves over things we cannot possibly control.

I've been thinking about the difference between believing God is our strength and actually depending on Him. Because there is a difference, and it shows up in ordinary life more often than we might expect.

God Wants To Be More Than Someone We Ask For Help

1 Samuel 15:29 refers to God as the "Strength of Israel."

Those words appear during a difficult conversation between the prophet Samuel and King Saul, and the passage emphasizes God's unchanging character. I find that description of God particularly meaningful because Israel's history shows just how often the people struggled to remember who they were depending on.

Think back to Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt. They had witnessed extraordinary demonstrations of God's power. They saw Him deliver them from slavery, bring them through the Red Sea, and provide for needs they had no reasonable way of meeting themselves.

In Exodus 15:2, today's scripture, Moses and the people declared, "The LORD is my strength and song, and he is become my salvation."

Notice the wording. God Himself was their strength.

That meant something when they were standing on the other side of the Red Sea, celebrating what He had done. Unfortunately, remembering God's faithfulness became considerably more difficult once they were back in the wilderness dealing with hunger, thirst, and uncertainty.

I suppose we shouldn't be too surprised.

We can have a wonderful answer to prayer on Monday and be worried about something completely different by Thursday, almost as though we've forgotten the conversation we had with God three days earlier. I know I've done that.

It's remarkable how quickly an immediate problem can occupy our thinking, even after we've experienced God's help many times.

The Israelites had to learn to depend on God repeatedly, often through circumstances they would much rather have avoided. We do too.

When Everybody Is Depending On You

Imagine a man named Neil who works as a warehouse supervisor and has two teenagers at home. His wife is recovering from surgery, his mother needs help getting to appointments, and one of his employees has been off sick, leaving Neil to cover additional responsibilities at work. By Thursday he's exhausted.

He comes home later than expected and discovers the washing machine has stopped halfway through a load. There's water on the floor, his youngest wants help with a school assignment, and he remembers he's supposed to be at a meeting that evening.

Neil has been praying for strength every morning. He means those prayers. The trouble is, he hasn't allowed himself to consider that perhaps he cannot keep doing everything he's been doing.

His brother offered to help with their mother's appointments, but Neil told him he had it covered. Somebody at work offered to take over an additional responsibility, and Neil insisted he could handle it himself.

Now he's irritated with practically everybody. He snaps at his son over something small and feels terrible about it afterward.

Later that evening, sitting in his car outside the house, he prays again. "God, I need Your strength because I can't keep going like this."

And perhaps the most useful thing Neil could do at that moment would be to admit that some of the responsibilities he's carrying need to be shared.

Maybe he needs to call his brother.

Maybe he needs to stop agreeing to things simply because somebody asks.

Those conversations won't necessarily be comfortable, especially if he's spent years being the person everybody relies on.

Nothing about his situation is going to resolve itself overnight.

His wife is still recovering, the washing machine still needs repairing, and he has to be back at work tomorrow.

But he has begun to recognize something important. He cannot continue confusing dependence on God with an obligation to handle everything personally.

I've seen how easily we can get caught in that thinking. We want to be responsible. We want to be helpful.

Sometimes we want people to know they can count on us, and if we're honest, there's a certain satisfaction in being the person who always seems to have everything under control.

Until we don't. And then we wonder why we're exhausted.

Stick with me because we're going somewhere with all of this.

Receiving God's Strength Requires Faith

Isaiah 40:29 says, "He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength."

I've always appreciated that verse because it acknowledges that people really do become weak. We get tired. We reach the limits of our understanding.

Sometimes we don't know how we're going to manage the next responsibility, much less everything else waiting for us later in the week. God knows that about us.

One habit I've tried to develop is beginning the day by acknowledging that I need Him.

I can make plans, organize my responsibilities, and work hard, but I still need God's wisdom and strength to handle those things well.

Jesus said in John 15:5, "for without me ye can do nothing." That's quite a statement.

We can accomplish all sorts of things through our own effort, at least in the ordinary sense. People work, build businesses, raise families, and accomplish impressive things without acknowledging God at all.

But Jesus was speaking about our dependence on Him for a fruitful spiritual life. And I think that's something we should remember when we're tempted to measure our strength entirely by what we're capable of doing.

Receiving God's strength by faith begins with believing that He is willing and able to help us. Then we have to live as though we believe it.

Sometimes that means approaching a difficult conversation with confidence that God can give us wisdom about what to say. Other times it means admitting we've reached our limits and asking someone for help.

I've noticed that people who are comfortable helping others aren't always comfortable receiving help themselves. We can become strangely stubborn about it.

Somebody offers assistance and we refuse almost automatically, then spend the rest of the day complaining about how much we have to do. I've had to examine that attitude in myself.

Perhaps God is providing help through someone who's standing right in front of us, and we're so determined to manage things independently that we keep turning them away.

God's Strength Doesn't Always Feel Like More Energy

There's another part of this that I think needs attention.

Sometimes we assume that if God is strengthening us, we'll suddenly feel capable of handling twice as much as we normally could. And perhaps there are occasions when He gives us unusual energy or endurance.

I've certainly known times when I felt strengthened to do something I didn't think I had enough left in me to do. But we shouldn't assume that depending on God means we'll never feel tired or need to rest.

Paul had an ongoing affliction he repeatedly asked God to remove.

In 2 Corinthians 12:9, God's answer was, "My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness." That's an interesting answer.

Paul wanted relief from something difficult, and God spoke to him about sufficient grace. The weakness itself didn't immediately disappear.

I think about that whenever I hear Christians speak as though receiving God's strength should make every task easier.

There are responsibilities that remain difficult even when we're depending on Him.

There are people who continue testing our patience.

There are seasons when we need more rest than we used to, and admitting that can be especially frustrating for someone who's accustomed to getting a great deal done.

God's strength may help us endure something we would rather escape. He may also give us the wisdom to recognize that we've taken on more than we should. I don't always enjoy that second possibility.

It's easier to ask God to strengthen me for everything I've agreed to do than to examine whether I should have agreed to all of it in the first place. That examination can be rather revealing.

Are You Depending On God Or Just Trying Harder?

As I bring this to a close, one of the questions I've been asking myself is fairly simple.

When something becomes difficult, do I genuinely turn to God for help, or do I immediately start looking for ways to push myself harder?

There are times when more effort is appropriate. We have responsibilities, and faith isn't an excuse for laziness.

But I've also noticed how quickly determined effort can turn into unnecessary strain when we refuse to acknowledge our limitations. Sometimes the wisest thing we can do is stop for a moment and ask God what He wants us to do next.

Perhaps we need patience. Maybe we've been trying to solve a problem that requires more understanding than we currently have. Or maybe we've spent so much time worrying about something that we've barely given God room in our thinking.

James 1:5 encourages us to ask God for wisdom, and I believe that invitation applies to the practical matters we encounter every day.

We can ask Him to help us understand a difficult situation at work.

We can seek His direction when somebody needs more from us than we're reasonably able to give.

And when we're tired, we can tell Him that too. He already knows.

I think some of us have become accustomed to presenting ourselves as stronger than we really are, even when we pray.

We tell God we're trusting Him, then spend the next hour trying to calculate how we're going to keep everything from falling apart. Maybe that's an indication that we need to revisit what dependence actually means.

It requires us to trust God with things we cannot manage entirely on our own. And sometimes that feels uncomfortable because we would prefer to know exactly how everything is going to work out.

There's a reason I keep coming back to the words of Moses.

"The LORD is my strength and song."

I want that to be more than a verse I agree with. I want it to affect how I approach my responsibilities, how I handle disappointment, and what I do when I'm running short on patience.

There will still be demanding days. People will still need things from us, and some responsibilities won't disappear simply because we've prayed about them.

I imagine I'll continue discovering areas where I'm trying too hard to manage things myself. Perhaps you will too.

So before you begin whatever is waiting for you today, take a moment to acknowledge your dependence on God.

Ask Him for the strength, wisdom, and whatever else you need. Then pay attention to how He may be helping you.

It might come through a Scripture that corrects your thinking, a practical solution you hadn't considered, a person who's willing to share a responsibility, or something you never even thought of. And if you discover that you simply need to rest, perhaps that's worth listening to as well.

God really is your strength.

Continue learning how to let that truth change the way you live.

If this resonates with you, here's a short prayer you can say today:

"Dear God, I know that I need You, although some days I behave as though everything depends on me and then wonder why I'm so worn out. Help me recognize where I've been stubborn, where I need wisdom, and where I've been making things harder than they need to be because I haven't stopped long enough to ask for Your help. I want to trust You with the things I can't control and approach my responsibilities with a better attitude, even when I'm tired or people are expecting more than I feel capable of giving. Keep teaching me because apparently I still have quite a bit to learn about depending on You. Amen."

God bless you! 

Your brother in Christ,

Daniel
Daily Effective Prayer

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