Sermon: With All Your Strength

PL 19

With All Your Strength

February 26, 2006

Cynthia O'Brien

Song of Songs 8:6-8

^{SS 8:6} Place me like a seal over your heart,

like a seal on your arm;

for love is as strong as death,

its jealousy unyielding as the grave.

It burns like blazing fire,

like a mighty flame.

^{SS 8:7} Many waters cannot quench love;

rivers cannot wash it away.

If one were to give

all the wealth of his house for love,

it would be utterly scorned.

Lamentations 3:22-33

^{LA 3:22} Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed,

for his compassions never fail.

^{LA 3:23} They are new every morning;

great is your faithfulness.

^{LA 3:24} I say to myself, “The LORD is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.”

^{LA 3:25} The LORD is good to those whose hope is in him,

to the one who seeks him;

^{LA 3:26} it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD.

^{LA 3:27} It is good for a man to bear the yoke

while he is young.

^{LA 3:28} Let him sit alone in silence, for the LORD has laid it on him.

^{LA 3:29} Let him bury his face in the dust-- there may yet be hope.

^{LA 3:30} Let him offer his cheek to one who would strike him,

and let him be filled with disgrace.

^{LA 3:31} For men are not cast off by the Lord forever.

^{LA 3:32} Though he brings grief, he will show compassion,

so great is his unfailing love.

^{LA 3:33} For he does not willingly bring affliction

or grief to the children of men.

First, consider this quote by Dr. Teilhard de Chardin, a French archaeologist and Jesuit priest:

“Some day, after we have mastered
the wind, the waves, the tide and gravity
we shall harness for GOD the energies of love;
and then, for the second time
in the history of the world,
man will have discovered fire.”

It is pure coincidence that during the 2006 Winter Olympics our family is learning to ice skate. Somebody asked me, “Did you get a little skating outfit?” and then we both doubled up in hysterics. A couple of weeks ago, I skated out to the center of the ice and was immediately accosted by a couple of kids asking if I was a new trainer. It must have been that I was tall and wearing Adidas workout pants because it sure wasn’t my skating.

Anyway, everyone is really friendly there. I was trying and trying to do a backward swizzle with not much success. A girl came up to me and said, “Can I help you with that?” I said “Sure,” so she demonstrated how to do it right, nicely showed me how I was doing it wrong, explained about the position of the feet and the part of the blades to use and where to put your weight and so forth. Sure enough, when I did what she said, I could do it. I said, “Thanks, what’s your name?” She said, “Danielle.” I said, “How old are you, Danielle?” She said, “Six.”

Michael and Rachel and Laurel are doing very well. I’m making progress, too. I’ve gone from petrified to just awkward. But one benefit of learning during the Olympics is that when I watch the Olympians on TV, I appreciate just how dangerous it is out there. Hard enough to skate on one blade without having to lift a hundred pound partner, good grief.

Olympic athletes weren’t born strong. They focus. They train. A commentator during the Olympic figure skating noted that some of the skaters will come back to Vancouver in 2010, and they will train every day until then. He said, “You have to really love being out on the rink several hours a day for four years.”

One of Michael’s students at Portland Lutheran High School is often at the rink. Brittany skates beautifully, and she is so strong she can do a double axle. I don’t have to skate like Sasha Cohen, I’d be happy to skate like Brittany. But she didn’t get that strength in 12 weeks – she’s been training several times a week for 12 years.

So we are training ourselves, strengthening our legs and our ankles, improving our balance. It’s not easy. All four of us complain of bruises and sore feet and the occasional bloody gash from a collision with another skater. But I keep telling Laurel, “Just tell your feet that they are not used to ice skating, and they’ll get used to it.”

Pushing yourself beyond what’s comfortable makes you stronger. Whether your muscles are sore from adding weight to the weight training machines, or you are out of breath from running five miles, there is a price to pay for getting stronger.

It’s like singing. If you want to sing, you need to practice. Singing is one of the greatest things a human being can do. It lifts the heart to worship God. But many of us have been conditioned to think we can’t sing. In the worst cases, you were told in early elementary school, “Oh, Johnny, you can’t carry a tune, so you just mouth the words.” Your music teacher didn’t take the time to teach you, so now you think you can’t sing. That’s simply not true. Anyone can learn to sing. We have free voice lessons every Wednesday night at 7:30, not so that Marilyn can have a nice choral group to entertain you. This is why we offer it: As musicians of every age come through the music programs, from the little ones to the grandmas, they get stronger in a unique human ability – to worship God through singing – and the congregation is then strengthened.

During the offertory you will hear the Youth Bell Ensemble play a piece that looks easy. It’s not. It’s extremely difficult. They have been practicing for months – I’ve heard it every Wednesday. It’s possible because of their training.

Love the Lord with all your strength and love your neighbor as yourself. Getting stronger takes training and practice.

2. Survival

Now there’s training, and then there’s survival.

Sometimes you get stronger, not because you exercised intentionally, but because you were trying to survive the trials of your life.

EX You get a job that turns out to have more heavy lifting than you counted on. But, because you need the job, you learn how to lift the weight and gradually you get stronger – not because you wanted to, but because you have to.

I visited a young couple who had just had triplets – the father had two cradled in one arm and the third under his other arm. No doubt he developed some biceps in the first few years. He got stronger because he had to be strong to survive.

Michael was associate pastor at a highly conflicted church in San Diego for five years. I remember several times sitting up long past midnight waiting for the Session meeting to be over, when they were fighting the whole time. When Michael left that church, it took almost a year to get over it. People took pot shots at the pastors all the time and had fights over things like whether the youth group would get to keep the donut money. It was awful.

But they say whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

While Michael was being unintentionally strengthened, he decided one year that this would be the year he learned about conflict. He attended the best church conflict management training in the nation and spent that year studying the best books on the subject.

Now, Michael can go into a highly charged situation, or a dysfunctional situation where all the anger is beneath the surface, and he can manage it. It was a combination of having to survive, which he did, and being intentional about training and practice.

So we get stronger either by personal will and discipline, or through surviving what life throws at us, and often by a combination of both.

Let’s talk about spiritual strength. Is it possible to become spiritually strong?

Well, there are exercises you can intentionally do in order to become strong in faith.

Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, wrote about an experience he had of prayer and fasting:

The longer I fasted, the more I sensed the presence of the Lord. The Holy Spirit refreshed my soul and spirit as never before. Biblical truths leaped at me from the pages of God’s Word. My faith soared as I cried out to God and rejoiced in his presence.

Through a spiritual discipline, in this case, fasting and prayer, Bill Bright found a spiritual strength.

This month, in the Carillon, the church newsletter, there are many ideas for spiritual exercises that you could say increase your spiritual strength. Prayer, fasting, Scripture reading, good works, these are just some of the exercises that strengthen your faith.

What can you do with that spiritual strength? You can bear your burdens, the hard things that life throws at you. You can have compassion on others and help them get through their hard times. You can resist temptation. You can stand up for what is right.

Which leads us to the fact that becoming spiritually strong is not an option. I suppose there are some people who are weak their whole lives, where everything is a crisis and they need you to bail them out and make it better. But you don’t want to live like that. The world is a dangerous place.

The hymns we are singing later describe our challenge:

Lo, the hosts of evil round us, scorn thy Christ, assail his ways.

This world with devils filled should threaten to undo us.

But the hymns also nicely make my next point, which is that we cannot possibly make ourselves strong enough to love God and live the Christian life. It would be arrogant to think that. You can do all the spiritual disciplines, all the good works, live a pure life, but without God it’s worthless.

Martin Luther: Did we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing, were not the right Man on our side.

That’s why we need to pray, as in this hymn:

God of grace and God of glory, on thy people pour thy power.

Grant us wisdom, grant us courage, for the facing of this hour.

Fortunately, God does answer our cries for help. God loves us and gives us strength. Even when it seems like we’re doing all the spiritual work here, remember that ultimately our strength comes from God. God is our trainer and the one who gives us the strength.

With the strength of God, there’s nothing we can’t do. Paul said, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

I wonder what I could do, if I were to really love God with all my strength, that is, put every ounce of energy singlemindedly into loving God, and received the strength from God, what could I accomplish?

Even a better question: What could our church accomplish? Our stationery says “Smith Memorial Presbyterian Church: Over 100 years of Christian love.” So, what if we take our 115 years and 200 or so people, and we pooled our energies, combined our strength and focused it on loving God with all our strength and loving our neighbor? We have a lot of individual ministries we are involved in. Many of you are spending a significant amount of time making a difference for others, and that needs to continue. But what if we all focused on the same thing, one thing, any thing? What might happen?

“Some day, after we have mastered
the wind, the waves, the tide and gravity
we shall harness for GOD the energies of love;
and then, for the second time
in the history of the world,
man will have discovered fire.”