Strength for today

Isaiah 40:28-31 Have you not known? Have you not heard? The everlasting God, the Lord, The Creator of the ends of the earth, Neither faints nor is weary. His understanding is unsearchable. 29 He gives power to the weak, And to those who have no might He increases strength. 30 Even the youths shall faint and be weary, And the young men shall utterly fall, 31 But those who wait on the Lord Shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with wings like eagles, They shall run and not be weary, They shall walk and not faint.

I sat on the porch this morning praying for physical, emotional, and spiritual strength. I am physically exhausted and emotionally drained. The combination is dangerous because Satan attacks us when we are weak; he is like a lion that pounces on the weakest in the herd, waiting to devour. Physical rest is good for emotional healing, but my prayer was simple in looking to the power of God’s Word to provide me strength. Spiritual power is what overpowers our enemy; the Word of God is the only offensive weapon we have to fight the war we cannot see. It is just as I tell people every day in my business; it is much better to be proactive than reactive when problems arise. There is a power, a heavenly power given to you through time spent reading God’s Word. God’s Word becomes planted in your heart and brought to memory when you need it most. This is something that is not explained, but simply experienced to the believer who has invested time with God and personally seen the fruits of scripture in their daily lives. Testimonies are built when we remember or articulate a passage at just the right time when we could not tell you when we read it. The Holy Spirit does a heavenly work with God’s Word in us that gives us a personal closeness to God; an experience with the Divine directly related to his living Word.

That such experience was in my porch prayer this morning. The Holy Spirit brought to remembrance this passage in Isaiah 40. This entire chapter is a prophecy spoken to encourage those exiled from their homes and land; those needing encouragement were given a direct word pointing to the sovereignty of God, and the coming restoration and Savior. I love how my study Bible puts it; a taste of salvation and the prediction of the coming full salvation. Are you struggling with life? Are you struggling with the pressures of life that take your eyes off heaven? All that you struggle with is temporary. This life is temporary, but the next is eternal. The strength found in God’s Word gives you that understanding of temporal and eternal.

The Christian disciple is a life of self-sacrifice of this life in honor and preparation for the next. As a disciple of Jesus, “ Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?” (1 Corinthians 6:19) The Holy Spirit living inside of you desires the pure spiritual milk of the Word of God. That is the yearning that you feel, yet Satan gets you to deny daily. He brings in the pressures of the world to take your mind off the things of God. Get alone today and spend some time in the Bible. Feed your soul so that He may feed your mind and body. Through that you fight the temptations, distractions, sins, lusts, and problems that arise each day.