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The Believer’s Strength.

By R.B.Jones.

 

“Whose weakness was turned to strength” (Hebrews 11 v34).

 

In Hebrews 11 v34 it is stated that there were those “whose weakness was turned to strength” and the wonder of our subject is seen in the life of Moses. Under God he was to create a nation. 

Touched by the wretchedness of his fellow Israelites, and also perhaps tired of the empty pomp of the palace, Moses came to a great decision. He will identify himself with his brethren, he will join their cause, more he will strike a blow for their emancipation.

With plans made, the well-meaning and very self-confident son of Pharaoh’s daughter leaves the palace for ever. The effect of the blow he is about to strike has been carefully calculated. The whole of oppressed Israel will rise to a man, leave their brick-making and rally under the banner of their masterful, self-appointed leader. They will bid farewell to Egypt, defy Pharaoh to pursue them and Moses will have added another great achievement to the credit of his name. Nothing seemed to be wrong with the plan, the result however was a ghastly fiasco, humiliating disappointment and a forced flight from Egypt to save his own life. God loved Israel and Moses too well to permit such a plan to succeed.

For forty years no more is heard of this great genius, he is lost in the silence of Midian. One of the mightiest intellects of his day occupied in the drab, daily routine of tending a few sheep. A man trained in and accustomed to the whirl of life with nothing to interest or occupy him but the dreamy, unvarying life of the desert edge. It all seems a mistake, but there is no mistake when the hand of God is upon a life.

Moses was now eighty years old. The fires of early ambition had long ago died. One day he led the sheep to “the mountain of God”, and there beside the burning but unconsumed bush, Moses is commissioned to be the deliverer of his people. The very thought stuns him. “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh?” exclaims the stupefied man, “What if they do not believe me or listen to me”. God promises, argues and endues him with miraculous powers, but Moses is sure of his uselessness, “Oh Lord” says he, “I have never been eloquent”. So reluctant is he that he says, “Oh Lord, please send someone else to do it”. To Moses the thought that he could deliver them seemed utterly foolish. The years in Midian had not been in vain. God had patiently waited for just this moment, had waited to hear the self-confident Moses meekly confess, “Who am I, that I should go?” 

Here at last is a man whom God can use. The first forty years of Moses’ life had seen the cultivation and maturing of his powers, the second forty years had seen the destruction of Moses’ pride and confidence in those same powers. It was a real work of grace that had brought such a man to a point where he sincerely deemed himself utterly unfit and useless. In the very nature of all spiritual life and service it is just at such a point that real usefulness begins. God loves those who in their own eyes are the weak, the foolish, the base, the nothings. 

The real trouble in service is not that we are too weak but too strong, not too foolish but too wise. We have natural resources, we know we have, and it is difficult for us to break with the long habit of relying upon them. We have the wrong notion that it is our duty to use our powers in the Lord’s service. Let us not foolishly withstand our Father as He graciously deals with us.  

Peter may serve as an example of this. ‘I’m going fishing’, he said. His patience was exhausted as he waited for the risen Lord’s promised meeting with them in Galilee, but though his dreams were sadly disappointed he had his old trade to fall back on. Then came a night spent with the nets. Next morning in answer to a query from One on the shore he had to admit that, in spite of all his best efforts, “they had caught nothing”. It was a unique and very humiliating experience. An expert fisherman unable to land a single fish. How gracious is God! Peter must not feel, even in fishing, that he can get along without the Lord. Strength there is, in abundance, the strength of God, but it is his only as, with Moses and others, he realizes, and heartily acknowledges his utter weakness and dependence. “Without Me you can do nothing!”

A fine example of this way in which God deals with His children is found in Paul’s story. Here was another strong man. This man of eminent intellectual culture and of unwearying activity was also brought low. In 2 Corinthians 12 he speaks of an affliction from Satan, “a thorn in the flesh”, that threaten to end his service. Thrice he prayed to have it removed and his prayer was answered, but the answer was an emphatic “No”, but accompanied by encouragement, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness”. Paul immediately detected God’s secret. There was a purpose in permitting the affliction, it was to keep him at the point of nothingness, of utter self-exhaustion, where he might experience the joy, not of God’s strength added to Paul’s strength to make Paul’s strength perfect, but of God’s strength making itself perfect in Paul’s weakness. Realizing this there burst from Paul’s heart, “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weakness, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. . . for when I am weak, then I am strong”.

Blessed are those who know this truth. God’s power does not mix with ours. “He gives strength to the weary”, even His own strength, the strength of Him who “faints not, neither is weary”. How foolish of us to cling to our own strength when our weakness is the sole qualification for such an experience.

There is a fuller description of Paul’s condition in 2 Corinthians 4 v7-14. He writes of “jars of clay”, his own in particular, which contain the treasure of “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ”. Like Gideon’s pitchers, broken to expose the blaze of the hidden torches, these “jars of clay”, Paul’s and others’ physical bodies, were handed over to death for Jesus sake. “Hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed”, they were always carrying around in their bodies the death of Jesus, in order that the life of Jesus might be revealed.

Putting together all the references, there comes the impression of a man, prematurely aged, emaciated and racked with pain; wan and weak in appearance; decay and exhaustion written in every line; a man fit for a nursing home rather than an apostolic campaign. And yet, this man, “dying daily”, travelling in many countries; plying his trade; reasoning in synagogues with Jews; preaching in market places to Gentiles, is as if possessed of completely robust health and strength. A man filled with weakness “turning the world upside down”. A man, living on the brink of the grave, becoming the channel of life to millions.

The Divine power can do more than human power. Paul could have done much, but God did more. Paul gave God His opportunity in becoming willing to be weak. He lived, yet not he but Christ. What he did was what Christ did through him. Our extremity is God’s opportunity. His life is ours as self dies; His wisdom, as we cease to trust our own; His strength, made perfect only in our weakness. It is when we are weak that we are strong. Faith turns weakness into Divine strength. God will see to the power. His strength is made perfect in our weakness.

 

From: ‘The Gospel for the Believer’.

 

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