How To Be Strong In The Lord

Guest post by my son Everett, age 18

Today I would like to talk about the strength that God gives us. We human beings are very weak. In fact, I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that we in ourselves possess no power whatsoever over the grand scheme of things. Our days are numbered. No one can add one single second to their lives through their own effort. The Christian songwriter/producer Charlie Peacock has a song called “Don’t have the Power” and the lyrics explain, “If you were to try to tell the river to run dry, you would find you don’t have the power.” We might think that we have power to exercise over this world or each other, but we don’t, really. So many things that seem important in this world don’t actually matter, and I think that our own power is similarly an illusion.

Jesus said in John 15:5, “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” That means, apart from God, we can do nothing, we have no power of our own. But while we can do nothing apart from God, if we abide in God, and God abides in us, then we will bear much fruit. So many times I’ve heard this kind of discourse conclude with either a feel-good self-help message or just with the statement, “We are very weak, the end.”

But that isn’t what Jesus said. He said that we will bear fruit by abiding with Him. We need to understand that while apart from God we can do nothing, nothing is impossible with God. When the angel of the Lord told Zechariah in Luke 1:37, “For nothing will be impossible with God,” he may have been explaining how John the Baptist would be born, but I believe his words speak for all time: that nothing will be impossible with God. As Paul said in Philippians 4:13, “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.”

Barnes’ Notes on the Bible says about this verse in Philippians: “From the experience which Paul had in these various circumstances of life, he comes here to the general conclusion that he could ‘do all things.’ He could bear any trial, perform any duty, subdue any evil propensity of his nature, and meet all the temptations incident to any condition of prosperity or adversity. His own experience in the various changes of life had warranted him in arriving at this conclusion; and he now expresses the firm confidence that nothing would be required of him which he would not be able to perform. In Paul, this declaration was not a vain self-reliance, nor was it the mere result of his former experience. He knew well where the strength was to be obtained by which to do all things, and on that arm that was able to uphold him he confidently relied.”

That is why, once the Holy Spirit lives in us, we should be weak no longer: we are called to be strong in the Lord. In Ephesians 6:10, before Paul talks about the armor of God, he says, “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might.” In other words, we shouldn’t remain in our own weakness after receiving the Holy Spirit, we need to be strong in the Lord so that we can carry out God’s plans for us and fight against the Enemy.

But how do we utilize the strength God gives us? I think there are four key things we need to understand in order to be strong in the Lord’s strength:

   1.We have to believe that everything the Bible says is completely true.

   2.We must reject the lies of the Devil.

   3.We need to resist sin and temptation.

   4.We must draw near to God.

Let’s look at the first one: We have to believe that everything the Bible says is completely true.

We have to understand that everything the Bible says is completely true, and as such, nothing the Bible commands us to do is impossible. The Bible is not an ideal; God isn’t taunting us with some unreachable bar. With God’s strength, we can live up to its standards. What’s more, we have to live up to its standards, otherwise, what are we even doing?

Dean Sherman, in his book Spiritual Warfare, says this about carrying out the Bible’s instructions: “Christianity is not just a belief or a confession, but a life. There is no Biblical principle to which we cannot adhere, no command which we cannot obey, and no promise beyond our grasp. When the Bible says ‘Be strong,’ we can be strong. When the Bible says, ‘Be Humble,’ we can be humble. When the Bible says ‘Be holy,’ we can be holy.”

But the good news is this: When God’s Word tells us to “Be strong in the Lord” He’s not telling us to be strong on our own—He’s inviting us to let His strength become our own.

We can’t do this in our own power, but with God, nothing is impossible. Jesus explains this in Mark 10:23-27, after His exchange with the rich young ruler. It says, “And Jesus, looking around, said to His disciples, ‘How hard it will be for those who are wealthy to enter the kingdom of God!’ And the disciples were amazed at His words. But Jesus responded again and said to them, ‘Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.’ And they were even more astonished, and said to Him, ‘Then who can be saved?’ Looking at them, Jesus said, ‘With people it is impossible, but not with God; for all things are possible with God.’”

God doesn’t expect us to go through the eye of a needle ourselves- that would be impossible for us, but all things are possible with God. He’s going to get us through that needle’s eye—figuratively speaking, of course—but we have to cooperate with Him, and not hinder the Holy Spirit as He transforms us. We can overcome anything if we just have faith in the Lord. He gives us the strength to stand against every temptation that comes our way. I would like to add, however, that we should be careful not to want God’s power in the same way that we want God. We should desire God’s power so that we can carry out His will for us, but we need to love Him more than we love His help.

On to the second point. While we must believe in God’s Word, the second thing we must do is: We must reject the lies of the Devil.

We can’t believe the lies of the Devil. He wants us to feel small and weak. Satan hates us vehemently, so everything his demons tell us is an attempt to break us down and destroy us. They’ll tell us that we’ll never be strong enough to stand against them, or that we can’t realistically expect to overcome sin, so we might as well give up trying, or that nothing that we do could ever amount to anything. But everything they say to us is completely untrue. If we could learn to discern exactly when demons were speaking to us, we could find a use for their deceptions by taking what they said and then doing the opposite. Of course, a better solution is to learn to discern when the Holy Spirit is speaking to us and believing what He says instead, but I said the former as an illustration that nothing good ever comes from the Devil and his lackeys. We don’t, however, need to despair in the least when we come under demonic attack. God gives us authority to drive out demons. As James 4:7 says, “Submit therefore to God. But resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”

Once the Lord’s strength is within us, Satan’s forces only have as much power over us as we give them. Sometimes it’s difficult to overcome negative thinking, though. It’s like having a mental block, where we think something is impossible, and so it becomes impossible for us because we believe it is impossible. It happens all the time in sports events. No one thought it was possible to run a four-minute mile until someone actually achieved it, then everybody was doing it because they knew it was possible. This illustrates that, even though saying “nothing is impossible” sounds like a stretch, we need to see that while by ourselves we are limited, nothing is impossible with God. That’s why it’s senseless to fear our enemy, he has no power over us as long as the Holy Spirit is in us. But we must stand against him. If we roll over in defeat at every obstacle, we have only ourselves to blame. This is why we must not act weak when the Lord has made us strong. Like Psalm 28:7 says, “The Lord is my strength and my shield; in him my heart trusts, and I am helped; my heart exults, and with my song I give thanks to him.”

If we find our strength in the Lord, then He gives us the strength to defeat the enemy, and in Him we are more than conquerors. As Romans 8:31 says, “What, then, are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us?”

If God is for us, what then should we fear? We can, not only resist the enemy, but with God, we can defeat and drive away Satan’s demonic forces.

And this goes into the third point, which is: we need to resist sin and temptation.

Sin has no power over us who have received the Holy Spirit. We are empowered to stand firm against sin and temptation, for God is here for us every step of the way. We just need to face our temptations and decide that we don’t want to be tempted by them anymore. If someone prays saying, “Lord, set me free from my sinful ways…just not quite yet,” then they can’t be set free. We cannot adopt an attitude that says, “Oh, I’ll stop sinning soon, it’s just that I enjoy it so much I want to have one last go at it before I say goodbye.” No! That attitude is pure insanity! We will never get free if we allow ourselves to be lazy in our escape from sin. We must surrender it to God entirely if He is to cleanse us from it.

One lie of the Devil that plagues many believers is the idea that we are allowed a moment to relax and stop fighting against sin. Satan never lets up his attacks on us- his forces are relentless and they’re ruthless. We must stay sharp and keep a vigilant watch over what the enemy is doing to attack us. If we try to take a vacation from spiritual warfare, Satan’s forces will move in for the kill while we’re unprepared for his assault. It’s not fun to think about, but we don’t get time off from fighting the forces of evil. This goes double for when we are exhausted, sick, or depressed. Demons fight dirty, so they’ll take every chance to spit in our eyes and hit us below the belt. If we take our eyes off the ball, Satan will strike us out.

But fortunately for us, we are never alone in our struggle. God is infinitely, radically, disproportionally stronger than our enemy, to the point where there is no way of measuring the difference in power, because next to God, Satan has no power; he would comparatively be smaller and weaker than the world’s smallest, weakest flea. There is no contest. We should be sure not to give our enemy more credit than he deserves. We have no reason to fear Satan in the least, not if the Lord is with us. But we do still need to be careful of his deceptions. Even though God protects us from the sins that would be too much for us to handle, it’s been said that God has our backs, but we still have to watch our fronts. Paul explained this in 1 Corinthians 10:13, when he said, “No temptation has overtaken you except something common to mankind; and God is faithful, so He will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it.”

We really have no excuse for giving in to temptation after receiving the Holy Spirit, because God is with us. He won’t allow us to be tempted beyond what we are able to endure, and He will never forsake us when we need Him. However, an important part of endurance is perseverance, so we need to stay strong and fight against sin, rather than give in when the going gets tough. And once we learn to be strong in the Lord’s strength, these temptations we overcome, the trials we endure, they serve to refine us and make us better Christians and stronger in our faith.

The secret to perseverance is actually pretty simple: it takes grit and a can-do attitude. Grit is also known as guts, or more formally, as fortitude. Basically, it’s the will to tough it out and never give up. Self-help slogans usually talk about thinking positively and having grit, but it breaks down apart from God because we break down apart from God. See, as soon as we find something that we realize we actually “can’t-do” then it stops working, no amount of positive thinking or endurance can help us. But if we have faith that God “can-do it” then what is there to discourage us? We are serving the Almighty God, He should inspire us to persevere the way that Jesus persevered, took on the cross, and overcame death itself.

This ties in to the fourth point: we must draw near to God.

If we want to be empowered, and grow in our faith, then we need to draw ever-nearer to the Lord. This should be our ultimate goal: to draw closer to God. It’s a goal that will serve us our entire lives. God is infinite, so we won’t reach a place where we’ve reached our goal and need to find a new one. We need to spend our entire lives running the race of drawing closer and closer to God. We do this by spending time in prayer, and reading the Word.

Firstly, looking at prayer, 1 Thessalonians 5:17 simply says, “pray without ceasing,” and that is what we should do. I believe we ought to take this verse literally and strive to pray constantly. Prayer can be thanksgiving, requesting aid, asking for guidance, or just talking to God about anything and everything. We’ll never run out of things to say to God if we think about it. If there’s nothing you need in particular, then just thank Him for all He has done for you, or pray that He would draw you nearer to Him.

The second way to draw near to God is by reading the Word. Christians need to read the Bible. If you aren’t big on reading, then ask God to give you a heart for reading His Word. The Bible is the inspired Word of God, so if we want to know how to follow Him, then the Bible is our very greatest resource. Anyone who tries to downplay its value is aiding the enemy. That may sound harsh, but it’s true that Satan doesn’t want us to read the Bible, he’ll try to undermine our efforts in every way he can, so we shouldn’t listen to those who say reading the Bible isn’t paramount to following God, because it absolutely is. Everything we know about God comes from the Bible, so we need to read it exegetically if we are ever to understand God.

All that to say, understanding these four things is essential for walking in the strength God provides. We are called to be strong, but not in our own strength—because we have none apart from Him. We need God’s help to fight against the enemy, so our strength must come from His power. Once we understand that everything the Bible says is completely true, then our comprehension of God’s Word and our faith in Jesus Christ grows. And when we realize that the Devil is a liar, then we are better able to discern his words from God’s Word. Once we do that, we’ll be more aware of the sin and temptations in our lives—and when recognized—sin can be overcome through God’s power. And in all of this, we’ll draw nearer to God as we pray and rely on Him to be our strength.

These four steps are not just a checklist—they are the way to be strong in the Lord. When we believe the Bible, reject the lies of the devil, resist sin and temptations, and draw near to God, then we can walk in the strength that only He can provide. So let’s stop thinking we are weak. Let’s go to the source of true strength—Jesus our Savior.  And in Him, we will be strong.

Prayer: Holy Spirit, we lay down ourselves and our strength and ask that You would fill us with the power to follow Your plans for our lives. Thank You for being so patient with us when we’ve tried to work in our own power, we ask that You would draw us nearer to You and expose the enemy’s lies to us so we may be deceived no longer. Help us to be confident in Your strength as we realize that while apart from You we can do nothing, nothing is impossible for You. Amen.