An Empowering Principle
Wednesday (October 22)
An Empowering Principle
Psalm 28:8a
The LORD is the strength of his people; he is the saving refuge of his anointed.”
About four years ago, on a thirty-minute commute to church, I talked to my young kids about God being powerful, and Micah, who was just turning six at the time, butted in to ask what the word ‘power’ meant. Kids ask the best questions, don’t they? Sometimes, when trying to answer what seems like a simple, noncontroversial query, we adults get confronted by complexities that we’ve taken for granted. And that’s one of the wonderful things about walking with children through their understanding of God. A child doesn’t generally just nod along and pretend to understand what he doesn’t. He’ll get perturbed and interrupt you mid-sentence with another ‘but’ clause or another ‘why’ question—at least my kids do—which is a strength of childlikeness that we adults need to get back to in our own walk of faith.
Well, the idea of God’s power got me thinking long past the car drive to church, and here’s what little I came up with. Power can imply strength. We call an ox powerful if it carries a cart weighing a ton. But power can also mean ability. We call the cheetah a powerful runner, because it can run at speeds of eighty miles per hour in a single dash, faster than any other creature. Yet, power can also imply authority as well. We call a king powerful because his edicts dictate standards and practices for hundreds of thousands, sometimes hundreds of millions of people. So, when David writes, “The LORD is the strength of His people,” think of that through this three-fold lens of power. God is strong enough to save us and carry our cross and shoulder our burdens and sanctify us into His image and ensure that heaven is a certainty not a feint possibility. And He’s also able to keep His word, down to the letter, because nothing in the cosmos, no man or devil or natural disaster, can thwart His gospel plan. And He’s also our supreme authority, and we can trust that because He is good and true and just, that whatever He asks of us will be for our good and glory as well.
With that in mind, how could we not entrust our lives to Him today?