Suggested Listening: How Great Thou Art
“Let him take hold of my strength.”
~Isaiah 27:5 NKJV~
“My grace is sufficient for you,
for my strength is made perfect in weakness…
I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses,
so that Christ’s power may rest on me.
That is why…I delight in weaknesses, in insults,
in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties.
For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
~2 Corinthians 12:9-10 NIV~
Kabod. At first glance, this small Hebrew word is easy to gloss over. Stepping aside to delve into its meaning, glory, kabod indicates great weight, a dense power that is breath-taking and awesome. Ironically, my family and I were at the Grand Canyon when I first read the words of Alisa Keeton, that “This kabod takes our breath away whenever we are near it. It is like standing next to the Grand Canyon. It is impossible to just walk by and not take notice.”[1]
The Grand Canyon is breathtaking and majestic and impossible to encapsulate on my cell phone camera. For me, I could only think how powerful and awesome everything was as we drove along the scenic highway to the Grand Canyon’s South Rim. It is everything I am not. How awesome is that to think about?
As we walked ten miles round trip through Zion’s Narrows, His was the voice reminding me, “I have given you waters in the wilderness and rivers in the desert” (Isaiah 43:20).
We traversed William’s Wiggles, a grueling hour up a steep summit. My family continued to Angel’s Landing, an arduous hike to a narrow peak, aided only by a heavy-duty chain. A mass of hikers conglomerated and communicated together as they ascended and descended the precarious peak. I, on the other hand, went the opposite direction to Scout Landing, given the combined concern of narrow heights compounded with compromised knees from our previous day’s hike through the Narrows. The Scout Landing heights surpassed Angel’s Landing, and I was in near isolation. Looking across the chasm, I could see people like ants, my family among them, ascending the precipice of Angel’s Landing. As I sought the path back down from the high landing, my eyes traversing the small plateau of striated rock, sand and mountain brush, his voice whispered, “This is the way, walk in it” (Isaiah 30:21) and “He shall give His angels charge over you, to keep you in all your ways … lest you dash your foot against a stone” (Psalm 91:12).
In all our walks of life, all the way to the highest highs and the deepest lows, from the wide obvious paths to the narrow and nearly missed, He desires to walk with us there. He knows our frailties, and yet it is in those very weaknesses where He desires us to find refuge in Him, leaning on him, learning how awesome it is to rely on His strength in our weakness. Bill Johnson refers to this as an “aggressive display of faith.” This is encouragement when I am at my weakest and feel insufficient to meet with either the trials and testing or mundane moments of life. And even when I’m on the mountain peak, was it really any display of my own strength, sweat, and huffing-and-puffing that got me there? He is the Good Creator of this good body I’m in that gets me to the top! What a comfort that HE is our strength in the throes of our fires here on earth. C.S. Lewis writes about His strength in our weakness in Perelandra, when Ransom is overwhelmed by the role he had been called upon to fulfill. He is encouraged by the angel Malacandra, who says “Be comforted, small one, in your smallness. He [God] lays no merit on you. Receive and be glad. Have no fear, lest your shoulders be bearing this world. Look! It is beneath your head and carries you.”[2] It helps me put into perspective my smallness, my weakness, my shortcomings and inadequacies. I can celebrate these things and be content in the space I’m in on my journey, knowing that His “grace is sufficient.” It’s about His awesomeness, not mine. I am to obey and not dwell on my smallness.
Our family vacation, while epic, certainly was not safe. We were on the playgrounds of the gods, exploring giant sandboxes on our rock-climbing jeep and dirt bikes, hiking through deep ravines or atop narrow precipices of an untamed and unpredictable power. I kept thinking about what Mr. Beaver said of Aslan in C.S. Lewis’s book, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, when Susan asked if he was “safe.” “Safe? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good.”
“There are times where the power of God is displayed because of the
aggressive obedience of the servants of the Lord…
The power of God is kind of like two-part epoxy:
when the two are brought together,
there’s an exponential increase in the demonstration of power.
The second part comes in the strangest way;
it comes in weakness, and you can only discover the second demonstration of the power by embracing loss…
it’s the problems that create the opportunity for surrender
that creates power.”
~Bill Johnson, “The Secret Place of Power”~
“So let’s not allow ourselves to get fatigued doing good.
At the right time we will harvest a good crop if we don’t give up, or quit.
Right now, therefore, every time we get the chance,
let us work for the benefit of all,
starting with the people closest to us in the community of faith.”
~Galatians 6:9 MSG~
“Keep asking God what He is trying to reveal to you,
even in those difficult circumstances when you feel overwhelmed.
You won’t feel lost in drudgery and dejection when you respond to God’s greatness with astonishment
and when you desire more of what He wants for your life.”
~Alisa Keeton~
“When I look down from lofty mountain grandeur
and hear the brook and feel the gentle breeze,
Then sings my soul, My Savior God, to Thee;
How great Thou art, How great Thou art!”
~Carl Boberg, Stuart Hine~
[1] Alisa Keeton, The Wellness Revelation (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale Momentum, 2017).
[2] C.S. Lewis, Perelandra (New York: Collier, 1962), p. 197.
A Walk Down Chamomile Lane 