If you or your loved one is up again a particularly scary diagnosis, I encourage you to think of the shepherd boy David as he went into battle armed only with a slingshot and five pebbles to fight against the giant Goliath. Do you know what his battle cry was? He wasn’t like The Little Engine that Could, chugging along and repeating “I think I can, I think I can.”
No, his thinking was more like “I know I can’t. I know I can’t.” David was the youngest and smallest boy in his family—too small to wear a protective suit of armor—and Goliath was more than nine feet tall. But David’s battle cry was: “I know God can. I know God can.” If you read 1 Samuel 17:47, you’ll see his exact words: “The battle is the Lord’s.”
That phrase appears many times throughout the Old Testament as mighty warriors went up against even mightier appointments. It’s a phrase you may want to pray as you awake each morning.
Lord, I feel like a little shepherd boy with a slingshot facing a giant named Cancer, and it is more than I can handle. But I choose to believe it is not more than You can handle. The battle belongs to You, Lord. Fight for me and through me. Do what I cannot do on my own.
I believe that sometimes we do get more than we can handle in our own strength, but I also believe in the promise of Philippians 4:13, which says: “For I can do everything through Christ, who gives me the strength.”
You don’t have to reach down inside yourself and muster up some super strength. Even if you feel you can’t always “live strong,” you can live by His strength.
The Old Testament prophet Isaiah described that strength: “He gives power to the weak and strength to the powerless. Even youths will become weak and tired, and young men will fall into exhaustion. But those who trust in the Lord will find new strength. They will soar high on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not faint.”
Live strong BY HIS STRENGTH.
