The Source of Strength

2 Corinthians 1:9-10, 2 Corinthians 12:9-10

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I realized it was too big for me and it was incredibly liberating.

Recently, there was some just heavy things going on in my world and in my life, and I just realized that I don’t have the wisdom for this. I don’t know how to work this all out. I don’t have the strength in and of myself. And yet I was also confident God was calling me to to serve in this way. So if God is calling us to do things that are bigger than us, that must mean God’s going to provide what we need to do those things, right? At least that’s the reasoning I had. And the more I thought about it, the more I thought, I think that, I think that works.

And part of the reason why I thought that, it has to do with what Paul says in Second Corinthians chapter one. He talks about the challenges they had. And he said,

Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again. (2 Corinthians 1:9-10)

See, God often uses those moments where we realize it’s so clear that we don’t have the strength to show us that we are not the source of the strength. I mean, the whole way this is all set up is that we were created to eat from the tree of life, in the beginning, humanity was. To receive life from God. And where everything went wrong is when Adam and Eve that they did what looked right in their own eyes and they tried to take what was good and seek wisdom and things their own way. God is again and again teaching us that it’s not for us to try to do it ourselves. We were meant to receive from him. And the message of the gospel starts with the law that we cannot set ourselves right with God. We have it in our hearts. We know we were meant for something to live a certain way, and we don’t do it. We can’t by ourselves. And so we need a Savior to do what we can never do for ourselves. Jesus lived the life we were meant to live. The life you were meant to live, died for your sins, and rose again to give you what you can never achieve yourself. It is simply a gift. It’s something given to you that you can’t do yourself.

And so whenever we are reminded that we don’t have the strength for this, good! Because it points us back to his, or like Paul says later in Second Corinthians, the Lord said to him,

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Corinthians 12:9-10)

It’s so liberating to come to the end of our own strength, because then we can be free of trying to be strong enough. We can then really begin to experience and embrace the strength of God. That’s what the gospel does. It frees us from trying to be good enough for God. You can know that Jesus was good enough for you, then every time in this life, whenever we come to the end of ourselves, we get to more fully embrace that we are in his hands, that Jesus has died. He has risen again, that we have life with him for eternity. And it’s all because of what he has done, and he is the one who will provide for us every step of the way today.