Heart Tracks - A Supplement?

"My gracious favor is all you need. My power works best in your weakness." 2 Corinthians 12:9....."He gives strength to the weak." Isaiah 4:29

It's difficult to go into any grocery or drug store and not see an aisle filled with vitamin supplements and energy bars. Many of the bars are advertised as "power bars." The vitamins are presented as sure additions to our strength and health. They are supplements to our own natural power, and if legitimate, will certainly boost our own strength to some degree. I've no problem with this, but I think in so many ways, we have come to view the Father as being a supplement to our own ability. A heavenly "power bar" that boosts that ability and enables us to get through tough situations, pressing circumstances, and varying times of need. On the surface, that may sound fine, but God is not interested in being an add-on to our own abilities. He does not work like a vitamin supplement. He will not accept the role of being a supplement to our lives. He desires us to realize that our own strength is no strength at all, and that it is only in our recognition of our total weakness that we can ever hope to experience His unending strength.

In Ephesians 3:16, Paul prayed that the church would receive "His glorious, unlimited resources, He will give you mighty inner strength through His Holy Spirit." As 2 Corinthians 12 shows, Paul discovered that the key to having such strength is in realizing his own total weakness apart from it. He didn't seek for God to come and add on to his own strength, but to totally replace it with His. That is what it is to live a Holy Spirit powered life. Is such a life being lived out by you and me today?

Beth Moore, talking about viewing Him as a supplement to our own strength said that when we take a supplement, or make use of an energy bar, we can tell that there is, at least in some degree, an awareness that we feel a little stronger, a little better. There's a degree of improvement. She said she could never be satisfied with a portion of His life and strength. Can we? She wanted all the fullness of His strength and life. She did not want to live a life that got a temporary energy boost when times were tough, and then lived in its own power the rest of the time. She wanted to walk and live at all times in the fullness of His power. She wanted to live in the recognition of her own weakness and powerlessness that she might then live in the fullness of His strength and "unlimited resources." Do we?

To what degree has He been to you and I a supplement? Has He been Someone that we visit in much the same way that we do the vitamin aisle at the drug store? Is His life, strength, and power been an add on, or a be all? In Paul's realization of his own poverty of strength and ability he was then able to be absorbed into the limitless power and strength to be found in Christ. He works best in our weakness. Not giving a boost, but a life. Is He working that way now in yours?

Blessings,
Pastor O