NOT BY MIGHT NOR POWER
June 15, 2016
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Isaiah 40:28-29
Isaiah 40:28-29
Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength.
When life’s demands exhaust us and we wonder how we can continue, we are reminded in our reading in Isaiah not to look to our own resources but to turn and look to the all-knowing and creating God who ‘does not faint or grow weary’ but rather ‘gives power to the faint’.
Zechariah 4:6, 10
This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel; ‘Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the lord of hosts.’
For whoever despises the day of small things shall rejoice, and shall see the plumb line in the hand of Zerubbabel.
In a world that hails the ‘big’ project and adores the ‘grand’ gesture, those whose days are spent on ‘small things’ can often despair of ever seeing or being part of anything significant. In our reading in Zechariah, God promises that Zerubbabel would complete the temple he had started. This would not be achieved by human power but by the unstoppable work of God’s Spirit.
When the Christian folks of the small Scottish town of Bo’ness opened their Charity shop in the town to ‘do something for the poor of the world’, they could not have known that God would grow that work into what would become The Vine Trust that would minster to hundreds of thousands of people in Peru and Tanzania.
In the late 17th Century a famous gentleman visiting the site of what would eventually be the new St Paul’s Cathedral stopped to speak to two stonemasons. ‘What are you doing?’ he asked the first. ‘I’m placing this cut stone on top of that other one’ came the answer. ‘And what are you doing?’ he asked the second. ‘I’m helping Christopher Wren build St Paul’s Cathedral’ was the proud response. Your daily faithfulness in all the minutiae of life is helping the Lord Jesus establish His kingdom on earth.
Creator and Sustaining God
Renew my heart
Strengthen my resolve
Quicken my spirit
That I may run and not be weary,
And walk and not grow faint.
Enable me to wait patiently for your prompting
Depending on the provision of your indwelling Spirit
To do and achieve that which is according to your will for my life
And which brings Glory to your Name.
May I see in all the small tasks that demand my time and energy today
The opportunity to honour your presence in my life
giving value, meaning and significance to all that I do.
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