"Our Strength"

This week I find myself in the middle of a Seminary semester and I’m tired!  Physically and emotionally.  I’m trying to continue ministering and commuting to school about 120 miles away.  What happens in trying to keep up with all the reading I find myself sinking further and further into academics and I lose connection to the one thing that can carry me through and that is the Holy Spirit.  Once we start trying to do things in our own strength we soon lose momentum and eventually run out of gas.  I picked up a book of “The Essential Works of Charles Spurgeon” and in the back of the book he is addressing primarily pastors, but there is something here for all of us.  Here are some of the highlights and you’ll see what I mean.

   

"If we make a treaty with error or sin, we do it at our own risk. If we do anything that we are not clear about, if we temper with truth or holiness, if we are friends of the world, if we make provision for the flesh, if we preach halfheartedly and in league with errorist, we have no promise that the Holy Spirit will go with us." 

"When the Spirit of God is gone, even truth itself become an iceberg. How wretched is religion frozen and lifeless! The Holy Spirit has gone, and all energy and enthusiasm have gone with Him."

"We never go a step towards heaven without the Holy Spirit. We never lead another on the heavenward road without the Holy Spirit. We have no acceptable thought, word, or deed apart from the Holy Spirit. Even the uplifting of the eye in hope or the ejaculatory prayer of the heart's desire must be His work. All good things are of Him and through Him, from beginning to end. There is no fear of exaggeration here."

"Every Man who goes to the land of the heavenly knowledge must work his passage thither; but he must work out the passage in the strength of the Holy Spirit or he will arrive at some island in the sea of fancy and never set foot upon the sacred shores of truth."

"No, we know nothing till we are taught of the Holy Spirit, who speaks to the heart rather than to the ear"

I am drawn to Spurgeon like a moth to the flame!  I read his sermons and writings and I am amazed how penetrating his words are 130 years after he spoke them.  He lived in the scripture and sought the Spirit to guide him in a time when the Victorian world around him was in the midst of the industrial revolution and reason was the new champion.  This is the age of Darwin's new thought, God was being marginalized and for profit thousands in the greater London area was suffering.  I can't help to see but see some parallels of our world today. 

We live in the technology revolution or the information age.  We will receive millions of bits of information daily and we have to sift through this deluge of information and try to make sense of it all.  In this flood of information is a growing hostility towards Christianity and an intentional effort to confuse those who profess to believe or who are thinking about faith.  This presents a problem for those who are not grounded in their Bibles and unsure of their faith. On top of all that we are busy, busy running everywhere and going no place. How in this time do we slow down enough to even begin a relationship with God, let alone sustain one? 

We have to slow down and take the time to spend time with God.  To place the Lord first in our lives requires effort and a shift of priorities.  What I know this much is true, we will not do anything until we see the value in what we give priority to.  But the dilemma is if we have never given priority to your faith how can you know it should be a priority!  As a Christian I can do nothing apart from the work of the Holy Spirit in my life.  John 15:5, Jesus said, “Apart from me you can do nothing”.  I need to draw near to Christ with the help of the Holy Spirit.  Without the strength of the Spirit I am helpless.  It is only when we take the time to earnestly seek Christ in His word and through prayer that I will find the strength I need to continue. 

I need to slow down and take time for Christ, I need the Holy Spirit to help me love the people around me, to understand the scriptures and to even pray.  There is nothing I do as a Christian I do that I don’t need the Holy Spirit enabling power. It is only when I recognize this weakness that I am made strong Paul said in 2 Corinthians 12:9:  

"My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness." Therefore, I will most gladly boast all the more about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may reside in me.”

Jesus said this to start the beatitudes:

 "The poor in spirit are blessed, for the kingdom of heaven is theirs. (Mat 5:3 HCSB)

It's when we humble ourselves before God and confess our weakness to Him that we are made strong.  Its when we finally realize we cannot manage our own sin, when we acknowledge we cannot meet our own expectations, let alone those others impose on us.  When we are finally broken by the weight of it all and God picks up and enables us to do far more than we could ever imagine.  

Our faith, our ministries, our lives, everything we do as Christian's has to be dependent and empowered by the Holy Spirit, apart from Him we are helpless and our efforts are but powerless and heavy to carry.