4 Ways to Strengthen Yourself in the Lord
In my blog titled, “3 Questions to Help You Navigate Overwhelm,” I walked you through the three questions that help you discern the source of your overwhelm and what to do with those answers. (If you didn’t get a chance to read it, check it out HERE!)
The first question that we explored in that blog had to do with where you get your strength. The Lord can and does send us strengthening encouragement and help through one another. We are a body; as Paul says in Ephesians 4:25, “we are members one of another.” We are made to be the hands and feet of Jesus in the lives of those around us. However, secondhand strength from the Lord only lasts for so long and helps so much. We need to find our strength in the Lord Himself. Then the strength of others will be even more of a blessing as our cup is already filled with God’s goodness.
Here are 4 main ways the Lord strengthens me: His Word, His Presence, His Throne, and my words.
1. His Word. To be strengthened by God’s Word may seem pretty straight forward but let me warn you: I spent a lot of time in my teens and twenties reading the Word and not allowing it to speak to me. When we approach the Word as a task, as 5 chapters to check off, as a perfunctory duty, we will miss the opportunity to hear the Lord through it and thereby miss the opportunity to be strengthened by Him through His Word.
Instead, we can open the Word each day knowing that the time we spend in the Word can be a divine appointment. The Holy Spirit is our Teacher (John 14:26) and though we may have read a passage a million times, He can still show us what we need to see in it. He can give us daily bread from His Word.
2. His Presence. To be strengthened by the Lord’s Presence is to receive directly from Him as we wait on Him in prayer or worship. No words from us are generally needed, just a still and reverent heart that is ready to hear, to be nourished by His wisdom and by His willingness to spend time with us. He truly wants to spend time with you, my Friend! Isn’t that a breathtaking realization?
Spending time with the Lord fills us with an awe of His delight in us, an awareness of His heart toward us, and a peace that knows that He is with us. There’s nothing like it when I begin to thank my Abba for His Presence (even if the sense of it is lagging) and He awakens me to the reality of what I’ve just thanked Him for.
3. His Throne. To be strengthened by His Throne is to spend time in adoration of His splendor. This may sound similar to being strengthened by His Presence, but here’s the essential difference: location. When I am in His Presence, He has made me aware of His Presence all around me, every moment in the busy and mundane moments. When I am before His Throne, I mentally, emotionally and even spiritually leave this world behind and see Him in His glory.
I do this most often as I worship Him with music or in those moments when the awe of Him strikes so solemnly that the world disappears, and nothing matters at all but Him. We are made in such a way that whatever we choose to focus on becomes bigger in our sight. And when our focus is on the Lord in all His glorious majesty, all the earthly things are diminished in gravity to their rightful size. I am strengthened as I see that nothing I face can stand before my God.
4. My words. This may sound like an odd fourth way to strengthen yourself in the Lord. All my other points have been focused solely on the Lord. So why do my words matter? Because delegated authority requires agreement. As the delegate of God on earth, what I say must align with what the Ultimate Authority, God, says.
Even if I have been nourished by God’s Word, spent time in His Presence and before His Throne, if the words of my mouth speak defeat or if I remain silent, the opposition will continue. When I take all that I have gathered from the first three ways to be infused with strength and declare those truths with my words, I stand firm!
When the Hubs and I had toddlers and preschoolers at home, we were taught that if you can get them to repeat your instruction, they were far more likely to follow through on them. And it’s true! There’s a spiritual principle there: if we speak the truth from our own mouths, we are far more likely to believe it and follow through!
Speak up today! Declare to yourself, the atmosphere and those closest to you the Truths God speaks over your situation, the goodness of God you’ve felt in His Presence and the might of God you’ve seen as you’ve stood at His Throne! Let the Truth of God be greater than all the facts stacked against you!