STAY STRONG

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. “Make level paths for your feet,” so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed.

Hebrews 12:12-13

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

It can be very difficult to be a new Christian in the world today.

I say this because the life one is entering into is radically different than the one they left.

In the world, the message to a person is to do whatever you like to do. You’re supposed to just “do you” which means you don’t have to worry about what anyone else thinks about you or the way you live. You should chase after everything you desire and it’s okay to do whatever you need to do to get it. Even those who break the law today are often given a free pass by the very justice system that’s supposed to uphold law and order while protecting the general public.

This life attitude is traded in for a version that is 180 degrees out from it when someone chooses to believe in Jesus as Savior. As Paul so masterfully writes in his second letter to the Corinthian church, a new Christian believer is a new creation, a creation that leaves their past behind to fully embrace the new that is springing up within them through the power and leading of the Holy Spirit.

Now, just because someone places their trust in Jesus doesn’t mean they are divorced and segregated from the temptation of sin forever. Rather, Satan and those he uses to carry out his evil will seek to come after the new believer. Having lost them to Christ, he will do everything he can to bring them back to himself.

Given this truth, a new Christian is in a place of vulnerability as they spiritually mature day by day so they need to make sure they are donning the full armor of God to defend themselves and remain strong when the time of attack comes.

As we turn to our verses today from the twelfth chapter of Hebrews, we find the author writing words of exhortation to the new Jewish Christians of the first century. Here’s what he has to say to them in regard to staying strong in their faith:

Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. “Make level paths for your feet,” so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed. Vv. 12-13

The call to the new Jewish Christians is to do whatever is needed to stay strong in the Lord as they came into the church and carried out the work Jesus called them to do. They were to fortify themselves so to be able to serve, developing their “feeble arms and weak knees” so to be the proper hands and feet of the Lord.

They were also to make sure that they walked the right path in life as they followed Jesus and sought to live as He did. A disabled person wouldn’t be able to do this and the disability here wasn’t physical but a reference to the spiritual health of the Christian believer. Walking the level path would have beckoned the Jewish Jesus followers back to the words of wisdom found in Solomon’s Proverbs when he shared the following:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to Him, and He will make your paths straight. Proverbs 3:5-6

The new Jewish Christians, the new creations that they were, are encouraged in this passage to keep their trust in the Lord with all their heart so that they could maintain their spiritual strength in Him. For only by turning completely from the world and submitting all their ways to Him, could they know that they would be walking on the straight or level path that the Lord wanted them to travel.

The call today from God’s word is to maintain strength as a Christ believer and follower. Don’t allow Satan to disable or weaken you in any way by invoking the Lord’s full defense and following His word which commands that the full armor be work every single day (Ephesians 6:11-17).  

Stay strong in the Lord and you, like the prophet Isaiah will be able to proclaim:

The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and His understanding no one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint. Isaiah 40:28-31

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

PS: Feel free to leave a comment and please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it. Send any prayer requests to TheChristianWalkPrayers@gmail.com.