Strength Is Spirit

We conclude this most rich and resoundingly triumphant time together, being revived and revved up to boldly and truthfully declare, with our lips and our lives in tandem, that The Lord is the strength of my life.

With hearts and minds attuned and revived, we, as believers, become living testimonies of the Sovereignty, Solemnity and Sensitivity of God, whose strength is our lives. The word strength, speaks pointedly of the Spirit of God, as God is Spirit. In other words, if we said, The Lord is the Spirit of my life, would we not be saying and meaning the same thing as, The Lord is the strength of my life? When David declares that the Lord is his strength, he is saying that the Lord is the Spirit of his life. One just has to look at the life of David, the fruit bearing, the wisdom, the humility, the honour God gave to him, and so much more, and all you see and hear is the Spirit of God at work in David’s life. 

There is the sovereignty of the Spirit. David speaks to his God, fully conscious of Him as Sovereign Creator. He does not only acknowledge God as Creator of the heavens and the earth, and all that there is therein, but he attributes his entire existence to Sovereign God. This is openly evidenced in that all-encompassing and all-acknowledging, Psalm 139. He declares to God what, unquestioningly and unwaveringly he believes, knows and lives. Will you listen to how this child of God speaks to his Sovereign Father in confidence and unmitigated assurance? For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise You for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well. Psalm 139: 13 – 14. David will own and acknowledge no other God but his Lord as the Most High. He daily abides by and in the perfect Sovereignty of the Spirit in him. Your life is a beautiful and most comforted life in God, who you are able with lip and life to always confess that you have been created by God.

There is the sensitivity of the Spirit. David is sensitive to the fact that he has life and that his life is not his own, but his God’s. He knows that his God is the invisible, all wise God, but he has become so sensitive to Him, so one with Him and so knowing Him in all different circumstances that God is his friend, confidant, and mainstay, his all in all. In Psalm 139, we also see this as clearly as possible, for God knows David and David knows his God. Listen to these sweet and homely words of David to his Lord. Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? Psalm 139: 7. When the Lord is the Spirit of our lives, we too become so sensitive to Him, we cannot even dream of living for one moment without Him.

There is the solemnity of the Spirit. David’s simple, yet stupendous wisdom; his human, yet supernatural works; his carnal, yet spiritual life; his ordinary, yet divine understanding, are all controlled, managed and sustained by his God. There is a depth of sacredness, honesty and absolute solemnity in him and his God, which is greatly enviable. It is the envy we listen to, as Paul speaks about his own Jewish people, who have wandered far away from God. Paul, like David, can say in his whole being, The Lord is the strength of my life. He has been sent by God to serve Gentiles, but his heart is sorely saddened when he sees how the Jews are rejecting Saviour Jesus. Paul openly declares this heart-hope. I take pride in my ministry in the hope that I may somehow arouse my own people to envy and save some of them.  Romans 11: 13b – 14 NIV. This holy envy is to agitate people to repent and return to God.

What I am saying is that when we listen to David’s intimately sacred and solemn words to his dear, sweet Lord, should we not envy this relationship and earnestly seek such a relationship with God, who is our God also? I bring proof to you from the same Psalm 139. I am constrained to quote the first six verses, with double intentions.

I quote them to help seal our declaration text in each one of us. The Lord is the strength of my life. May the Holy Spirit bring fulfilment, in awaking, accosting and agitating you to arise, take up your mats of mediocracy, complacency and timidity, and go in the strength of our Lord.

Finally, I quote them to leave you in sweet, solemn and sacred communion with your Lord.

O LORD, You have searched me and known me. You know my sitting down and my rising up; You understand my thought afar off. You comprehend my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word on my tongue, but behold, O LORD, You know it altogether. You have hedged me behind and before, and laid Your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain it.

May God quicken you in His Strength, so that truth may blossom, grow and bear fruit, tenfold, fiftyfold and a hundredfold.