Last updated on January 21, 2023
Featured image by jplenio on pixabay.
We’ve made it, Friends! This is the last article in our Barriers series on weariness. We’ve covered weary hearts, weary souls, and weary minds. Today, we’re on the topic of weary strength.
The irony is not lost on me that I am writing this article when I’m on my second week of being sick with, and recovering from, the COVID-19 Omicron variant. Over the last eleven days, I’ve had the worst sore throat of my life, all-over body aches, a miserable sinus cold, fever, and exhaustion that acts like it’s going away, but as soon as I do anything substantial (i.e. washing and folding laundry), it’s all I can do to keep myself awake. Probably shouldn’t have waited that extra month to get my booster. Hindsight and all that.
Add to that the two other members of my household who are currently battling the same symptoms, one with an even more severe case than mine (9 days of high fever with pneumonia is no joke, people). Only one of us seems to have avoided symptoms.
Weary strength is a real and palpable thing for me right now. And it is from this place that I want to enter into this conversation with you in hope that you and I both will understand not only our weariness but where to go from here to get free of it.
How does the Bible define strength?
Let’s look back at Mark 12:30, the passage we’ve been using as a reference for these conversations on weariness:
Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.
Mark 12:30 CSB
The word used here for “strength” is the Greek word ischys and it means “ability, force, strength, might.” (source)
In the New Testament, this word is usually used in reference to the strength which God supplies, occasionally of “mighty” angels, and only once in reference to a person’s might in the greatest commandment (that’s what the commandment in Mark 12:30 is often called).
In our discussion of weariness of mind, we drew the conclusion that the mind of Christ is the only mind that is never weary, and that it is with a mind more and more conformed to Christ’s that we are less and less weary. Not by our own mind’s abilities, but by his mind’s ability in us (1 Cor 2:16). His mind is able and ours is limited.
Applying this same logic to the weariness of our strength, we can conclude that we are weary in strength when we are drawing from the very limited depths of our own strength rather than on the strength which God supplies (1 Peter 4:11). When we do this, trying to live and love and do good by our own strength, we find our own limits, well… limiting. We can’t sustain it. It makes us weary in the futility of trying.
When we find our strength growing so weary that we don’t even have any left to pursue closeness with God, it is a huge red flag that whatever we are exerting our effort toward might be the wrong thing, or at least the wrong way.
Willful Weariness
Back to my current situation with COVID. I am physically weary right now. Mentally, I’ve got some pretty decent brain fog going on. I feel very much like I don’t have the strength to pursue relationship with God. Instead, my efforts have been focused on trying to solve the problem of this illness in myself. To will myself to get better. To troubleshoot what symptoms are plaguing me today and remedy them. And then to plan forward to how long I imagine I’ll continue to be sick, based on the detailed Google searching I’ve been doing, of course, and mapping out what it will take to get life “back on track.”
Like I control that.
Because even though I know God’s in charge of anything happening in my life, I still practice the untruth that I’ve got the ultimate power to control what comes next in my life.
It’s exhausting, on top of being exhausted because of the natural course of illness. It brings me to a place of hopelessness. No, not even that. A place of a sort of internal emotionless void. I’ve been so very very empty.
And I’m realizing that I’m so empty because all I’m doing is trying to fill myself up from some imaginary reserve that isn’t there. Though I try with all my might to will it to be there.
Though we find ourselves wanting to believe otherwise, there is no, “It’ll get better once I get past this one thing that’s taking so much of my effort.”
Maybe you’re not sick, but I’d take a gamble that there’s something going on in your life that you’re trying to will yourself out of or toward by your own might. Or it could be that you’ve already reached the limit of that might, that force of effort, and you’re in the internal void just floating along with no foundation to hold you secure.
Welcome
I’m so glad you’re here. This is a safe place for people like us to be where we are. And a place to find encouragement from the only one who has the resources we find ourselves depleted of.
Perhaps you remember the story of Jesus with the woman at the well. If not, take a minute to read it here.
He spoke to her about the living water, by which she would never thirst again. It’s like that, too, when we’re talking about our weary strength. Our human strength is only a drink of water from a well that will always run dry. A bucket we will always have to keep filling up. Our strength will weary out, leaving us thirsting for what we cannot supply ourselves.
But the living water never runs out. God’s strength never runs dry. His might is never ending. Never reaches a limit.
Jesus answered, “If you knew the gift of God, and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would ask him, and he would give you living water.”
John 4:10
God’s strength is available to us when we are growing in intimacy with him, when we ask for his strength. When we are going to him, the river of living water, not the limited well of our ancestors. He grants it to us freely by the power of his Holy Spirit. It is not our power, it is his power working in and through us to accomplish what it is that he’s set out to do in us and in the world.
When our limited force of effort is extended completely toward him and his purposes, his might accomplishes beyond what ours is able to sustain. Every time it is a miracle when his power enters the world through us. What joy it is to be present for such things.
Day by day
It is a daily, hourly, minutely journey with our God. Our limits will look different depending on the moment. Some days our limited strength will hold out longer than others. But there is always more available to us when we are loving God with all the strength we do have.
Paul tells the Galatians in his letter to them:
“Let’s not become discouraged in doing good, for in due time we will reap, if we do not become weary.”
Galatians 6:9 NASB2020
When he says “let’s not become discouraged” and “if we do not become weary” there are some interesting bits of information here that can help us to understand our path out of weariness.
Here, the word translated “discouraged” means to be utterly spiritless, to be wearied out, exhausted (source).
If we are challenged by Paul here not to become exhausted in doing good, those things that God designs to further his plans and purposes in and through the world, how can it be possible? We wear out. There are too many legit needs in the world that need attention and care. How are we to tend to them without becoming exhausted? How are we to keep seeing the fallenness of mankind and what we do to each other and the pestilences that come about by nature of being in this broken and fallen apart world and not become utterly spiritless?
The answer is in the second part of the verse, “In due time we will reap, if we do not become weary.” “Weary”, here, means to loose, unloose, to set free (source).
Paul is saying the good produce of our efforts will come if we don’t let go. When we don’t give up. When we refuse to stop clinging. To what? To the good that we do? To the people we do it for? No. To the God of all the strength that could ever be needed to do good. To repair the broken world, and us. To heal it, and us. To recreate it, and us.
Even before we are at the limits of our strength, our charge is not to let go of him. To not grow weary.
What are we holding onto instead of him?
So, Friend, if we find ourselves weary, we need to take some time for self-examination at the feet of Jesus the Christ.
Make a list of all you’ve been giving your strength of effort to. Is it a happy relationship? A career? Well-formed and prepared children? Planning and structuring your days to optimize efficiency? Staying in tune with the current events of the day? Being vigilant to keep yourself healthy and illness-free? Fighting for a social justice cause? Standing firm against change? Pushing for change? Overcoming medical obstacles? Financial obstacles? Trying to convince someone to get away from what’s destroying them? Caring for someone in the evening of life? Caring for people at the early years of life? Something else?
Pray through your list, asking the Lord to help you see which of the items are making you the most weary. Which make you feel “utterly spiritless, wearied out, exhausted”? Maybe it’s one particular pursuit, or maybe it’s many.
Choose your most draining one or two pursuits and pray the below prayer. Modify it as needed for you. Be sure to keep your focus on clinging to God’s strength for his purposes rather than your own strength and your own purposes. Lay aside any preconceived notions of what you “should” or “shouldn’t” be doing with your life. Let God tell you what he wants you to be doing and what he wants you to be loving. He has the answer. He promises that when we seek first the Kingdom of God, all our other needs are provided for us (Matthew 6:33). So seek his Kingdom, his purposes, his ways now as you pray:
Lord God, I have been pursuing _______________ with my limited strength and it is resulting in weariness. Help me, Lord, to know what to do about that weariness. Is this a pursuit that is of my own making or a result of the pressures I or others put on me? Is this a pursuit you have given me as a means to love you with all my strength? If I need to release this pursuit in exchange for deeper investment in my life with you, please let me know. If this is a pursuit given to me by you as a means to further your purposes in me and the world, I am clinging to you, Lord, at the end of my human strength, and asking for your strength to continue forward. Whether this pursuit is of me or of you, God, I am listening. Speak to my spirit, Lord. Help me to see what is right to give all my strength to, in your name.
A Parting Encouragement for the Weary
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might.
As we go from this place we’ve shared together, my hope for us is that we will not cease clinging to Christ, no matter how weary we become. I hope that we each walk closer and closer with him on this journey of life through faith. May we truly find, moment by moment, our own strength in the Lord and step out of and away from a weary way of living and loving.
It is good to be with you today,
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