Real Strength

Thursday, August 4, 2022

What joy for the nation whose God is the Lord, whose people he has chosen as his inheritance.  The Lord looks down from heaven and sees the whole human race.  From his throne he observes all who live on the earth.  He made their hearts, so he understands everything they do.  The best-equipped army cannot save a king, nor is great strength enough to save a warrior.  Don’t count on your warhorse to give you victory—for all its strength, it cannot save you.  But the Lord watches over those who fear him, those who rely on his unfailing love.  He rescues them from death and keeps them alive in times of famine.  We put our hope in the Lord.  He is our help and our shield.  In him our hearts rejoice, for we trust in his holy name.  Let your unfailing love surround us, Lord, for our hope is in you alone.  Psalm 33:12-22

The Psalmist makes me think of the absurdity of strength, the far-as-the-east-is-from-the-west difference between perceived strength and genuine strength.  Imagine a four-year-old child, angry at his father, swinging his fists wildly at Dad’s face.  He imagines he will do damage, but doesn’t have a strength that will sate his anger.  Consider the imagination of a little girl, dressed in her best WalMart princess costume.  What throne in all the world belongs to her strength, it’s all only in her mind.  Picture a young man, three days after graduating from college, dressed in a new suit he purchased with his new credit card, for the interview with a prospective employer.  His bank account is down to $1.84, but the bills from tuition to earn his degree weigh-in at $86,000.  There are two-outs in the 9^th inning, and he’s down to his last swing at the plate.  For all his “accomplishment” the strength of that moment is sitting on the other side of the interview table.

The genuine strength one possesses can never be measured, except in the relative position to absolute strength.  It is often said the President of the United States is the most powerful person on the planet.  But the powers of the office (which by far supercede the powers of the human being in that office) are only granted by the will of the people who elect presidents.  And even then, the checks and balances of our governance question that power. 

Genuine strength resides outside of time, space, and creation.  Ultimate strength belongs to God alone.  All else was, and is, subject to God’s creative will.  And the human, created person, confidently believing in his or her own supremacy, is about as hapless a fool as a gnat in a wrestling match with an elephant, no matter the perception of that person’s strength by other created beings.

For You Today

Is your hope in your dreams, your abilities, your determination, or even someone who you perceive champions your best interests?  Do you sense strength coming your way from that promotion, salary increase, or new nutritional regimen?  Have others told you how much they admire your accomplishments?

Remember He who created all of what you see, hear, sense, and imagine…and so much more.  His genuine strength is to be found in His unfailing love…for you!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

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There are about 2,000 devotional posts in the Rocky Road Devotions library.  To dig deeper on today’s topic explore some of these:  Total Trust and Misplaced Trust

[1] Images:  Pixabay.com     Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©   

Misplaced Trust

 

Thursday, May 28, 2020

Psalm 33:12-22

What joy for the nation whose God is the Lord, whose people he has chosen as his inheritance.  The Lord looks down from heaven and sees the whole human race.  From his throne he observes all who live on the earth.  He made their hearts, so he understands everything they do.  The best-equipped army cannot save a king, nor is great strength enough to save a warrior.  Don’t count on your warhorse to give you victory—for all its strength, it cannot save you.  But the Lord watches over those who fear him, those who rely on his unfailing love.  He rescues them from death and keeps them alive in times of famine.  We put our hope in the Lord.  He is our help and our shield.  In him our hearts rejoice, for we trust in his holy name.  Let your unfailing love surround us, Lord, for our hope is in you alone.

One of the (generally) misunderstood issues of the relationship of Christian faith to military prowess is assigning naïveté to the former, and complete trust in the later.  The Psalmist, probably King David, is no stranger to military ventures.  His remarkable career started in a tussle with a giant, and David was celebrated for victories aplenty…so much so, it drove King Saul crazy.  David understood battle, and he understood the value of military might.  But, even with the start of the skirmish with Goliath, David trusted God much more than any earthly strength:

David replied to the Philistine, “You come to me with sword, spear, and javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of Heaven’s Armies—the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. Today the Lord will conquer you, and I will kill you and cut off your head.   1 Samuel 17:45-46

We know David wasn’t perfect; later his mistakes with his family and his fidelity proved that he was an imperfect man, capable of messing up more than most.  But, at least at this point, David had it together, using strength, but trusting in God.

Fast forward several millennia and you have the world’s population on its knees, not necessarily praying.  We’ve been knocked to our knees by a bug so small we cannot see it without a microscope.  COVID19 has taken over the economy, our activity, and news cycles unending.  The debate rages about how to act, what to do, and whom to avoid.  And our trust may be misplaced.

I say that because some advocate throwing caution to the winds, simply, and naively trusting that they don’t have to use common sense.  They act as if being a person of faith guarantees them an immunity from biological attack.  On the other hand, there are those who imagine the entire effort rests with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and all the technology man has marshalled against the demonic bug.

It’s time to remember that David took a big risk fighting Goliath, but he also packed more than one stone.  And the boy who took down a 9-foot battle-hardened enemy, was fighting with faith and a plan.  There was nothing naïve in a kid accustomed to facing “hairy” nightmares.  As a shepherd, David knew how to go up against the odds.  When King Saul questioned him about his chances against the giant Philistine, David replied:

“I have been taking care of my father’s sheep and goats,” he said.  “When a lion or a bear comes to steal a lamb from the flock, I go after it with a club and rescue the lamb from its mouth.  If the animal turns on me, I catch it by the jaw and club it to death.  1 Samuel 17:34-35

Let’s Pra y

Father, God, we know our trust is to be entirely placed in You, alone.  You have also given us common sense and strength.  Help us to keep enough common sense to use our strength, and place our trust in You, and not the other way around, placing our trust in strength, and using Your promises like a vending machine.

For You Today

Whether our enemies are armies or viruses, our trust is misplaced to think we can handle it in our own strength; we must always come to the battle in the name of He who is the Lord of Heaven’s armies.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road today.  Have a blessed day!

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Title Image:  Pixabay.com  Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©

For another post on Psalm 33 see Total Trust and Meeting With God and Broken Pieces

Total Trust

[i]

Thursday, June 1, 2017

What joy for the nation whose God is the Lord, whose people he has chosen as his inheritance.  The Lord looks down from heaven and sees the whole human race.  From his throne he observes all who live on the earth.  He made their hearts, so he understands everything they do.  The best-equipped army cannot save a king, nor is great strength enough to save a warrior.  Don’t count on your warhorse to give you victory—for all its strength, it cannot save you.  But the Lord watches over those who fear him, those who rely on his unfailing love.  He rescues them from death and keeps them alive in times of famine.  We put our hope in the Lord.  He is our help and our shield.  In him our hearts rejoice, for we trust in his holy name.  Let your unfailing love surround us, Lord, for our hope is in you alone.  Psalm 33:12-22^(NLT)

The closer we get to July the more anxious I get each year.  It’s not just because my birthday falls at the end of June, and I’ll mark another trip around the sun; mostly it’s because we always have that Independence Day thing to deal with.  That thing is the tension between being loyal to the privileged land of which I am a citizen, and being thankful for the country through which this citizen makes his pilgrimage.

There…I’ve done it again…said something in preacher-code.  You know what that means; when a preacher gets near the sacred cow he’s got to talk in non-threatening, low tones, using words that leave some wiggle-room in case it offends anyone.  In the case of the birthday of America, those low tones must include a bow towards patriotism. 

Tension for the preacher on Independence Day when it comes to doing the obligatory patriotic flag-waving is found in what every Jewish child remembers when he reads Psalm 33 or any of the countless Scriptures calling for trust in the Lord; the land in which you live is nothing; God is the only shield of protection for any people.  You can stamp In God We Trust on all the currency you can imagine, but if your trust is really in your system of government, a strong economy, the president you elected, or military power, you’re headed for trouble.

Historically one of the reasons Americans took note of what a Presidential hopeful’s spiritual life looked like is because governing is all about making choices.  And electorates always wanted assurance that the person sitting in the most powerful seat on planet earth was driven from within by a commitment to make moral, God-honoring choices, more than just pragmatic, economic advantage or power brokering choices.  All the framers of the Constitution may not have been Evangelical 5-point Calvinists, Congregationalist or Wesleyan, but they didn’t squirm when God was invoked.

For You Today

A Christian is a citizen of Heaven, so this coming Independence Day when you salute the flag and sing God Bless America, remember, you’re an alien here!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road…have a blessed day!

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NOTES

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 ^I Title image: Bundesarchiv, Bild, via Wikimedia Commons