BYM ONLINE DESK Jan 2019 Blessing E-magazine | Page 10

January 2019 | www.bymonline.org
S trength For A New Year
J. R. Miller
God has strength for us. How does His strength
come to us? It comes to us in many ways. James tells us
that every good and perfect gift comes down from the
Father of lights (Jas. 1:17). No matter, then, how the
strength comes to us, it really comes from God. We may
find it in a book, whose words as we read them warm the
heart and freshly inspire us for struggle or service. We
may find it in a friendship whose cheer and
companionship and helpfulness fill us with new courage
and hope. Far more than we understand, does God
strengthen us and bless us through human love. He hides
Himself in the lives of those who touch us with their
affection. He looks into our eyes through human eyes and
speaks into our ears through human lips. He gives power
to us in our faintness, and hope in our discouragement,
through the friends who come to us with their love and
cheer.
The Bible tells us a great deal about the ministry
of angels in the olden days. They came with their
encouragement to weary or struggling ones. After our
Lord's temptation, angels came and ministered to Him in
His faintness. In His agony in Gethsemane, an angel
appeared, strengthening Him. No doubt angels come now
to minister to us and strengthen us.
Strength from God's Word
But God's strength is imparted in other ways. It
comes through His words. We are in sorrow, and, opening
our Bible we read the assurance of divine love, the promise
of the divine help and comfort that God is our Father, that
our sorrow is full of blessings, that all things work together
for good to God's child. As we read, and believe what we
read, and receive it as all for us, there comes into the soul a
new strength, a strange calmness, a holy peace, and we are
at once comforted.
Some days we are discouraged, overwrought,
vexed by cares, fretted by life's myriad distractions, weary
and faint from much burden-bearing. We sit down with
our Bible and God speaks to us in its words of cheer: “Let
not your heart be troubled” (John 14:27); “Fear not, for I
am with you” (Isa. 41:10); “Cast your burden upon the
Lord” (Psa. 55:22); “Peace I leave with you” (John
14:27); “My grace is sufficient for you” (2 Cor. 12:9); and
as we ponder the words, the weariness is gone; we feel that
we are growing strong; hope revives, courage returns.
One who reads the Bible as God's own Word, and hears
God's voice in its promises, assurances, commands, and
counsels, is continually strengthened by it.
Strength from God Himself
But there is something better than even this. God
is a real person and He comes into our lives with all His
own love and grace. The prophet tells us this “He gives
power to the faint; and to them that have no might He
increases strength” (Isa. 40:29). This means nothing less
than that there is a direct impartation of divine strength for
God's fainting and weary ones on the earth. It tells us that
the very power of Christ is given to us in our weakness,
passed from His fullness into our emptiness.
One may stand by us in our trouble and may make
us a little stronger by his sympathy and love, by his
encouragement and cheer; but he cannot put any portion of
his strength or joy into the heart. Christ, however, gives
strength, imparts of His own life. What the vine is to its
branch, Christ is to us. If the branch is hurt in any way,
bruised, broken, its life wasted, the vine pours of its life
into the wounded part, to supply its loss and to heal it. That
is what Christ does. He gives power to the faint. His
strength is made perfect in weakness. The greater our
need, the more of Christ's grace will come to us.
Therefore, there are blessings which we shall never get till
we come into experiences of trial. We shall never know
God's comfort till we have sorrow; but then as we learn
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