Your Strength Is Limited, God’s Is Unlimited
Are you tired? Some of you are running on steam. You’re tired a lot. At the end of the day, you’re worn out and you’re running out of energy, and the reason why is real simple: You’re a human being.
Your strength is limited. God’s strength is unlimited. Your strength is finite. God’s strength is infinite. Your strength is exhaustible — that’s why you get exhausted! But God’s strength is inexhaustible. God never runs out of energy. God never gets tired.
Psalm 84:5 says, “You bless all who depend on you for their strength” (CEV). Do you want God’s blessing in your life? Then you need to depend on God for your strength.
One of the most famous Christians of the 19th century was a guy named Hudson Taylor. He was a missionary to China, and he was a spiritual giant and a brilliant man. In his old age, he lost his health and became very weak. He wrote a letter to a friend that said this: “I am so weak I can no longer work. I am so weak I can no longer study. I am so weak I can no longer read my Bible. I cannot even pray. I can only lie still in the arms of God like a little child in trust.”
Sometimes in your life you’re going to be so weak you can’t even pray, read the Bible, or go to a Bible study. You can’t work. You can’t do anything. What do you do in those moments? You rest in the strength of the Lord, in his arms like a little child, and you trust.
Weakness can actually be a good thing in your life if it causes you to depend on God. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 12:8-10, “Three different times I begged the Lord to take it away. Each time he said, ‘My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.’ So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me. That’s why I take pleasure in my weaknesses, and in the insults, hardships, persecutions, and troubles that suffer for Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (NLT, second edition).
That’s the paradox of depending on God — the more you’re weak, the more you depend on God. And the more you depend on God, the stronger you get.
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Talk It Over
- Why is it difficult for us to admit or show our weakness?
- How does our culture perpetuate the idea that we have to be strong all of the time?
- What does it mean to depend on God’s strength? What would that look like to other people?
For more Daily Hope with Rick Warren, please visit rickwarren.org
OUR GIFT
This devotional © 2016 by Rick Warren. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
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