Thank you so much for checking out this week’s blog! During this season of quarantine, I’ve decided to start filming blogs once a month. Head to my new YouTube channel to watch Strength and Peace! You can also read the full teaching below. Be encouraged today as you run the race God has marked out for you!

Strength and Peace.

Two words I often pray, for others as well as myself.

Strength and Peace.

Two things I long for, maybe now more than ever.

Jon chose to cover Peace this week for #MusicMonday, so naturally all of us at home have been humming it and singing along. On repeat. The lyrics are rich, and I encourage you to take some time to reflect on them.

Originally I wanted to post about strength for this #ThoughtfulThursday, but God had a way of tying the two words together… Strength and Peace.

Last Thursday was a rough one for me. One thing after another brought about a heaviness and weariness to my soul. A wasp in the kitchen after breakfast, high winds and nonstop rain, a leak in our 1901 farmhouse rental during the storm, a fainting child, and a child that had one too many outbursts. (A few surface level things that were magnified by my emotional struggles.) I felt so weak by day’s end. So depleted. So fragile. So desperate for a sliver of strength.

I turned to a favorite passage – 2 Corinthians 12:8-10. Paul wrote, “Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

I don’t know about you, but I need the power of Christ to dwell in me. Maybe it takes getting to the end of my rope, the end of myself, to realize my desperate need. I can be strong and independent, but I’m learning there’s a better way. I can be honest about my shortcomings, how I don’t measure up, how I’m not perfect, how I haven’t arrived. I can invite God into those places of hurt and heartache.

My weakness creates space and makes room for Jesus’s resurrection power to rest on me. My confession opens the door for His strength to come in.

I can boast in my weakness. I can delight in my difficulties. When I acknowledge my adversity and how I fall short, God’s grace becomes sufficient and His power is made perfect. His strength enters my hardship, enabling me to stand firm.

“I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know Him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which He has called you, the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints, and His incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of His mighty strength, which He exerted in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.” – Ephesians 1:17-21

May we get to know Him better, and know His incomparably great power, this victorious power that’s available for us who believe.

“And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please Him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to His glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light.” – Colossians 1:10-12 

May we be strengthened with all power – according to His glorious might – so that we can stand firm with great endurance and patience.

💗

So I spent a few days wrestling with strength and weakness, grace and power. And then peace came along.

As Jon sang the melody and strummed his guitar, I looked up ‘peace’ in one of my favorite books… the Dictionary of Word Origins. It said: “the etymological notion underlying peace is of ‘fastening’, so as to achieve a ‘stable’ condition.”

We find peace when we’re fastened to the One who can withstand the storms of this life. We discover stability when we cling to Him in every trial and trouble that comes our way.

While God’s strength being perfected requires my weakness and vulnerability, peace demands that I am close in proximity to Him. Fastened to the Father, leaning into His love, pausing in His presence.

Peace is a gift, a promise, a fruit of the Spirit… but maybe it’s also a choice. A choice to be tethered to Him, fastened, stable and secure.

“You will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in You.” – Isaiah 26:3

The word for steadfast in the Hebrew is camak (H5564), and it means “to prop; to lean upon or take hold of; propped, upheld, i.e. unmoved, firm.” God wants us to be steadfast in our mind – leaning upon Him, propping ourself up against His peace, taking hold of His strength. He wants our eyes fixed on Him, unmoved, standing firm in His Truth.

“You will guard him and keep him in perfect and constant peace whose mind [both its inclination and its character] is stayed on You, because he commits himself to You, leans on You, and hopes confidently in You.” – Isaiah 26:3 (AMPC)

“You will keep [guard, protect and maintain] in perfect peace [shalom – safety, wholeness, welfare, health, prosperity] him whose mind is steadfast [propped up, leaning upon, taking hold of, upheld, unmoved, firm], because he trusts [goes quickly for refuge, is confident and sure] in You.” – Megan’s Hebrew Definition Paraphrase

God wants us to run quickly to Him for refuge, to stay fixed on Him, to rest secure in Him. He upholds us in His perfect peace.

And then God tied it all together with Psalm 29:11 – “The Lord gives strength to His people; the Lord blesses His people with peace.”

God is our source. He longs to give strength to His kids – to show up in our weakness and be strength for us. His heart is to bless us with peace – wholeness. He wants to be close to you and spend time with you.

Let His love cast out fear today. Let His power be perfected in your problems. Let His strength overwhelm your weakness. Let His peace guard your heart and mind.

Stand firm today. In His presence, there is Strength and Peace.