God our Strength

“Thy God hath commanded thy strength: strengthen, O God, that which thou hast wrought for us.” (Ps 68:28 AV)

It is not God’s hand that builds only.  God hand is the power that maintains as well.  God is the one who does it all.  We have quickly forgotten this.  What I have found in the body of Christ is a common stress over the dwindling size of the church.  We look at the past as the glory years and reminisce over all that WE have done for the LORD.  So, as we see a dispensation fail, the stress is laid upon our shoulders to keep that which WE thing we have wrought.  The body of Christ, because it sees itself as shrinking, stresses over how to make it increase again.  The problem is, for a generation, we have had our eyes on ourselves.  It was our programs.  Our efforts.  Our aggressive evangelism.  Our compromise.   Our Wall Street methods.  Our strength.  What we have failed to realize it that God gives the increase and by the power of Christ, nothing shall prevail against the church.

I have seen many couples stress over having a child.  They go through all shorts of tests, treatments, medications, etc to conceive.  Sometimes, it works.  Many times it does not.  What is interesting is when a couple stops stressing over trying to have children, they often find themselves pregnant.  Once they surrender the responsibility of something they cannot control, allowing the Creator to control it, they find themselves new parents in often miraculous ways.

Maybe, instead of stressing to reach what we consider a successful church body, we faithfully discharged the duties given to us by Christ and leave the building of the church to the Creator.  Paul said that he and Apollos planted and watered.  God was the one who gave the increase.  Let us commit to sharing the gospel and discipling the saved allowing God to grow and strengthen us!