DIVINE STRENGTHENING
J. G. Chalmers
Romans 4: 20–22; Ephesians 3: 14–18
These passages refer to being strengthened. In Romans Paul says that Abraham found strength in faith, or, as it may read, was ‘inwardly strengthened by faith’; and in Ephesians Paul prays that the saints may be strengthened with power by the Father’s Spirit in the inner man. God had said that Abraham and Sarah were to have a son. Humanly speaking, that was impossible, but Abraham did not reason on human lines. In faith he took God at His word and was inwardly strengthened thereby for he was fully persuaded that what God had promised He was able to do.
These are days, beloved brethren, when our faith is being tested. Young people leaving school are finding difficulty in getting work; some of our brethren are facing unemployment; others are afflicted with sickness and various other matters. These things make us wonder at times just how we are going to get through; situations seem at times impossible as we see no apparent issue. God is testing out His own work in the saints. He has promised that He will not leave us nor forsake us (Hebrews 13: 5).
He has promised to be a Father to us (2 Corinthians 6: 18). His promises are many and they are meant to strengthen faith in the midst of adverse and seemingly impossible conditions.
Unbelief quails before difficulties, but faith lays hold of God and on the infinite resources that are in God, knowing that what He has promised He is able to do. There is not a circumstance that can arise in our individual lives, or in our households and businesses, or in the testimony, but what God is able for, no matter how impossible it appears. As we prove God thus, we give Him the glory, as Abraham gave glory to God.
In Ephesians 3 it is a matter of being strengthened by the Father’s Spirit in the inner man in view of the spiritual realm, the realm of God’s purpose. As we think of that realm we feel the need of being strengthened in view of apprehending and enjoying it. Paul had unfolded to the saints the whole counsel of God and here he is bowing his knees to the Father, showing the intensity of his desire that we should enter upon and enjoy the vast realm of divine counsels.
It has often been said that God has just one thing before Him, and that is a universe of bliss of which the Christ is the glorious centre; yes, the Christ, the One who has effected everything for God and who gives character to that whole scene of glory that subsists for the pleasure of God.
O, beloved, may we have a heart to go in for the whole counsel of God! There is no reason at all why we should not be able to apprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height, for the Spirit is available to us, the Father’s Spirit—a wonderful thought—the One who strengthens us with power in the inner man so that we have capacity to apprehend with all the saints the vastness and wealth of the realm that subsists for the pleasure of God. The issue is, “to him be glory in the assembly in Christ Jesus”. Well, dear brethren, as we prove what it is to be inwardly strengthened by faith in the sphere of testimony, and by the Father’s Spirit in the realm of purpose, may there be increasingly glory to God, for glory all belongs to Him.
Word in meeting for ministry, Lossiemouth
19 August 1980