Praying to Find Strength

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Transcript:

Tonight in Psalm chapter 28, we’re going to look as we have been looking at some of the reasons why we pray. Some of the reasons why we pray. And I told you this morning, I shared with you that I’ve come in the last few years not to like the saying.

Even though I’ve said it myself and heard it said by people I respect very much. I’ve come not to like the saying that God doesn’t give us more than we can handle. Because the further I get along in life, I realize really how frail I am in contrast to the strength of God and really the strength that’s needed to live in the world.

I realize more the older I get that I’m not as strong as I think I am, and none of us really are as strong as we think we are. I don’t want to do life under my own strength. I don’t like the saying.

And I’m not going to be mad at you if you slip and say it, okay? I don’t want you to feel bad about it. But I don’t like the saying that God doesn’t give us more than we can handle.

You know what? Sometimes he does. Or sometimes the world gives us more than we can handle.

But I do believe very strongly that God doesn’t give us or allow us to be given more than he can handle. There’s nothing that’s outside of God’s realm of being able to accomplish. There’s nothing that God can’t handle.

And tonight we’re going to look at praying for the purpose of finding strength. Praying for the purpose of finding strength. It should come as no surprise to any of you tonight that in life there’s a lot of struggle involved.

Now, that’s nothing necessarily to complain about. That’s just a consequence of living in a fallen sinful world. I mean, even from the moment of the fall, God told Adam that in the sweat of his brow would he eat bread.

There’s something noble about work, and yet God said there would be this struggle, there would be this toil involved in it. And it’s just a consequence of living in a fallen world that we have to struggle. And even in good things in life, we have to work hard for it and we have to struggle for it.

And then there are things that we are handed that are not so good that we have to struggle with. And on good days, we may look like, if you remember the statue of Atlas, one of the old Greek stories. Atlas carrying the big ball on his shoulders, supposed to be the globe.

Atlas just carrying the whole world on his shoulders. That’s where we get the phrase, the weight of the world on your shoulders, I believe. And on a good day, we look like Atlas carrying the big ball.

You know, we’re struggling, but we’ve got it under control. And then I think on bad days, we a lot of times look like Indiana Jones running from the big ball. You know, it gets away from us.

Did none of you see that movie? Okay, I’m glad I’m not the only one. It just kind of gets away from us and chases us downhill as we’re about to be crushed by it.

And there are some things in this life that our own strength cannot take care of. And whether it’s the day-to-day grind of life, whether it’s difficulties that arise, even if it’s something incredibly wonderful that God has called us to do, and we’re just not strong enough on our own to do what God has called us to do, we need God’s strength just to make it through this world alive. Would you agree with that?

We need God’s strength. We need God’s strength. And a good motivation for praying is to ask God to strengthen us, not only for the struggles and difficulties, but also to strengthen us for the work that he’s called us to do.

As I talk tonight about praying to find strength, I don’t want to just talk about difficulties and hardships of life, because there are enough of those. And as we’ve talked about praying for comfort from our burdens last week, and talked this morning about praying to find guidance when we have a dilemma, I don’t want to just focus on trouble. Folks, sometimes we’re in need of strength for good reasons, because God has called us to do something incredible that is way outside of our capabilities.

And so we need to learn to pray for strength. We started out in the beginning of this series looking at things we pray for with things like giving thanks, with things like praying just to honor God. And we’re going to look at some more of those in the next few weeks, praying to obey God, praying because he’s told us to pray.

And so we pray because we want to be obedient, praying so we can be like Jesus. Hey, if Jesus, God in human flesh, needed to pray to the Father, what makes us think we can get by without it? And so there are reasons to pray to God that don’t involve getting anything, that involve more us looking at Him rather than looking at our own needs.

But it’s also a mistake, as I’ve said before, to go to the other extreme and neglect the fact that we have real needs and God desires to meet those needs. And one of those needs is for strength. It’s a little different from, you know, we talked at the beginning of September about praying to make our requests.

You know, when I have a need, I can go to God and say, God, I really need $100 to pay this bill. Just hypothetical. I really need this. God, I really need help in this area.

I really need, and taking to God what our needs really are. And it’s okay sometimes to take our grocery list to God, as long as that’s not the only reason we pray, and that’s not the only time we ever pray. But we also have needs beyond just what we see with the practical, the here and now, the finances, the family, all of these things.

We have needs when it comes to just making it through the day and accomplishing what it is God has called us to do. And God’s strength, God’s strength is sufficient. I shared with you the verse last week in one of Paul’s letters to the Corinthians that said, my grace is sufficient and my strength is made perfect in weakness.

God’s strength is shown. God’s strength, his absolute almighty power is demonstrated when he does something in and through us that we are incapable of doing ourselves. Because if I do something that I’m capable of doing, the world looks at it and says, wow, how great is Jared?

When something is accomplished in my life in and through me that I am incapable of doing, the world looks and says, wow, what a powerful God he serves. And God’s strength is incredible. And he offers that strength to us not only to make it through the hardships of life, but also to do what he’s called us to do.

And he’s called us to do a great number of things that I think that we’ve talked about at different times. Like the Great Commission that I think we all would like to do, but for whatever reason we think, I can’t do that. I don’t know enough.

I’m scared to death to go talk to somebody I don’t know. Any number of reasons. And God gives us the strength and just what we need to accomplish what he calls us to do, if we’ll just ask him.

But let’s look at Psalm chapter 28, starting in verse 6. We’re going to look at about four verses tonight. It says, Blessed be the Lord, because he hath heard the voice of my supplications.

God has heard David’s prayer. This word supplication also means petitions, his requests. And he says, Blessed be the Lord, because he’s heard my request. And this is, you know, I talked to you this morning about overlap among some of these different areas we talk about.

Here’s an area of overlap. Here’s a theme that we see repeated over and over that God hears the prayers of his people. We’re not just talking to the ceiling, ladies and gentlemen.

We’re talking to God. It is a conversation with God when we pray, and God listens to his people. Blessed be the Lord, because he hath heard the voice of my supplications.

The Lord is my strength and my shield. My heart trusteth in him, and I am greatly helped. Therefore, my heart greatly rejoiceth, and with my song will I praise him.

Okay, think about that. It’s an incredible statement, an incredible few statements here for somebody like David, a warrior king, to make. You know, the rest of the world would look at David and say that his strength had been his army.

I mean, in many cases, in many battles, David’s army just seemed unstoppable. He even had his elite forces, his mighty men. And David, David with his army was a force to be reckoned with.

And yet David says, my strength is the Lord. The strength I have, it’s God. He’s the one who strengthened me.

He’s the one who’s delivered the enemy into my hands. He says, the Lord is my strength and my shield. He’s talking about his offense and his defense here.

And I’ve seen, I don’t know if it’s at the exact same time period, but I’ve seen where people have remade ancient weaponry in one of the countries, it may have been the Romans, made these long spears, long pointy spears, out of some kind of soft metal similar to aluminum, may have been aluminum. And the point was, they would throw this spear, this javelin type thing, and it would end up in the opposing warrior’s shield, and it would bend, once it went through, the weight of it on the other end would bend it where they couldn’t pull it out, and then you can’t really move your shield around to defend yourself with this long pole sticking out of it, so they’d just have to throw their shield away, and then they’d be defenseless, and the other country could come in and just wipe them out with the sword because they have no shield. That shield meant the difference between life and death.

It was the thin line between life and death. And David says here, my shield, my protection is not my military hardware. It’s not my armor.

It’s not my shield, my physical shield. My shield is the Lord. He said, God has protected me.

That’s an incredible statement. Because most people, most warriors in that day, just as much as today, I’m sure most people in David’s day would rather have walked out there with a big sword and a shield rather than just walk out there in their street clothes with God on their side. Just like today, if we were going to battle against another country, most of our military, I’m sure, would rather have a howitzer and smart bombs and all that just go out there with no weapons and let God do battle for them.

But folks, I submit to you, if you really have an understanding from the Bible of who God is, be smarter just to go out there in your street clothes and let God do battle. David understood who God was, and David understood the strength that God had and the strength that God used to strengthen his people. That’s why David could say, the army I’ve got, the military hardware I’ve got, the sword, the shield, that’s all well and good, but really my strength and my shield are the Lord.

He said, my heart trusted in him and I am helped. You know, you would walk out into battle and you would have to put trust in your army and in your shield. You would have to put trust in your troops that they’re going to do what you’ve trained them to do.

And they’re going to fight the enemy and they’re going to know the tactics. You’d have to put strength when you go into hand-to-hand combat. Have to have faith in that shield.

Trust that it really is going to hold up against the swords and axes and everything else that the enemy brings against you. And he’s saying he trusts God the same way he trusts the sword and the shield. Not that the two things are equal at all, but say he has no less trust in God than what he has in those things.

I’ve heard people for years use the illustration of what faith is to talk about sitting in a chair. And anytime you sit in a chair, you’re placing faith in that chair that it’s going to hold you up. Now I’ve seen a few of those folding chairs, not here, but the kind that we have downstairs, that somebody sat in and there they go.

And it gives me a little bit of pause before I sit in one of those chairs. I don’t have as much faith as I do, used to, haven’t seen them. But we have faith.

We trust that chair is going to hold us up. Well, folks, if we can trust a chair to hold us up, if we can trust a piece of metal or wood to defend us as a shield, how much more should we trust the living God and his strength? He says, because my heart trusted in him, I am helped.

Therefore, my heart greatly rejoiceth. There’s another theme we see running throughout these passages we’ve looked at about prayer, that when David has called out to God and God has done something in response to David’s prayer, David rejoices. Not just, hey, I’m happy that I got my list filled.

He’s happy because he’s also learned something about God. You know, anytime he talks about these prayers in here, anytime he talks about crying out to God, he also tells us something about who God is. And that’s what he’s responding to when it says he rejoices.

And he says, and with my song will I praise him. Folks, we’ve got 150 songs written down in this book, most of which are by David, that all point to how great God is and how good God is. And that’s what praise is, telling the world how great he is and how good he is.

It says in verse 8, the Lord is their strength and he is the saving strength of his anointed. So it’s not just David, but it was all of God’s people for whom God was their strength. And God was the saving strength of his anointed, the people that he’d called out and chosen to be his own, the people of Israel, That God was not only their strength, but He’s their saving strength.

He was enough strength. And we need to pick up on this, folks. God does not just strengthen us.

God strengthens us sufficiently for the task ahead. God doesn’t just provide us with some strength. God provides us with strength enough for what is needed.

And here in verse 9, it says, Save thy people and bless thine inheritance. Feed them also and lift them up forever. And this, verse 9, is really what I want to focus in on in the next few minutes, where he prays for four specific things when it comes to strengthening his people.

And folks, we can trust God to strengthen us. We can trust God to strengthen us to do things, not only in our personal lives and the things we’ve got to deal with, but strengthen us enough to do things for him that we thought, I never thought I was capable of doing that. I thought, as I was preparing this message, I thought of a few people that exhibited this.

I thought of Samson. And Samson was not always a wise character in the Bible. But there came the time at the end of Samson’s, I say ministry, because he was one of the judges of Israel.

Toward the end of his ministry, when he’d had his hair cut off and he was weak, and he was chained up in the Philistine temple. And the Philistines were mocking Samson, and even more importantly, were mocking Samson’s God. And Samson didn’t have enough strength left to do anything about it.

And in one last ditch effort, he cried out to God to strengthen him. And God gave him enough strength that with his arms stretched out between these two pillars he was chained to, he pushed them apart, toppling the temple where the Philistines were having their big pagan worship party. And he brought down the temple, not only killing himself, but all the Philistines that were in and I believe the Bible says he took more of them out that day than he had the rest of his life.

You may say, well, how in the world was God’s work to slaughter all those people? Well, we’ve got to not think of them as innocent civilians. These were the people who were slaughtering God’s people.

These were the people who were trying to introduce pagan worship to God’s people. These were people who had made war against God and his people for decades, and they were at war. And Samson said, Lord, I need strength enough for one more battle.

and God gave him the strength to do what he could not have done otherwise. And a major victory was won for the people of Israel that day. I think of Peter.

I think of Peter. And we know that for all the admirable qualities about Peter, just on his own he was not the strongest man, didn’t have the strongest testimony. I mean, after all, he is the one who denied Jesus three times.

And yet something changed when God strengthened him later on and we see him become an incredible witness, One of the most eloquent speakers, one of the most recorded preachers in the early churches was Peter. They record his sermons throughout the book of Acts, and the numerous times he endured beatings and imprisonment and running for his life as a result of proclaiming the news about Jesus Christ who formerly he had denied. And we see Peter going so far, as history tells us, as to being crucified, dying in the same way Jesus did, professing belief in the God he had once denied.

And you can’t tell me that that change was Peter’s doing. That change was because God strengthened him and gave him strength for the work that was ahead. I think even past that in Christian history, and I’ve talked about some of these before, but Polycarp, I mentioned him Wednesday night, one of the people who made the early lists of what he thought belonged in the Bible, Polycarp of Smyrna, who was a follower of John.

And there was some kind of edict or decree where they were not allowed to pray to the God of the Bible because the Romans wanted them to worship Caesar. And a little kid saw Polycarp and ratted him out. And he was told, you know, you’re an old man, we will let you go if you’ll just renounce Jesus Christ. If you’ll just say you don’t believe in him, we’ll let it go.

And history records that Polycarp said, these 86 years, I’ve never denied him. Why would I now blaspheme the one who saved me? Why would I now blaspheme my king who saved me, he said.

And so they sentenced him to be burned at the stake, burned to death. And such was the strength that God gave Polycarp. Keep in mind, 86-year-old man.

Normally, I guess in that time, they would nail people, nail their arms to the stake so they couldn’t get away. And Polycarp said, I guess if you will spare me the indignity of nailing me to this pole, He said, I assure you that I will stand here motionless and just take it. Now, folks, I burned my hand on something I pulled out of the oven, and I get a 40-inch vertical jump.

I can’t imagine standing there loose at a stake while the flames burned around me. But history records that Polycarp, God not only strengthened him to say, these 86 years, I’ve never walked away from him. Why would I do it now?

But God also strengthened him to stand there in the flames and the smoke until he died. professing that Jesus Christ had died for him and risen again. There’s another story, one more, about a young lady named Blandina under the Roman persecutions.

She was to be martyred with about three or four other Christian men. She was a very young woman in the Bible, or not the Bible, excuse me, Fox’s Book of Martyrs is not the Bible. It’s good, but it’s not the Bible.

It says that she was of weak constitution. I guess that’s what they used to say in the old days for women who would faint at things. But she was of weak constitution.

And history tells us that she being the weakest of all of these who were to be martyred together, they were all being tortured before their death. And it says that some of the men were thinking about recanting and saying, you know, we were wrong. We don’t really believe in him.

Either so they would kill them quickly or they would let them go. And it’s written down that Blandina, even being a young woman of weak constitution, put these other men to shame by her firm stand and the fact she stood there and endured the torture rather than give up, rather than renounce the name of Jesus Christ. God strengthened her to stand firm so much that the men she was being tortured with looked at her and said, I don’t know what they exactly said, but looked at her and were strengthened by her example, and not one of them recanted the name of Jesus Christ. Folks, God can strengthen his people to do some incredible things, And the God of the Bible, the God of the Bible is the same God that you and I serve today.

I was listening to a song in my car yesterday by a singer named Stephen Curtis Chapman, and one of the lines of the song just has been stuck in my head ever since then, where he says that you want the world to see the God that you’ve been every day of history is who you are this day. Folks, the God of the Bible, the God who did the incredible things in the Old Testament, the God who did the incredible things in the New Testament, And the God who was with the early churches, folks, is the God we serve today. And he still strengthens his people for what he calls us to do.

So tonight, four things that David prays for, or that David mentions in this prayer about strength. Is that first of all, God can defend his people and deliver them from destruction. He says here in verse 9, save thy people.

Now just about anywhere we see the word save in the Bible, it usually indicates something about, something near deliverance. Now, I’m not saying that changes anything about our view of salvation. Because when we’re saved, we are delivered from death.

We are delivered from hell. We are delivered from sin and from judgment. It’s just a synonym.

It also means to be delivered is to be set free. It calls to mind the Exodus when God set his people free out of Egypt. And God has been delivering his people ever since then.

Well, folks, God can defend his people and deliver them from destruction. And that’s why David prayed it. Now you’ll notice in all of these things I say God can because God doesn’t always.

God doesn’t always. Sometimes they go to martyrdom. Sometimes we have to suffer for the cause of Christ. But we serve a God who can deliver us and can defend us.

He may not deliver us, but he’ll defend us and he’ll strengthen us. He’ll strengthen us to stand. Second of all, God can sanctify his people unto himself.

It says here in verse 9, he tells them, he prays to God and says, and bless thine inheritance. That word bless, that word bless means to do something good for, to grow it. And his inheritance, he’s referring to his people, Israel.

He’s referring to what God has taken as his own. And folks, we today, who’ve been born again, who’ve been bought by the blood of Christ, we’re God’s inheritance. We belong to him.

And that word sanctify, I’ve said many times, means to set apart. So if you’re wondering what I’m talking about when I say here that God can sanctify his people unto himself, that means God can set apart people and say, they are mine. And ladies and gentlemen, I’m not talking about salvation because I think I’ve made it very clear.

I don’t believe the Bible teaches that God says, okay, you’re going to heaven, you’re going to hell. I believe he says, whosoever will may come. What I’m talking about is once we belong to him, I believe God says they are mine.

They are mine. And you know, there are some things we don’t touch because of who they belong to, because we don’t want to mess with the one that they belong to. We used to drive a back way going home from my parents’ house when I was pastoring in Bethany, and we’d go out the long way around the airport in Oklahoma City because there was less traffic.

It’s less traffic because it’s the longer way, but I hate traffic. I always was afraid to break down on that road because, you know, just a few feet from the road was this big fence with barbed wire on it. They had the FAA headquarters out there and all these signs that said no trespassing property of the U.

S. government. And they had vehicles that would go up and down it and watch it.

I was always afraid to break down there because I was afraid, am I trespassing if I’m there on the side of the road? I mean, you know, let’s face it, I don’t want to, I don’t want to tangle with Uncle Sam and that’s his land right there somewhere. Okay.

And a lot of, most people, if they see that sign that says, this is Uncle Sam’s land, we’re going to think twice about, okay, they really don’t want me, you know, I know it’s supposed to be ours, we the people, but I don’t want to mess with them. Uncle Sam has the IRS. I don’t want to mess with these people.

Well, folks, just like Uncle Sam puts his name on that sign, God stamps his name on us and says, they’re mine. They’re mine. And quite honestly, if I could have anybody’s name stamped on me for ownership, I’d just assume it not be mine and be his.

Folks, we belong to him. As his children, as people who’ve been bought by the blood of Christ, he set us apart and says, they’re mine. And you know what that means?

That means the world can only do to us what God allows to happen. I’ve told you before, I won’t tell you God causes everything that happens to us, but nothing happens to us that God doesn’t allow. You’ll recall from the early chapters of Job, when Satan wanted to mess with Job, for lack of a better word.

He had to go get God’s permission, didn’t he? And he could only do to Job what God said he could do. Why?

Because Job belonged to God. Job was one of his. Ladies and gentlemen, you’re no less one of his than Job was.

And God can sanctify his people. He can strengthen us. He can set us apart.

Third of all, God can nourish and discipline his people so that they will grow. Now he says there in verse 9, feed them also. Praying that God would feed us much like a like a shepherd would feed his sheep.

Feed us. You know what happens if we don’t get fed? We don’t grow.

Eventually we die. That’s why we have to feed ourselves. That’s why we have to feed our children and have to feed our pets.

Folks, if we’re not nourished, we don’t grow. But he feeds us and he disciplines us and he does everything that’s necessary for us to grow. And he gives us the strength.

And as we grow, we get stronger in him. But always his strength is there to uphold us because even as we grow stronger, we are still not strong enough on our own to be apart from him. But God does strengthen us as time goes along because he feeds us and he nourishes us and he disciplines us so that we grow strong and grow in the right direction.

And finally, this evening, God can preserve his people from peril. David prays, and lift them up forever. Lift them up, keep them out of harm’s way.

Folks, we can pray to God for strength and we should. Some of these things deal with God protecting us. with God removing us from the situation.

God can do any of these things. But when we look at a situation and we realize wisely that we are not strong enough to handle what the world throws at us on our own, and we come to a point of saying, God, I need you to deal with this, God has several options of what he can and may do. God can take us out of the situation.

God can take the situation away from us. God can step in and deal with the situation for us. Or God can strengthen us to where we use his strength to deal with the situation.

And folks, I am a firm believer that God does not give us more than he can handle. And sometimes if we, you know, like I said at the beginning of the message, if we go from being the guy holding the big ball to the guy being chased by the big ball, we need to realize our frailty. Stop trying to be so stinking self-sufficient and realize how dependent we are on God and ask him to strengthen us for the work ahead.

not just for the difficulties in life, but also for the incredible things that He’s called us to do.