Cultivating Christian Strength
Finally, be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of his might (Eph. 6:10)
Why Strength?
Does anyone need strength this morning? We do! “Cultivating Christian Strength” is always a relevant topic and I chose to talk about it this morning not only because of the season we are in as a church, but because there are a few things that easily hinder our strength: our focus on circumstances and our forgetfulness of strength.
Focus on Circumstances:
I think for most of us, when life is hard, the thing we want most is a change in circumstances. We want the hard things to go away. While this is understandable and even a normal human response, I see at least two problems with this desire. First, it unconsciously forms us into people who, when it comes down to it, just really want things to be easy.
We want to remove hard things from our life like we remove a dead mouse from the kitchen. Eww. Take it away. But wanting things to be easy makes us start to expect things to be easy, and soon we demand things to be easy. If we think we deserve an easy, comfortable life, we’re more likely to be upset when life turns out to be hard, as though we have been cosmically wronged.
Second, this desire for hard things to go away just doesn’t line up with reality. The Bible makes it clear that we don’t live in a world of comfort and ease. From Genesis 3 onward, we know that because of sin, our world is cursed with sweat and toil, pain, conflict, suffering, and death. We know from experience that life brings challenges and many of those challenges will not resolve quickly. I would guess that almost every person in this room is dealing with some kind of trial that is life-long – it’s not going to go away– whether that’s the loss of a loved one, health problems, broken relationships, family dynamics, past trauma, work stress, or the daily challenge of living in a post-Christian society.
Think about our Sunday morning experience right now. If you are like me, at some point you probably pinned your hopes on those protestors going away, so things can go back to “normal.” We forget– I forget– that this kind of brokenness is normal in a fallen world. Going to church freely on Sunday mornings is actually a great grace that many brothers and sisters across the globe have never known and never will.
The protestors going away might seem like the easiest solution to our Sunday morning problem, but it’s probably not the likely one, or even the best one.
Forgetfulness of Strength:
A hyper-focus on our circumstances can cause us to forget strength altogether. You can imagine a knight who comes across an enormous, evil dragon. Rather than fight the dragon, he runs back to a safe place and prays that God would remove the dragon, or shrink it down to manageable size. He won’t do anything until circumstances change. He even begins to get angry with God, because he knows that God can change the dragon, but he won’t do it. All the while, the knight has forgotten another prayer that he could pray. He could ask God to give him courage to fight the dragon. For wisdom in the battle ahead. For endurance to bear up under the dragon’s fiery blasts. For armor strong enough to protect him. For God to be with him in the fight. In short, he could pray for strength.
I think we are often like that knight. We want God to change our circumstances, but God wants to change us. Romans 8:29 tells us that God does indeed plan to change us. He predestined us “in order to conform us to the image of his son, in order that he [Jesus] might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.” God plans for us to look like his Son, King Jesus. He didn’t go around the cross. For the joy set before him, he endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
Like our savior, our story ends in glory. And like our savior, the path will involve suffering.
And isn’t it just like our Savior to give us his own strength for the race now set before us, through the indwelling of his Holy Spirit? For the Christian, strength is not a last resort, after we have done everything within our power to change our circumstances. Strength is the result that comes to everyone who puts their faith in Jesus, to live faithfully in the circumstances he’s given us.
God wants his children to be strong. His children increase in strength (Acts 9:22), they grow strong in faith (Rom. 4:20), they do all things through Christ who strengthens them (Phil. 4:13), they serve in the strength that God supplies (1 Peter 4:11), and they love the Lord with all their strength (Mark 12:30).
Christians don’t just have to be strong, we get to be strong, because the Almighty God is our Father, the Son is our Savior, and the Spirit is our Helper.
So this morning, I want to focus on just three ways to cultivate Christian strength:
3 Ways to Cultivate Christian Strength:
Desire to be a Strong Woman
Depend on Christ’s Love
Decide to Stand
Desire to Be a Strong Woman (Proverbs 31:10, 17, 25, 30)
Consider these verses from Proverbs 31:
Proverbs 31:10, 17, 25 (NRSV)
10 A woman of strength (חַיִל), who can find? She is far more precious than jewels…17 She girds herself with strength (עֹז) and makes her arms strong (אָמֵץ)…25 Strength (עֹז) and dignity are her clothing, She laughs at the time to come…30 Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.
This woman is strong. We’re used to thinking of strength as a man’s virtue, but Proverbs 31 will not let us ignore God’s design for feminine strength. Strength is mentioned four times in 22 verses. “Strong arms” refers to literal physical strength (17). “Girding with strength” and “clothing with strength” express valiant character – this woman is strong inside and out.
The rest of the passage gives the details of her strength. Amid the details, two things really stand out.
First is her others-centered capacity. Her strength has a purpose— she uses it. Right where God has placed her, she gets things done and smiles while she’s at it. In different ways, across different seasons, she “seeks,” “works,” “brings,” “rises,” “provides,” “considers,” “plants,” “opens,” “reaches,” “clothes,” “delivers,” and “laughs.” The one thing she does not do is “eat the bread of idleness” (verse 27).
Look at all the references to her hands…
She “works with willing hands” (13)
With the fruit of her hands she plants a vineyard (16)
She puts her hands to the distaff, and her hands hold the spindle. (19)
She opens her hand to the poor (20)
They give her “the fruit of her hands” (31)
Think about our emphasis on fitness in our culture. I’m not anti-fitness, but I do notice that often, fitness becomes an end in itself. We lift weights in order to lift heavier weights. We want to be fit to look good, not to do good. Think of how many fitness ads are totally self-centered. I saw an ad recently that said, “Stop thinking about anything else. This is YOU time.”
That is not the mantra of the Proverbs 31 woman. Her strength gives her capacity and she uses her capacity “totally and selflessly” for others (see Waltke, Proverbs, 521). She seeks her husband’s good. She feeds her household. She cares for the poor and needy. She seems to delight in all she does, and all she does blesses others.
Second, notice her God-fearing confidence. Look at verse 25 with me. I think this is the second most important verse in this passage. “Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she laughs at the time to come.” Strength is her clothing – her regularly constant way of being – and the result is that she laughs about the future. What does “the future” or “the time to come” mean here? John Piper tells us: “the time to come is a time of trouble — a time of unknown” (What is Strong Feminine Womanhood).
We don’t know the future and we can’t control it. We can’t keep every bad thing from happening. It’s likely that bad things will happen to us and to those we love at some point. Normally this makes us fear. But this woman is not afraid. She laughs. And we have to ask ourselves, what kind of strength does this woman have that allows her to laugh at the future?
Look at verse 30. This is the most important verse in the passage. “Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.” Here we get the secret, the source of this woman’s strength. She fears the Lord. She trusts God. She lives with her eyes toward him – his character, his promises, his past acts, his plan for his people, his sovereign rule over all things – and the future is no longer fearful.
Laughing at the unknown means that her circumstances do not determine her confidence or courage. God does. No matter how hard they may be, circumstances cannot keep her from God’s love and care. They cannot keep her from walking with God. They cannot exist outside of God’s sovereign will – so she does not fear them.
Her greater fear — fear of God — conquers every lesser fear and puts them in their proper place. So she can laugh. She doesn’t laugh from indifference or apathy or denial. Her laughter comes from a joy that runs deeper than circumstances. It comes from confidence that what is unknown to her is never unknown to God. The God to whom she belongs is infinitely worthy of all her trust, and her whole life rests in his loving care and rule. What he gives, she receives. What he takes, she surrenders.
John Piper describes her this way:
“Now [this] is what I mean by a strong woman. I mean a woman who can lose a child, lose a husband, lose her health, face a family crisis, see the world becoming anti Christian all around her and wonder about raising children in this world, women who go to a dangerous place on the mission field, women who return good for evil over and over again, women who get up a thousand times with a sick or disabled child at night, all of it in the strength that God supplies, because God is her hope. God is her rock. That is what I mean” (What is Strong Feminine Womanhood?).
A woman who fears God does not need to fear anything else, not even the unknowns of the future. And the question for us is: do we want to be strong like this woman?
God wants us to be strong women, like this woman.
What would it look like to grow in strength, especially in capacity and confidence?
It might mean getting up earlier. Or going to bed earlier. Or putting down the phone and picking up your Bible. Praying more and complaining less. Becoming more reliable. Serving others when it isn’t convenient. Committing to opportunities right away. It might mean serving in childcare or coming on Sunday evening to corporate prayer. Or just showing up on time.
How might God be calling you to greater strength?
We will never cultivate Christian strength if we don’t actually want to be strong; if we shrink from strength in horror; if we refuse the strength that comes from letting God be God, putting every detail of our lives into his strong hands.
God invites us to be strong and he himself strengthens us.
Listen to his words in Isaiah 41:10:
Fear not, for I am with you;
be not dismayed, for I am your God;
I will strengthen you, I will help you,
I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.
The first step to cultivating Christian strength is wanting to be strong.
2. Depend on Christ’s Love (Ephesians 3:14-19)
Turn with me now to the New Testament, to Ephesians 3:14-19:
14 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, 16 that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
What does Paul specifically pray for here? The request is in verse 16, he asks the Father: that he might “grant you to be strengthened.” Strength is a gift from God. He gives his children strength. How does Paul expect God to strengthen the Ephesians, and us?
He lists three things, which I think are different aspects of the same reality:
With power through his Spirit in your inner being.
So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.
being rooted and grounded in love.
It’s like he prays, “Father, strengthen them by the power of your own Spirit, which is Christ in them, which roots and grounds them in your saving love.”
The whole Trinity is here. The strength Paul asks for is the strength of God for us, God with us, and God in us.
Paul knows that there has never been a weakness greater than the weakness of fallen humanity. Have you felt weak today? This week? This month? Of course we have. We’re human! We have limits. We have cycles and hormones and emotions. We have problems and we make problems.
However we may feel today, we have never been more weak than when we were dead in our sins, daughters of disobedience, living in the passions of the flesh, and by nature children of wrath (Eph. 2:1-3). There is nothing weaker than being dead. There is no weakness greater than the weakness of sinners lost and ruined by the fall.
So our only hope must come from a power outside of ourselves strong enough to break the curse of sin, to defeat death itself, and to resurrect the dead. Our only hope is God, who sent his son to die in our place and to give us new life. “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ– by grace you have been saved (Eph. 2:4-5).
Only God could save us, but why would he? “Because of the great love with which he loved us, being rich in mercy” (v4). This is the gospel. And it is powerful.
We have never been more weak than when we were dead in our sins. And we have never been more strengthened than when God made us alive by his love. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).
The Father gives strength by pouring out the astounding love of the Trinity for us. Over and over in the Bible, strength is connected to the presence of God. “The Lord your God is with you,” (Josh. 1:9, cf. Isaiah 41:10). “Lo, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:20).
So Paul asks that God would strengthen us in his Trinitarian love, for what purpose? To have strength to comprehend the incomprehensible love of Christ. He prays for us to have strength to understand the love that is our strength! We have it, and we need to keep seeing and savoring it. We’re alive, so we don’t act like we’re still dead. Our greatest weakness is still our sin and only the remedy is still looking to Jesus in repentance and faith. The more we understand the gospel – the more we “have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge,” the more we are “filled with all the fullness of God” (v19) – and what could be stronger than that?
Here’s an example of what it might look like for someone to be strengthened in Christ’s love. Lilias Trotter was an upper class English woman and artist who moved to Algeria as a missionary in 1888. In her journal, she describes what it might mean to “go anywhere with Jesus.”
“To us in Algeria it must mean sometime or other, Arab food. Do we object to it? And mice, do we mind them? And mosquitoes, do we think them dreadful? In some part it means close contact with dirt and repulsive disease. Yet if Jesus is there, what have we possibly to complain of? It means living among a stiff-necked and untrue people and struggling with a strange and difficult language. And yet let us evermore write over all our miseries, big, and for the most part very little, these transforming words “With Jesus.” And then the very breath of heaven will breathe upon our whole being and we shall be glad” (quoted in Faithful Women and Their Extraordinary God, by Noelle Piper,66).
It is as simple as going through our day with Jesus — allowing us to meet in faith whatever comes to us, because we are loved eternally in Christ.
When we are weakened by unbelief, by doubt, by our own selfishness, by suffering, by persecution, by distraction, by materialism – we don’t need better strategies, we need the love of Jesus. He is with us. Christian strength is gospel strength.
3. Decide to Stand (Eph. 6:10-20)
I want to close by considering two questions:
First, we need to ask: What difference does it make?
We get to go out into the world every morning in the strength of Christ’s life-giving, life-sustaining love. What difference does that make for us today? What does that even look like?
I think Ephesians 6 gives us a really helpful answer. Flip over a page to Ephesians 6:10-11:
Finally, be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.
Here’s the difference: We don’t wait around for different circumstances. In Christ’s strength, we stand against the schemes of the devil.
What are the devil’s schemes? Satan’s mission is to sabotage the Great Commission. He is out to wreck our faith and derail our mission.
In Matthew 28, Jesus commands us to make disciples by baptizing and teaching. “Baptism” refers to gospel acceptance: salvation, coming to Jesus in repentance and faith;. “Teaching” refers to gospel obedience: “teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.”
Standing against Satan’s schemes means that we will continue to preach salvation and practice sanctification. We will be gospel hearers and doers. The love of Christ strengthens us to invite others into that love, and to embody that love in our own holy living.
And Satan doesn’t want that. He doesn’t want the love of Christ compelling us to be ambassadors for Jesus. He doesn’t want the love of Christ transforming us into Christ-likeness day by day. So he schemes against us.
But we can stand firm, with God’s strength and God’s armor. We don’t have time this morning to go through all the armor of God, but I encourage you to spend time in Ephesians 6:10-20, especially in seasons when you feel weak.
Ask yourself, where in my life is Satan scheming against me? What does it look like for me to stand firm in these areas?
Which leads to our last question:
What about weakness? How do we stand when we feel weak?
Strength and weakness are dynamic. As strength grows, weakness withers. And growing stronger does not mean we outpace the strongest person we know; it means we outpace ourselves, sometimes by just another step. With God’s help, today we can be stronger than we were yesterday. Although we “slowly move forward by staggering, limping, and even crawling on the ground,” John Calvin assures us, “no one advances so hopelessly as not to make at least a bit of progress daily on the way. . . . When today is better than yesterday our effort is not wasted” (Institutes 3.6.5).
Where does weakness most affect you? Confront your weakness with Christ’s strength. That might mean praying something like this:
Jesus, I feel weakened by ______________, But your love assures me ___________. Strengthen me in your love to ________________.
Jesus, I feel weakened by my discontentment, But your love assures me that I have all that I need. Strengthen me in your love to give thanks for all your benefits.
Jesus, I feel weakened by selfishness, but your love assures me that I can put others first, because you are always caring for me. Strengthen me in your love to consider others more important than myself.
Jesus, I feel weakened by fear, but your love assures me that you will keep my soul safe even if the worst happens. Strengthen me in your love to believe your promises today.
Jesus, I feel weakened by exhaustion from the demands of daily life, but your love assures me that mercies are new each morning. Strengthen me in your love to believe that fulfilling my responsibilities today is a heavenly task that you delight in.
Jesus, I feel weakened by my circumstances, but your love assures me that no circumstances can ever keep me from walking with you in faith. Strengthen me in your love to bear fruit right here.
C. S. Lewis reminds us that when we want something badly enough, we don’t wait for the right conditions:
“The only people who achieve much are those who want [strength] so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavourable. Favourable conditions never come” (“Learning in Wartime”).
Growing in God-dependent strength might not change our circumstances, but it will change our hearts and our hands, our attitudes and actions, our marriages, homes, friendships, communities, and churches.
How might cultivating Christian strength make a difference in your own life and for others? How might it change your heart?
With strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow, let’s desire to be strong women who depend on Christ’s love and decide to stand against the devil.
Ephesians 3:20-21
Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
Book Recommendation: Faithful Women and their Extraordinary God by Noelle Piper