So often, I think to myself that I have to do everything on my own. The world we live in gives us the mentality that we have to be completely independent, or we will never go anywhere in life. Independence can be a good thing, but not always. We weren’t created to do it all on our own. We were created to lean on God, and to seek his face, not just in good times, but in the hurt, the lost hope, the messiness, and the brokenness of our lives.
Philippians 4:13 reads, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me,” not “I can do all things on my own.” It reminds us that we are capable of conquering all, but not without God. We must lean on him, seek his face, and ask him to help us. When we try to do everything on our own, without God, we hit multiple stumbling blocks. Seeking help from God isn’t weakness. If anything, it shows our strength. Admitting that we can’t do it all on our own, allows God to come into our situation and give us the strength we need to get through.
But we can’t be strong until we seek his face and his strength first. In 2 Timothy 4:17, Paul writes, “The Lord stood with me and gave me strength.” I think because the world tells us that strength isn’t rooted in dependence, we see asking for help, especially from God, as making us weak. But Paul doesn’t say, “The Lord gave me strength, because I did everything by myself”, or “he gave me strength because I was perfect”. If we read the bible, we see that Paul was just like us, broken, imperfect, struggling, and human. In 2 Corinthians 12:10, Paul writes, “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.”
When we realize what Paul is really saying- that there is only one who can make us strong, and that it isn’t us- we can lay down every burden at the throne of God, learning that the king of the universe doesn’t define strength as the world does; and we can follow him, blindly, trusting that he will fight for us. When we know the one who makes us strong, the world will never break us. We will always come out on top. Because living life with God as our strength is like waiting for and watching the sunrise. You don’t ever see how the darkness will leave; you don’t always feel like the light will come again, but when miraculously, it does, it’s brilliant and beautiful.
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