Alva Review-Courier -

Psalm 73:26: My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever.

Psalm 73:27: For, lo, they that are far from thee shall perish: thou hast destroyed all them that go a whoring from thee.

Psalm 73:28: But it is good for me to draw near to God: I have put my trust in the Lord GOD, that I may declare all thy works.

Most likely, you do not enjoy your areas of weakness. Most of us tend to be problem solvers; often when we identify a deficiency in our life, we stop at nothing to correct the issue. After all, doesn’t the Lord want us to solve the problems we encounter? While it is true that through God dramatic changes can occur in the lives of His children, we ourselves must not take credit for the power to change. Our own strength is weak and faulty (John 15:5). The strength of God is limitless (Phil. 4:13). Paul captures this image perfectly in 2 Corinthians 4:7, when he says, “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves.” 

We can trust this statement because of the apostle Paul’s credentials in adversity: He had been imprisoned, beaten, shipwrecked and persecuted. 

Moreover, he struggled continually with a personal ailment, which he referred to as his “thorn in the flesh” (2 Cor. 12:7). The Lord used these things in Paul’s life to keep him centered on divine power, not his own. Pride puts us in opposition to God. So live by faith and focus on God, and lean on Him, not on “me!”