Renew Your Strength in the Lord

When challenges come, and life gets hard, our strength starts to fail. It’s then that the Bible tells us that those who wait on the Lord will renew their strength. So being strong doesn’t mean you never get weak. It means exchanging our weakness for God’s strength. In this week’s Bible study, learn 3 important steps to take to review your strength in the Lord. Enjoy!

In order to get stronger physically, to prevent injury, and promote my overall health, I’ve been doing a lot more strength training. My challenge, however, is that I'm not that strong. Especially my upper body.  So starting a strength training regiment has been frustrating at times. You're putting all this pressure and stress on your body, and as you're getting started, you're not seeing very much change . . . . yet. 

I’m learning that to grow in strength and increase muscle mass in your body, you must put stress on the muscles. This is what can make exercise very uncomfortable, but it's a healthy stress on the body that actually promotes the strengthening of your muscles and the increase of muscle mass. So to do well in strength training, you really have to have a mentality willing to be consistent through the stress to wait for the results. That is how you get stronger. The same is true for our spiritual lives as well. 

Oftentimes, we want to run away from situations that make us feel weak, we want to avoid situations that have caused us to grow weary, and we just want to give up. But it's our enduring and trusting in God in those pressures that increase our strength.

Today, we're going to be looking at Isaiah chapter 40:28-31 to learn how to renew our strength in the Lord. It reads:

Much of the book of Isaiah is a prophecy about the consequences the Kingdom of Judah will endure for turning away from the Lord. As we get to chapter 40 in this book, there is a shift from the consequences of their unfaithfulness to God to a focus on God’s faithfulness to His people. Even though they will face the consequences of their actions, God still, in his mercy and grace, speaks comfort over His people. Isaiah prophesied the coming Messiah, Jesus, and then he went on to share about the sovereignty and power of God. “Do you not know?” he says “have you not heard?” he asks. He reminds God’s people that God is everlasting, He is the creator of all, and even in all His creating and doing and controlling, He doesn't run out of energy or strength or knowledge. If you read chapter 40 in its entirety, you see that there is a vast contrast that Isaiah presents between God and people. God is everlasting. We are not. God is the creator of the entire world. We are the created. God never grows faint or weary. He has no limits. We have many limits.

Now this may not seem like a comforting message. However, in verse 30, Isaiah makes the connection between God's strength and our weakness. God has all these qualities and aspects that we don't have, and yet He also gives them to us. We grow faint and weary. God does not, but God does give strength to the faint, and he gives strength to the powerless. Now you are feeling weary and faint today, you may be wondering how can I get a hold of that strength?

As we take a look at the text for today, we're going to learn three important steps that we need to take to exchange our weakness for God's power so that our strength can be renewed.

STEP 1: ADMIT YOU ARE WEAK

The first step that we need to take to renew our strength in God is to admit that we are in fact weak. Note that the text reminds us that even youths grow tired and weary, and even young men faint. There is no one, no matter how old or young, that doesn't become tired at some point or that doesn't lose their strength. What does that mean? This means that we all need God and not admitting that we are weak, to not admit that we sometimes run empty, is to try to say that we don't need God, or even worse is to try to say that we are equal to God. As the text reminds us, God is the only one who is limitless. He's the only One that the scripture says never grows faint or weary.

Now this may seem like an obvious step to take; to admit that you are weak, but it's not that obvious in our hustle culture. We fill our calendars to the brim, unrealistically, hopeful that we can do more in a 24-hour period than we really can. We often think that we're stronger than we are because that's what we want to be. Instead of humbly admitting and accepting our limits, we want to rush everything and push ourselves to the limits when God never called us to do that in the first place. It's okay to admit our weaknesses and our limits and even embrace them. In fact, today's scripture reveals to us that God expects us to get tired, He expects us to run out, and He expects us to get weary. So why are we so surprised when we find ourselves hitting a brick wall? Why are we so frustrated with ourselves when we don't complete the project, when we don't get done all that we planned on our to-do list, when we have to take a break and sit down and catch our breath? Too often, we beat ourselves up for needing a break when God expects us to need those breaks. He expects us to run empty, and then He's right there, ready to fill us back up. If we want to fill up on God's strength, we will have to empty ourselves of the false strength we often like to portray that we have when in actuality, we're really struggling, and we're tired and we are two seconds away from burnout. The Apostle Paul knows what it’s like to be weary and weak, but listen to what he has to say about his weakness in 2 Corinthians 12:9-10:

It's when we're weak that we are in prime position to receive God's strength. God is not giving strength to the strong God. He’s giving strength to those who are weak, those who are weary. He's giving His strength to you and I. It's pride that's making us weak. It's our trying to appear strong and striving to be superwomen that's actually draining us of the strength that God is ready to pour into our lives.  I can't tell you how many times it took me reaching my end to finally come to God and admit I did not have enough and I needed help. And it was then that thing started to finally turn around. When we’re not trying to act strong and be God, we can then get out of God's way to allow His strength into our lives and allow Him to renew us with the new strength that comes from Him and not from our weak, feeble attempts of trying to control. God is waiting for us to admit that we're weak, and that we in fact need Him and He is ready to pour His strength into us when we do.

STEP 2: CONNECT TO THE SOURCE OF STRENGTH

In order to receive God’s strength, we need to be connected to Him. Just like your phone runs out of power the longer it’s disconnected from its power cord or charging station, we too, need to connect to our source of power. Jesus calls this abiding in Him. In John 15:4, Jesus says:

As believers, we are called to be fruitful, but many of us are weary and tired because we're more concerned with being productive with busy work and not a fruitful faithfulness to the kingdom of God. Production is just about getting something done for the sake of saying that you got it done, but fruitfulness involves cultivating, waiting, nurturing, and can’t be done without a gardener who is intentional about the type of fruit He wants to grow. We can’t be fruitful without being connected to the vine, Jesus Christ and the gardener, our Heavenly Father who gives us all we need to grow. It’s not enough to admit we are weak if we want to get stronger. We must connect ourselves to the unlimited source of power that God gives. 

When we seek power from ourselves, it will run out. When we seek power from the world, it will be taken away. But when we seek power from God, (who gives power to the weak) we have a source of strength that will never run out. 

When Jesus spoke with the Samaritan woman at the well in John Chapter 4, He told her that the living water He offered would never run out. It’s the physical water or things of the world that will always run out leaving us searching for more. But it’s not so with God. We can always come to Him empty and leave full. 

If you are tired and weary and weak, I want to ask you, where are you drawing your strength? If it’s from distracting yourself to avoid your problems, or the quick rush of sensation you feel when you scroll through your phone, or the temporary comfort of eating more than you know you should, or the quick fix of people pleasing until they are not pleased anymore, you will always end up with less than you invest and find yourself faint and weary.

It’s ok to be weary and weak and as I’ve shared, God expects us to become weak, but we don’t have to stay weak and weary. We can renew our strength when we connect to God. How do we do that? We seek Him when we are in need or weak, instead of trying to fix it on our own. We ask for His guidance and leading before we make decisions. We feed on His truth by reading and studying His word. 

The enemy is attacking your relationship with God because he knows you are weak without God, so he’s doing everything he can to distance you from your true source of strength and power. Connecting to God as your source isn’t easy because there is opposition in the spiritual realm and many don’t even realize it. Listen to how the apostle Paul connects our strength to spiritual warfare:

The strength that we need comes from God, but we must put on the whole armor of God to stand against the schemes of the enemy. The enemy has a plan to disconnect you from God’s strength and hopes to trick us into believing that opposition to our relationship with God means that God’s not true, or real or relevant. And it’s all a scheme to strip us of our power in God and prevent us from renewing your strength in Him. Our battle isn’t against what we see and feel here in the flesh, but dark forces of evil that want to take our strength from us. Renewing your strength by connecting with God won’t always be easy, because sometimes we’ll have to fight for it. Sometimes we won’t feel like it, but we can be sure that if we don’t fight to stay connected, we won’t renew our strength because God is the only true source of strength to our souls. 

STEP 3: WAIT ON THE LORD

This leads to the third step that we must take to renew our strength and that is to wait on the Lord.  Once we are connected to God, we must abide and stay with Him to receive His strength. Many of us are weak Christians because we do not exercise the spiritual fruit of patience. We want to say one prayer and see results.  

Just like it would be unwise for me to work out one time and expect muscle gains, the same is true for every other area of our lives, including our spiritual lives. To exchange our weakness with God’s strength most likely won’t happen overnight. It takes time. It takes waiting.

Now waiting on God doesn't mean we sit and do nothing. It means we stop trying to control the things only God can control and trust He will provide what needs to be provided, healed what needs to be healed, and move what needs to be moved. When we try to do what’s out of our control, we don’t gain power, we lose strength. But when we wait on God, our strength is renewed because we’re not wasting energy striving to do something that we were never meant to do. Psalm 27:14 says:

See the connection between waiting and strength. It takes courage to wait and trust God, but it's in the waiting that we gain strength. Some of us are spending energy on things God has not called us to do and we’re wondering why we're tired and weary. In the physical, we’re like those who overtrain their bodies to the point that they injure themselves and can’t run the race. There have to be moments of pause and rest so that strength can build.

As I'm strength training, I’m learning more about what it takes to build muscle, and it’s more than just heavy lifting. It’s eating the right things and resting to allow your muscles to recover from the stress that was put on them during training. 

Muscles aren't built in the gym. Muscles are broken down in the gym so that when you go to sleep and rest, it's then that your body builds your muscles back stronger than before. In 2021, I went through months of physical therapy due to a neck injury. When I told my physical therapist I was having trouble sleeping at night, he became very concerned. I didn't understand why because I was going to physical therapy and I was doing my exercises consistently at home, but he let me know that sleep was important to my recovery because a majority of my healing would not occur during my physical therapy, but at night when I was asleep.

Some of us are weak because we’re not resting in and waiting on the Lord, giving Him the necessary time to build up our spiritual muscles, and make us stronger. Instead, we run, and we go, and we do to no end, and all of this is a lack of faith. And I want you to know that I’m first speaking to myself. It takes trust to wait on God and be still and know that He will do it even when we can’t see it. It takes faith to go to sleep at night when your life is out of control. But the strength to soar and run and walk requires seasons of waiting on God. 

So if you’re feeling weak, helpless, and as though you can’t make it one more step, wait on God. Don’t turn back and leave Him; don’t try to keep pressing through and get ahead of Him. Stand firm, and wait for Him, because although you can’t see it, it’s in this waiting that God is renewing your strength. 

Now I would love to hear from you, Beloved. How is God renewing your strength this season of your life? Let’s encourage one another in the comments. 

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As always, thank you so much for watching, and until next time, be beautiful, be blessed, and be loved.