Super hero or withering flower?

The “gurus” of the positive-thinking industry make fortunes convincing people that they’re much stronger than they think they are, and they can be anything they want to be if only they “believe” it and speak it.

In the Bible, there’s a man who achieved such extraordinary success in life that not only had he become wildly wealthy, but he had even earned the attention of God to the degree that God bragged about him to Satan! He would go on to endure more loss and pain than most of us would ever experience. Having a good measure of life and a full spectrum of human experience, Job’s words to us (as inspired by the Holy Spirit) stand in stark contrast to the glut of lies others like to promote …

“How frail is humanity! How short is life, how full of trouble! We blossom like a flower and then wither. Like a passing shadow, we quickly disappear.” – Job 14:1-2.

Job is a blunt man. He cuts to the heart of being human and tells it like it is: we’re frail, life flies by very quickly, and it’s loaded with trouble. Job tells us we aren’t nearly as strong as we’re told we are – it really doesn’t take much to knock the strongest of us down. By Job’s insight, we’re more withering flower than super hero.

Those positive-thinking gurus would say Job’s message — and much of scripture — is so negative! It’s not, it’s the truth. And we need to understand truth, both the good news as well as the bad, so that we can discover God’s plan for how we can overcome the bad and lay hold of the good. To get to what God offers, we have to be honest about our need, and Job says we’re frail beings. In fact, even our strengths can quickly become our weaknesses, an insight explained by none other than Hollywood producer and studio president, Dore Schary …

A person who calls himself frank and candid can very easily find himself becoming tactless and cruel. A person who prides himself on being tactful can find eventually that he has become evasive and deceitful.

A person with firm convictions can become pigheaded. A person who is inclined to be temperate and judicious can sometimes turn into someone with weak convictions and banked fires of resolution … Loyalty can lead to fanaticism. Caution can become timidity. Freedom can become license. Confidence can become arrogance. Humility can become servility.

All these are ways in which strength can become weakness.

Without the tempering of agape love from God, even our strengths can morph into weaknesses. We really are frail people, and life is rife with troubles — not a good match!

But do not despair!

Now that we understand our frailty in a trouble-laden world, we can clearly see our need for God. The very One who is Creator and Sustainer of all, the only One who is truly all-powerful, doesn’t just offer us a way to tap into His strength; rather, He offers to exchange our weakness with His strength! Pastor Rod Crowell explains how God provides a way for us to transplant His strength in place of our frailty:

When Isaiah 40:31 says “those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength,” the meaning of the Hebrew verb “renew” is more accurately translated “exchange” — as in exchange their ebbing mortal strength for God’s own unlimited strength and power! Seen this way, the text takes on new meaning: our weakness is lifted, and our power increased (verse 29) as we “let go and let God” in faith!

Suppose you have a lawn mower that barely runs. You could upgrade it by installing a new spark plug or battery and experience a slight increase in performance. But what if you did what the father of one of my church elders did years ago — take a long-frame garden tractor and transplant into it a 350 cubic-inch Chevy V-8? (By the way, for you hot rodders out there, it was coupled to an in-out box and an 8″ Dodge rear end). The souped-up little mega-machine was so impressive a man who saw it in motion as he drove by stopped and wrote out a check for it on the spot! THAT’S a strength TRANSPLANT, not merely an UPGRADE!

Barnes Notes: “Shall renew their strength – Margin, ‘Change.’ The Hebrew word commonly means to change, to alter; and then to revive, to renew, to cause to flourish again.

Crowell concludes his notes with this:

When weak, don’t look for an upgrade but a transplant. Transfer you trust completely to GOD and allow His unlimited strength to begin to flow through you. Rely on His boost of spiritual power rather than the bootstraps of your own mortal efforts. It’s one thing to call Him “Almighty,” another to believe it!

The bad news: Yes, we’re frail. The good news: God is all-powerful and offers us the means to transplant His strength into our lives. Do you see how that is more than a match to what Job describes as life that is “… full of trouble …”?

Have you given in to your frailty, or have you discovered the strength we can appropriate through a personal, covenant relationship with God?

Scotty