When Our Strength Isn't Enough

Upcoming Events:

Church Cleanup Day October 3rd beginning at 9 am.

Our next Church Fellowship night will be October 17th beginning at 5pm. We will have a 70’s “Who Done It” Mystery Theme.

Weekly Message - When our own strength fails, God strengthens us from within through His Spirit, teaches us to live with gratitude, contentment, and prayer, and reminds us through Jesus’ compassion for the widow of Nain that Christ is strong enough.  

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When Our Strength Isn’t Enough

Good Morning. Mark Twain once wrote, “What a wee little part of a person’s life are his acts and his words! His real life is in his head, and is known to none but himself.”  Twain describes our inner life as something hidden beneath the surface, with “volcanic fires that toss and boil, and never rest, night nor day.”

In other words, while other people may see and hear our words and actions, they don’t know the whole of us. There is a whole inner life beneath the surface, an invisible part of us that God sees perfectly. In fact, He sees it better than we do. In today’s Epistle, Paul is praying about our inner life, that God would strengthen it by His Spirit.

The Christian life isn’t easy. There are times we don’t want to examine ourselves, and times we do examine ourselves, and don’t like what we see. Paul began Ephesians by reminding his readers that they’ve been chosen in Christ and made part of his body. And because of this, they have a calling to live differently. And that calling begins in our Inner Life, where much of our struggle takes place.

So where does our strength come from? We kind of know the answer, but Paul makes it clear. It comes from the Lord. So often we rely on our own strength, and we can let ourselves down quite a bit.

Paul prays that we would be “strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being,” so that “Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.”  

Paul isn’t telling us how to make ourselves stronger. He’s praying that God will. Christian strength isn’t sheer determination or gritting your teeth, it’s something God works in us as Christ dwells in our hearts through faith.

And yet, when Christ strengthens us from within, that strength begins to show itself in the way we live. Paul’s own life gives us some good examples.

One of them is gratitude. Paul’s letters are filled with thanksgiving, even when he was suffering. Paul tells the Ephesians to “give thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” and he says this while writing to them from prison because of the ministry of the Gospel.

Always giving thanks doesn’t mean pretending everything is good. But even in difficult circumstances, there are reasons to give thanks, because God hasn’t abandoned us. Gratitude changes what we see because it changes where we look.

During World War II, Corrie ten Boom and her sister Betsie were imprisoned at the Ravensbrück Concentration Camp. Their barracks were miserably infested with fleas. Betsie insisted they follow the Bible’s command to “give thanks in all circumstances.” Corrie struggled with that idea. How could they possibly thank God for fleas? But Betsie prayed and thanked God anyway.

Later, they discovered the guards rarely entered their barracks because of the fleas. That meant they were able to hold their secret Bible studies without interruption. The very pests Corrie hated were a shield God used to protect their ministry.

Gratitude turns our attention away from everything we don’t have and toward the goodness God has already given us. In Philippians, Paul says, “I have learned to be content with whatever I have.”  And contentment is difficult because our world is constantly teaching us to be dissatisfied. Scroll through social media and you’ll see someone else’s vacation, their new renovated kitchen, their highlight reel, and suddenly your ordinary life feels like it’s missing something.

Paul says there is another way to live. We can learn to say, “What God has given me is enough.”  Contentment frees us from spending so much of our lives chasing things that cannot satisfy us.

And that inner strength also changes the way we pray. Paul tells the Thessalonians, “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing.”  Praying without ceasing doesn’t mean we spend every moment of every day on our knees. It means we never stop turning toward God. Whether we’re grateful, worried, angry, or discouraged, we bring all of it to Him.

And something people don’t always realize is how the Bible is filled with prayers of frustration, doubt, and cries for help. God wants us to bring all of it to him. And sometimes prayer is simply saying, “Lord, I don’t know what to do. Help me.”  That is not weakness. That is faith.

Today’s Gospel gives us a beautiful picture of this. Jesus comes to a town called Nain, and as he approaches the gate, he encounters a funeral procession, led by a widow. A young man has died, her only son. In that world, a widow losing her only son was not just losing her child, but potentially her future security. And Luke tells us that when Jesus sees her, “he had compassion on her.”

Notice what Jesus doesn’t say. He doesn’t tell her to be stronger. He doesn’t tell her that everything happens for a reason. And He doesn’t wait for her to ask Him for something. Jesus simply sees her. And he does something she cannot do for herself. He stops the funeral procession and says, “Young man, I say to you, arise.”  The dead man sits up and begins to speak.

Paul says that we are to know “the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.”  Luke shows us what that love looks like when Jesus encounters a grieving woman.

Paul says that God “is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think.”  Luke gives us no record of her asking Jesus for anything. Jesus saw her need, had compassion on her, and acted.

That doesn’t mean God gives us everything we want. Sometimes the answer is no. Sometimes we have to wait. And sometimes we’re simply praying for the strength to get through the day. But Paul wants us to know that God’s power is greater than our understanding, and his love is greater than our ability to comprehend it. That is why our strength doesn’t depend upon how strong we feel.

Our hope isn’t that we’ll be strong enough. Our hope is that Christ is strong enough.

Paul could look at all the good and bad in his life and still trust that God was at work. He could say, “We know that for those who love God, all things work together for good.”  Not that everything that happens is good, but that God is powerful enough to work even through the broken things of this world.

The Christian’s strength isn’t the strength to say, “I can handle anything.”  It is the strength to say, “Whatever comes, Christ is with me. His Spirit is at work within me. His love holds me. Nothing in all creation can separate me from that love.”  When our strength isn’t enough, Christ is strong enough.