#49: strength belongs to God
glorious surrender
I pray my life never becomes a story of my great excellence but my great weakness in the hands of an Almighty God
“Look, you failed again.”
“You disobeyed again.”
“You did what you said you weren’t going to do.”
“You can’t do this.”
“Quit talking because no one cares.”
I have been thinking a lot about weakness lately. Mostly because I am very aware of my weaknesses (the enemy is sure to remind me of them). I hear these phrases in my mind like a broken record.
“Sit down and be quiet.”
The goal of accusations is to make us live inward, to focus on ourselves and our inability to overcome. They make us analyze our every step and force us to live on a tightrope of fear.
“One wrong step—you fall.”
What do we do when we are backed into a corner of weakness and faced with our inability to fight?
“Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. And the tempter came and said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.’ But he answered, ‘It is written, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”’” (Matt. 4:1–4)
Right after Jesus was clothed with power He was sent into the wilderness to give it up. The Spirit’s leading reveals that power doesn’t come through strength but through the humility to be weak. Anyone can put on a facade of strength, but very few have the courage to be weak.
There is no place in the Bible that says we should rely on our sufficiency. We can spend all day toiling in the fields, planting seeds, and removing weeds, but our work is in vain until God sends the rain.
“These all look to you, to give them their food in due season. When you give it to them, they gather it up; when you open your hand, they are filled with good things. When you hide your face, they are dismayed; when you take away their breath, they die and return to their dust.” (Ps. 104:27)
Our surrender of strength is not succumbing to defeat but releasing control. It is a declaration that our lives are not our own. Weakness given to God brings us into holy alignment with Him. It teaches us what to prioritize and connects us to one focus: Follow the Lamb.
Weakness draws us closer to the Father. He allows our hearts to yearn, bleed, and break to align us with His purposes. We credit the devil for much of our pain, but even God is sovereign over the accuser.
“And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” (Dt. 8:3)
This verse was on Jesus’ mind as He sat in the desert—tired, hungry, and alone. What does a life look like that is dependent on God’s word more than food and drink? How do we allow ourselves to hunger and thirst for righteousness more than any other desire?
When we spend time with Jesus, we will be emptied. For a long time, I thought I was failing at my Christianity because I felt weaker and more broken than I did before I trusted God. Until I realized—this is what Christianity that is working looks like.
Every day we become more aware of our need for Him.
We will be stripped of everything we thought we were and all of the wrong things we thought about God. His words confront every construct of our thought life that does not align with His heart.
Only the Holy Spirit can lead us to the end of ourselves.
In exchange for the upheaval of everything we once knew, we are led to the streams.
Surrender is the way to the streams of water—the refreshing words of life we so desperately need. When the accusations get louder, His word is only forged deeper. Truth takes preeminence as lies are exposed for what they truly are. Stabilizing roots begin to grow (even though we can’t see them).
Weakness is our strength.
Because in our weakness, we find Him.
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