Strength for all Times

Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Thursday, October nineteenth. Are you able to maintain stability whether things go for or against you?

Today's podcast helps you learn how to truly have strength for all times. Every year an increasing number of men who are in the ministry and who've been in the ministry a long time bail out. They just decide to walk away. And when you ask them why, there are probably several reasons. But one of the primary reasons is they get tired and weary and worn and burnt out and they say, I just can't handle it anymore. That's one thing to be tired.

It's something else to be tired of serving God. And as I look back and think about where I learned my first lesson about walking in the strength and the power of God and serving Him in His strength and not in my own, I learned it not in a seminary. In fact, you would never guess where I learned it.

I learned it at an airport, standing there waiting for the plane to arrive. And this little lady got off the plane and she was about seventy-three years of age, somewhere thereabouts. Her name was Bertha Smith, forty years a missionary in China. I said, Bertha, there's one thing I want to know. And I had heard all the stories of things that she'd been through.

And I mean bombings, I mean, you know, you name it, she'd been through it. I said, Bertha, would you please tell me at your age how is it that you're three paces ahead of me everywhere we go? I won't ever forget what she said. She says, I don't go in my own strength, I go in the strength of the Lord.

And I said, now tell me that again. You mean what you're saying is that you don't go in your own strength, you go in the strength of the Lord? She said, that's right, I don't have to go in my strength.

I have His strength to go in. And she says, if I'd have been going in my strength, I'd have come home from China years ago. She says, I just go in the strength of the Lord. Well, I'm sure I probably didn't under, I know I didn't understand what she meant at the time. But I want you to know that if she had said nothing else to me over the years, I had to believe her because she died at a hundred and one. And not only that, I believe it was a hundred and one, a hundred and two. And not only that, her schedule was out under a hundred and a six. Because she really expected to live until Jesus came.

And so, here's a woman who learned a secret. When we think about the things that you and I have to do, the things that we're called upon to do, the truth is that God nowhere ever intends for us to serve Him, to follow Him, to do anything for Him in our own strength. He says, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Now, He didn't say I can do all things, but all things through Christ who strengthens me.

What limits this? I can't do all things. First of all, because God doesn't want me to do all things.

And I'll tell you something else. You and I can't even claim that verse of Scripture for anything that is not in the will of God for us. And oftentimes, people take on more than they can handle and more on their schedule than they can do. And then we run here in yonder and we are worn out and weary because, you see, He says I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

I cannot even begin to think in terms of trusting God for what He does not want me to do. And here's a man who's making a boast, not out of pride and egotism and arrogance, but out of humility. And here's what he says.

He says, I know, I can tell you, I can bear witness that I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me because, he says, because let me tell you what I have been able to do through Christ. He says, first of all, beginning in verse twenty-three of chapter eleven of Second Corinthians, he says, imprisoned, beaten times without number, often in dangers of death, five times I received the Jews' thirty-nine lashes. Now, friend, he says five times it happened to him. Three times I was beaten with rods. Listen, that means eight times he got a Roman beaten.

Now, most of us couldn't have handled one of them. Not only that, once I was stoned and left for dead, by the way, three times I was shipwrecked. A night and a day have I spent in the deep, that is, floating on something that kept him up, a piece of wood. I've been on frequent journeys in dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my countrymen, dangers from the Gentiles, dangers in the city, dangers in the wilderness, dangers on the sea, dangers among false brethren. I've been in labor and hardship through many sleepless nights in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. Apart from such external things, there is the daily pressure upon me of concern for all the churches. Now, how many of you in the light of that have ever had a hard time?

Not any of us. And you know what Paul said? He's writing out of a prison. He says, I want to tell you, I've learned the secret. I've learned the secret of contentment.

I've learned the secret of being able to walk and to serve and to follow the Lord Jesus Christ, not in my own strength, but in His strength. He says, I've learned the lesson. And if you'll reread that 11th chapter, beginning in verse 23, of all the things that happened to him.

Now, we can read through them quickly. But if you read through and ponder the fact that he was beaten five times, I mean with lashes, no man could stand that in his own strength. This man had the most difficult lifestyle you can imagine. What does he say? He says, I want to tell you something. I can, I know what it means to be enabled, to be strengthened, to be empowered, to experience any and every type of difficulty, hardship in life, and to come through victorious through Christ who strengthens me. What is it that he knew? How is it that he kept going?

What is it about him and what did he know that made it possible? And I think in my own personal life, though, I would never boast of anything because God knows, I have plenty of weaknesses, lots and lots of them. But as I think in my own life, the greatest truth personally that I have ever experienced or learned, and that is that Jesus Christ is my life. That is the greatest truth that I have ever learned in my whole Christian life.

He is my life. Everything else that I know revolves around that. It is the greatest truth because everything Paul says about contentment, everything he says about strength, and everything he says about supplies wrapped up in the fact that when Jesus Christ is our life and we know that he's our life, then our supply, then our contentment, then our energy, then our power, then our strength, then everything we need, we begin to realize it is not out there.

It is not dependent on that and dependent on this and dependent on them and dependent on those. It is rather on the inside ready to be released by the wisdom and the gift of God so that we are to operate from the ever bubbling strength of Almighty God himself. So we said Paul boasted. He said I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Now what was the basis of that boast?

The basis of that boast was this. Paul knew and understood his position in Christ and what is that position? He said my position is, and this was his key phrase in the epistles, you can wrap up everything the apostle Paul said in these two words. In Christ he said, as Jesus said, I'm abiding in you and you're abiding in me. You and I have a personal relationship with Christ wherein the Spirit of God now resides within us with all of his omnipotence. So our position in Christ is that we are the children of God. We have been reconciled to him, redeemed by him, forgiven by him.

We have brand new creations in Christ. We are the children of God. We bear his name and possess his life.

We are eternally secure in him. We are the servants of God. Every single child of God is a servant of the Lord.

Indwelt by the omnipotent Holy Spirit in order that every single thing God wants us to do. Listen, God has already assumed the responsibility for getting it done through us. That's why he says in 1 Thessalonians, he that calleth thee will also do it. That is whatever he calls us to do. He guarantees the strength and the energy and the wisdom and the power to get it done no matter what. And so when you and I learn to operate out of the resource that is within us, walking and living and serving in the strength and the power of God, not in our own, then we're able to do, able to accomplish, able to keep going or the folks fall aside, able to keep moving through life. Whenever we begin to look within ourselves at our strength, we begin to measure what we think we can do. And we look at responsibilities and schedules and all the things that are going around us, we say, oh God, I just can't, right?

We absolutely cannot. But you see, he didn't teach us to look at ourselves and Paul didn't. You see, he understood his position and his position was this. He was so related to Jesus Christ that every single solitary thing he needed and all the strength and the power to overcome all the difficulty and the hardship was already his, deposited to his account and all he had to do is to draw from that. God specializes in energizing the weak. There's nothing wrong with saying I'm weak as long as I'm wise enough to say, but Lord, in you I am capable.

I am enabled through the Spirit of God who indwells me. He understood what his position was. The second thing that the apostle Paul was this, his perspective was right. When he thought about Christ, what did he think about? Well, certainly he must have thought about Christ in ways that satisfied and settled the issue in his own life because he's the one who wrote this. Listen to what he wrote in Colossians chapter one, verse fifteen.

He said, you want to know what Jesus is like? He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. But by him all things were created, both in the heavens and on the earth, visible and invisible, for the thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities.

All things have been created by him and for him. He is before all things and in him all things hold together. He said, look, the person who is indwelling me, Christ, he's the one who created it all.

He's the one who holds it all together. So his perspective of Christ was this, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, supreme sovereign of the universe. And so because he said he was his strength and his very life, he knew that he, he was able to draw from the indwelling resource that was inexhaustible.

He had his perspective, right? His perspective was upon Christ. That is, his focus was upon Christ and not himself. When you look to see what he said, he said, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

God was ever supplying his need no matter what it was. And so he said his position was settled, his perspective was settled, and then, of course, he knew the promises of God. And you think about what the Lord Jesus has promised us, and he's promised us so many things, but think about the strength he's promised us. For example, in the first chapter of Ephesians, how Paul is talking here about his prayer for the Ephesians, Christians, and he says, verse 18, I pray that you'll see something, that you'll understand something. He said, I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so that you may know what is the hope of his calling, what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance and the saints. And he says, I want you to know by experience what is the surpassing, that is indescribable greatness of his power toward us who believe. These are in accordance with the working of the strength of his might. That is, God is strengthening, empowering us, enabling us to face any and every single solitary situation we face. And he's the one who is there to empower us in the strengthener so that if you and I can learn to walk in his strength and serve out of his power, it doesn't mean we won't get physically tired and worn at times, but it means we'll never get tired, listen, of serving Jesus. And it means that we'll be able to go when others can't go. We'll be able to hang in there and we will have an energy that is indescribable, a power that cannot be labeled as human because God is there to enable us.

And you, for example, are college students and you get lots of pressure on you at times and exams come and the pressure gets there and you work also. You think, God, how am I going to do this? Listen, God is just as willing to empower a student as he is a pastor. He's just as willing to empower the businessman or the mother to do her work and to do his work as he is a pastor.

I can do all things through Christ. He is my source. My source is within. Now, here's the big question. How do I tap into the source to get this energy moving in my life down here on this earth? Well, this is what I kept asking Bertha.

I said, Bertha, now tell me. What I want to know is I know the promises of Scripture and Jesus said, I'll never leave you nor forsake you. And Isaiah 40, he says, though young men shall stumble and fall they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings as eagles. He says, they'll run, not be weary, walk and not faint. How is it you keep going?

And it was so simple, I never caught it for years. She says, here's what I do. When I begin to serve the Lord in some area or I begin to feel we're in tired, she says, I just pause and remind him of what he promised me and that I am at this moment, I am at this moment drawing from his resource exactly what I need. She says, I just draw it by faith. I just draw it by faith. I just remind him of what he promised and I draw it by faith. Well, that sounds simple, but let me ask you a question. How else would you do it? You see, how else would you do it except thank him, trust him, ask him, believe him and do what?

Then step out. You see, so many times we wait for God to get us up to what we think we need to do his work. That's not faith. Faith is I step out where God told me to go, though I don't feel like it, though I can't see my way clear, though I don't have the energy, I don't have the resources I think, I just have to step out by faith, trusting him that as I go, he will strengthen me.

Now, you see, it all boils down to this. Do I understand how to draw from his inexhaustible resources? How do I draw? I simply draw by saying, Lord, I'm trusting you to enable me at this moment to accomplish, to achieve, to finish, to go through, to do whatever it might be. I'm trusting in your energy and your strength.

You know why we burn out? Because we do not draw from the divine, holy, inexhaustible resource of Christ who is our life. If he's my life, then he's responsible for all I need to be all I can be and to do all I can do. He is your life. And if he is your life, you can do anything, everything, all things through Christ, which means everything, anything, all things Christ requires of me, demands of me, sends me forth to do or to become, you can.

You see, I can't, doesn't fit who we are. Because, listen, omnipotence is indwelling you. And you have the key that unlocks all the power you need to accomplish whatever God calls you to do.

And what is the key? Faith. I'm trusting you, dear God, for what I need at this moment. Now here's what I want you to see. You don't have to do it in your own strength.

It all boils down to something real simple. Am I willing to say to Him, Lord Jesus, I'm trusting You for Your energy and I'm thanking You for it. And step out and watch Him do it. Young men shall stumble and fall, but listen to this, they who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint. So, here's what He's saying. They that wait upon the Lord, you can't run, run, run, run, run, work, work, work, work, work.

Busy, busy, busy, busy, busy. And never take time to sit before the Lord or kneel before the Lord and open His Word and nourish your spirit from His Word and your soul, your spirit with Him in fellowship. You cannot do that and walk in the strength of the Lord. Here's how He worked in Abraham's life. Here's how He worked in Joshua's life. Here's how He worked in Daniel's life. Here's how He worked in David's life. Here's how He worked in Paul's life. Jesus Christ is saying yesterday, today, and forever. Now, how are you going to work in my life?

Same way. You see, this helps me keep my focus right. That my focus has to be Him. It is His life and not my life. His strength, not my strength. His energy, not my energy.

His wisdom, not my wisdom. His sufficiency, not our sufficiency. And I want to say to you, no matter what your role in life is, if you will trust Him day by day and moment by moment, for the strength you need to accomplish it, you will succeed in whatever God called you to do. And Father, we thank You for making it simple and plain. Thank You for the wonderful example of the apostle Paul. We can rely upon You as our life, look to You as the source of all that we need, and know that all we have to do is to believe You, and our simple childlike faith releases within us all that we need to become and to achieve to Your glory and honor in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you for listening to Strength for All Times. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by intouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.