Renewal by Another Name

This one, more than many of the others I've reviewed recently, feels like it reaches tendrils into my life today...


April 8, 2005
A few more things spring to mind as I consider approval and love.  If we seek the right approval, then we will only walk into it when the "need" for it is dead, for the need itself is self-centered.  A paradox.  "But none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself so that I might finish my course with joy..."  Acts 20:24.  What a powerhouse verse about approval!
Even more paradoxical, our being approved ultimately doesn't even come from our own strength at all, but from God's strength:

"He gives power to the weak
And to those who have no might
He increases strength.
Even the youths shall faint and be weary,
And the young men shall utterly fall,
But those who who wait upon the Lord
Shall renew their strength;
They shall mount up with wing like eagles,
They shall run and not be weary,
They shall walk and not faint."  Isaiah 40:29-31

My Bible describes this word "renew" from the text as being better understood with the idea "to exchange." It is not that God renews in the sense of our strength being refreshed, but that he utterly swaps it out for His own.

O God, exchange Your strength for my own! 

I think of the Hannah Whitall Smith story from her book, The Christian's Secret of a Happy Life, about the man walking with the heavy pack on his back.  Another man driving a cart comes along and offers the walker a ride.  The man gratefully accepts the ride, but when he climbs into the cart, he doesn't remove the pack from his back.  The cart driver says, "Brother, why don't you put your pack in the back of the cart?"  But the rider says, "Oh, no; you have already given me a ride.  I couldn't ask you to relieve me of the weight of the pack as well!"  The man doesn't think through his situation.  The cart is already bearing the weight of his pack.  His own strength is of no account in the matter of bearing the burden.  How often do we accept renewal--a divinely offered ride on the journey, but do not go so far as to accept this exchange Isaiah mentions. 

Help me drop the pack, Lord, for I know I am surely in the cart!  In the name of the cart-driver!  --Amen.

Strange how impactful this seemed to me when I first discovered this principle of strength exchange. Strange, too, how much I got a glassy-eyed stare from people when I'd try to share it with others who felt circumstantially weak.  Or I'd get that dreaded look that said, "Yes, and so what's the punch line?" after you finished telling the joke, so you lamely grab for closure with an "I guess you had to be there..." or some such thing.  I got those responses until finally I just stopped sharing this Great Revelation, but for me it still was.  This was somehow a huge channel of peace, one that made me able to turn and face that fear-making challenge, thinking "It's not my strength being measured here..." and then I could begin to breathe normally again and my hands would grow stronger. 

During this recent and extended season of intentional weakening hand-delivered by God, this strength-concept left me entirely.  Now that my natural strength is returning, I joyfully refresh my memory on this one; but it is different, as well.  I learned well how to embrace the weakness that goes in lockstep with the demands that were obviously too heavy for me to lift, but I did not associate it with those things I lifted easily.  I understand that now, but during the season of trial, it was a discouraging thing as I watched more and more thing become too heavy. 

Now I consider it anew.  What might it be like, this new way of seeing the exchange? To not only take my utter weakness, faintness and failure and offer them up for exchange; but also to take my strength, the thing I'd never consider needing renewal, and offer it up as well? 
To some it might seem foolish; to others obsessive...
But I think in truth, it would be a holiness.