Who is your Strength?

By Pastor Jeff,

If I asked you, who is your strength? no doubt those who know Jesus Christ will shout out His name. Lately I have been hearing the quote from Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher,  “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” This quote has been part of many songs and I recently heard a Christian artist use it.

I’ve been always fascinated with strength, I remember the old Superman (the black and white one) and imagined myself as having the same powers he had, I watched the Olympics and became fascinated by the weightlifters who could lift massive amounts of weight! Then I thought of the animal kingdom and the tremendous amount of strength you could see by horses, elephants, and other large animals. Interestingly the strongest pound for pound creation on our earth is relatively small, no! not the ant which can lift  times it’s weight, but the Gung beetle, which can carry, 1140 times its own weight which would be equal for us carrying 80 tons!

We can look at a 747 which requires 735,000lbs of thrust to lift its 67,400lbs in the air and the F-1 rocket engine that was used to send an Apollo spacecraft into orbit produces 7.5 million pounds of thrust, that folks is power!

Then we look at nature and all of us have the recently observed the power and damage sustained by hurricanes Harvey and Irma (which had 185mph winds), the strongest wind recorded for a tornado was 302 mph in 1999. Our Sun holds 99.8% of the our Solar system’s mass, about 1 million earths could fit in the Sun, the temperature on it’s surface is 10,000 degrees but the inner core is estimated at 27 million degrees, that is one hot powerful Star, isn’t it!

But all these pale to a God who with His very word spoke our world and universe into existence in a mere six days. The book of Psalms is filled with references to a God who is our strength, in all we find 271 times God is mentioned as our strength, lets look a just a few.

Psalms 27:1, “The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? the LORD is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?”

Psalms 28:7, “The LORD is my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in him, and I am helped: therefore my heart greatly rejoiceth; and with my song will I praise him.”

Psalms 46:1, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.”

Psalms 118:14, “The LORD is my strength and song, and is become my salvation.”

John 10:10, “The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” 

The enemy of our souls hates us and only desires harm for us, but our Lord Jesus Christ is our strength! Let’s face it, most of us have no desire to endure hardships to become stronger and when we face trials by ourselves it can destroy us physically, emotionally and spiritually. But if we rely on the strength that comes from God we can be overcomers of everything that comes our way. The only limit to what God can do is the limit we place upon Him, He and He alone is my strength!

So a question, what is the greatest force in the world? (hint, its a four letter word)

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