“When I think of all this, I fall to my knees and pray to the Father, the Creator of everything in heaven and on earth. I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God. Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think. Glory to him in the church and in Christ Jesus through all generations forever and ever! Amen.”
Ephesians 3:14-21 NLT
In today’s western influenced culture, inner strength is pervasive language. It speaks of finding one’s true self and harnessing one’s potential. Paul highlights a completely different understanding. His prayer for the church was to find a biblical inner strength. In God’s kingdom, inner strength is invasive to one’s life. Once allowed in, it sets up camp and spreads through your life. Paul describes it as a trees roots that fortify the tree into the ground while providing nutrients to the tree. And this shoring up of the tree is done by allowing the Holy Spirit to replace our own control and understanding with his own deep revelation of God’s love. It is this love that acts as the ever creeping root system. It’s reach knows no bounds and it’s effect is a tree that can stand all types of wind, scorch, flood and winter because it pulls its nutrients from deep underground and is anchored as such. We must return to this model for confidence and boldness in our Christian hope and faith. Our true inner strength as believers is one that resides in us, not one that derives from us.
JOSH McGARY. COM 