| Not Strong Enough - article by Joel Hempel Back in the day, to be specific, back in my college days when I was one of two shot putters on the Valparaiso University Track and Field team, I could bench press 360 pounds and squat an equal amount. I used 75-pound dumbbells for alternate shoulder presses and weighted squat lunges to strengthen my thrusting power. Back then, I was stronger than 99.9% of the world’s population and could smoke any of them in shot-put competition. But do you know how much one-tenth of one percent of seven billion is (the number of people who live in the world)? That’s right—a lot. If my math is correct, that’s about 7,000.000 people. Thankfully, not all seven million showed up to compete against me in the shot-put events. That would have been utterly humiliating. It was bad enough that my teammate and the guy from the opposing school beat me – in every meet. I was strong, but not strong enough. It took a long while, but I learned I didn’t have to be the strongest to succeed. Indeed, no one has to have strong muscles, a strong intellect, or a strong will to defeat Satan’s temptations, wrestle illness to the mat, pin pain to the floor, or manage an unmanageable challenge. We can be the last one chosen or the first one cut and still win in life and death. I know you can’t bench 360 pounds, so how strong are you? Don’t be modest. How strong? You don’t want to say? Then let me tell you. You can do all things through [Christ] who strengthens you (see Philippians 4:13). If you tell God you don’t have enough strength to make it, he will likely say, it doesn’t matter! Because with his grace and presence, those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength when needed because his strength is our strength (see Isaiah 40:29-31). Many of you know the name, Joni Eareckson Tada. She is an incredible woman. At seventeen, she was a budding athlete and felt invincible like many teenagers. So, with great confidence in her youthful self, she dove into a shallow pool, thinking she could pull herself sharply out of the dive. She was wrong. She hit the bottom of the pool headfirst, broke her neck, and has been a quadriplegic for 57 years. Throughout her life, she has struggled against depression and chronic pain. What does Joni say about strength? In her podcasts and books, she states that it is not unusual when offering an inspirational message to others or sitting at home by herself that she becomes hyper-aware of her pain. It’s at those times that my ability to keep going, keep smiling, keep persevering, keep moving forward shrivels up! My strength feels so small! At such times, though, she has learned to trust Apostle Paul’s counsel in Romans 16:25. I find strength when I lean into the Gospel and focus on Jesus. There is no magic in Joni’s revelation. It is the miracle of our Lord’s grace. When we are overwhelmed by our weakness and inability, reading his words of encouragement and singing hymns about his promises WILL renew his strength in us! | 
