Because God loves you, he gives you strength and ability to do all that is his will.
During the summer before my senior year in college, I worked for a carpenter building houses. For my first day on the job, I brought my own hammer to work. It was a typical hammer used around the house, measuring about 13-inches long. My job was to pound large, 16-penny, framing nails into 2×4 studs to make walls. I quickly learned that my little hammer was not up for the task. It required way too many strokes to sink each nail, and I would need to sink several hundred nails each day.
My new boss let me use that for an hour or two, to make a point I suppose. Then he walked up, said, “Put that pea-shooter away,” and handed me one of his hammers. It was about four-inches longer, and heavier, and the head had sharp teeth to bite the head of the nail so as not to slip off with a glancing blow. This was a professional-grade framing hammer. It was powerful. I could sink a nail in one-third the strokes.
I had a job to do and needed power to do it. My boss empowered me with a tool.
Kinds of power
Power comes in many forms. I not only needed a professional-grade hammer for my task, I also needed energy, lots of it. I was on my feet all day, lifting heavy stuff, swinging my hammer, climbing ladders and walls. My boss was a furiously hard worker and kept his crew going at a fast pace. So, I needed food and water. How glad I was to be newly married and have a wife who woke up early to make me a filling breakfast of eggs and toast and meat, as well as to make me a big lunch to take to work with a cold thermos of water. I had a job to do and needed power to do it. Nancy empowered me with food and water.
We all need power in other forms. We can’t work successfully, for example, without wisdom, skill, motivation.
Because my new wife loved me, she met my need for food energy. Love meets the need of another.
God’s love behind your power
God loves you, and so he meets your need for power. He empowers you in many ways. He provides abilities and skills, motivations, the infilling of his Holy Spirit, wisdom, coaches and teachers, education, money and capital, tools, technology, hands and fingers that move and legs that can walk and eyes that can see and ears that hear and a brain that can think. In all these ways and more, he meets one of the greatest needs you have: the power to work, act, move, produce, achieve, build, and create.
Unless God in love chose to give you each of these empowering resources, you would be utterly impotent, weak, and incapable. “From him and through him and to him are all things” (Romans 11:36, ESV).
The apostle Paul wrote, “Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, who has made us sufficient” (2 Corinthians 3:5–6).
Moses told the Israelites, “Beware lest you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.’ You shall remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth” (Deuteronomy 8:17–18).
Again Paul, speaking about what he had accomplished as an apostle, wrote, “By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me” (1 Corinthians 15:10).
God’s empowering love
King David recognized the connection between God’s love and his empowerment. David needed power for face-to-face combat, beginning famously against Goliath and followed throughout his lifetime with scores of battles. In Psalm 18 he describes God’s help. Notice what these select verses say about the empowering love of God:
“1 I love you, O LORD, my strength. … 29 For by you I can run against a troop, and by my God I can leap over a wall. … 32 the God who equipped me with strength and made my way blameless. 33 He made my feet like the feet of a deer and set me secure on the heights. 34 He trains my hands for war, so that my arms can bend a bow of bronze. … 39 For you equipped me with strength for the battle; you made those who rise against me sink under me. … 50 Great salvation he brings to his king, and shows steadfast love to his anointed, to David and his offspring forever.” (Psalm 18:1, 29, 32–34, 39, 50)
In another Psalm he again connects God’s empowerment with his love: “1 Blessed be the LORD, my rock, who trains my hands for war, and my fingers for battle; 2 he is my steadfast love” (Psalm 144:1–2).
In his love, God met David’s need for strength and skill with a sword, shield, bow and arrow.
Our way and God’s way
Our way: We might proudly rely on ourselves. We might boast and take credit for what power we have. Paul told the Corinthians, “What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?” (1 Corinthians 4:7).
God’s way: God gives us every sort of power we need for what he wants us to do, if we will rely on him through prayer, have faith, and follow his wisdom. He is the vine, and we are the branches (John 15:1–7).
Life principle: I can do all things through him who lovingly strengthens me (Philippians 4:13 with “lovingly” added).
Jeremiah 9:23–24: “Thus says the LORD: ‘Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD.’” (ESV)