“In your strength I can crush an army; with my God I can scale any wall.”
Psalms 18:29
If you tuned in today for some advice in the area of military techniques, you are going to be sorely disappointed. No military prowess here. And that’s a good thing!! I’m not a bad shot with a rifle, but I’ve never had to use it for anything but bragging rights on target practice day. There has never been an army camped outside my community that I had to defend with hand to hand combat or guerrilla tactics.
What a gift.
If you tuned in today hoping for some tips and pointers on stretching your vertical limits, ditto. A climber, I am not. My knees shake by the third step of a ladder. Standing at the top of a steep ski hill makes me queasy. I once tried a rock wall and after labouring and struggling for a while, realized I had only gotten a few feet off the ground.
I’m not exactly Lara Croft material.
‘Well, why call this post ‘Crushing It’, if I’m not going to learn how to crush anything?’, you may be asking.
Thanks for asking!
You may never need to learn how to blow up a munitions depot, or how to outmanoeuvre a tank. There may be no reason (other than fun or fitness!) to scale a wall.
Yet every day, you are at war.
There is more than one army out there wanting to take you down…
The tides of popular opinion. The media and how it represents gender and race and religion and social status and aging and definitions of beauty. The battle of the bulge. The skirmishes with your own hang ups and poor self image. Your health. Your difficult relatives. Your job – or lack thereof.
The war for your soul.
We need to be emotionally and mentally and spiritually nimble to be able to take on all these major confrontations all at once.
Hence the scaling of walls.
We may not need to infiltrate an enemy garrison or sneak into a physical city undetected, but we sure need to be prepared to climb over obstacles thrown our way – depression, anxiety, a harsh boss, a rough upbringing, negative thought patterns, that rotten diagnosis, that chronic pain – all of these can conquer our freedom and destroy our joy.
And we need to fight for both of those! Freedom has always come at a cost – ask a veteran about that. And joy must be protected, guarded, proactively sought after.
We will need both to survive this all-out battle zone called life.
Cue start of pep talk.
Did you see the key to success yet? There are two aspects that we need to be aware of.
First, ‘in your strength…’
In your strength.
In your strength.
In other words, you don’t need to be strong, because God is! You don’t need to muster up more, dig deeper, stretch farther, push it to the limit, because God already did on your behalf.
It is finished.
You can stop and breathe and rest in the knowledge that God has your back. He’s also got the rest of you! He delights in sharing His power and agility and knowledge and expertise and insight and skill with us, because He loves us. He’s cheering for us. He wants nothing more than to see you win your battles!
The second is an equally incredible promise:
‘With my God, I can scale any wall.’
With my God.
With my God.
With my God.
Do you see the beauty of it? Relationship. Companionship. Togetherness, teamwork. The promise of God’s presence in addition to the power and strength to do what needs doing is a game changer!
So, not only can you crush an army coming against you (defensive strategy), you can also scale a wall (offensive moves). You have the complete package! You have the ability to guard against frontal attacks while launching an offensive of your own.
Look at you, crushing it!
And by the way – ‘crushing it’ sometimes looks like coming home exhausted, and being willing to try again tomorrow. Life is challenging. We don’t always remember to include God in our fights. We don’t always know how to fight well. And that’s ok. We aren’t professional soldiers, after all – we just got drafted and have a lot to learn.
But we can sure make some progress as we become aware of the war!
Trust God to help fight your battles with me?
Father, we truly are at war. Each day brings its own struggles. Give us the strength we need to not only defend our position but strike back at the lies and confusion and obstacles that seek to destroy our peace and joy. Amen.
Growing in Grace 