Our Strength Is In The Lord

As we concluded our prayer to Father God, in yesterday’s offering, we gave Him thanks for who He was and still is to us, His children. In surrendered adoration, we gave Him grateful thanks for His forgiveness and for granting us refreshment.

Today, for a moment, we want our hearts, minds, souls and strength to be bathed, no, drenched with the Glory of how God has given Himself to us all. Let me acknowledge that He comes to us in various ways too numerous to mention. Nevertheless, in this prized hour, we receive Him in this life-giving way. We are receiving Him as our Strength.   

Let’s look again at our main text. So the servant put his hand under the thigh of his master Abraham and swore an oath to him concerning this matter. Genesis 24: 9.

We have also been shown the symbolism of the thigh, the meaning of thigh as Strength, acknowledging Strength as the very Spirit or Power of life. God is Spirit, that we know, but how does Spirit come to us? How does God come to us? We are taken to what God tells His people about Himself and who He is to them as recorded in Jeremiah chapter two and part of verse thirteen. He describes Himself as, The Spring of Living Water. In other words, God has categorically said this to His children, including you and me, and His Word is immutable, infallible, and unalterable. God does not change His functions, His attributes, or His Character, little by little even, as time goes on. He is the same Living Spring, the same Living Spirit, the same Living Strength of life to you and me, today. Through Jeremiah, His chosen servant, God is showing His people how they have broken faith with Him; how they have broken promise with Him. They are the people who swore an oath to God, a ‘thigh oath’ with Him, as their ancestors did. What do we understand by that? What does it mean? 

Recently, a family was celebrating their food business, which had been around for over a century. This was a food establishment which was founded by the present owner’s grandparents and parents. The spokesperson at the official celebration said that when his grandparents started the food business, they had made a promise to the people. Their promise to their community - neighbours, the vicinity, the surrounding areas, and even those from afar – was that they would always supply those who came to their restaurant, with good, home-cooked food, to keep them strong, healthy, appetized, refreshed, pleased. They would be SHARP people.

This promise, this commitment to the people, had stood and withstood all the minor and major tests of time, over the years. This was a fact, because the food business was still going and growing strong. The promise made so long ago, by those of old, was still being upheld by the newer generation, who remained faithful to the promise. The spokesperson was very clear in stating that it was because of the reliability, loyalty and patronage of the people, they were and still are able to keep the promise of providing, SHARP food.

When I heard this, it made me deeply grieved, for here was it, a person is speaking, with visible, tangible, on the spot evidence of the faithfulness of people to their SHARP food and our Lord is speaking of the unfaithfulness of His people to His SPRING of Living Water. Listen to what God says about His own people. Listen to the graphic terms He uses.

Has a nation ever changed its gods? (Yet they are not gods at all.) But my people have exchanged their Glory for worthless idols. Be appalled at this, O heavens, and shudder with great horror, declares the LORD. My people have committed two sins: they have forsaken me the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water. Jeremiah 2: 11 – 13.

What I hear is that God has made a promise with His people, with us, to provide us with His Strength, His Spirit, His Sustaining Spring, all one and the same. God is the One who made covenant with us to be our God and us to be His people. He is the One who said that He will uphold us with His strong right Hand. He is the One who said that He will write His laws in our hearts. He is the One who said that He will never leave us nor forsake us. Alas! We have been stubbornly disloyal, hugely ungrateful and persistently fickle in our ways. God has given Himself to us, as the Spring of Living Water and we have gone all over to find and fetch our own water, from fountains that hold no Living, Lasting Water. This is the precise reason why many of us are unable to keep our oaths of promise to God, to be His faithful servants, even in our older years.

Is this true of you? Is this true of me?