Do you sometimes need encouragement or extra strength on the job or just in life generally?
Chapter 40 of Isaiah was first written to be an encouraging word to Israelites in exile in Babylon during the sixth century BC, but its encouragement is timeless. It’s a good word for us today.
Those ancient Israelites needed strength in a tough situation, and God knew they would one day wonder whether he was willing to help them—or if he was even able to help. The chapter ends this way:
Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel,
“My way is hidden from the LORD, and my cause is disregarded by my God”?
Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable.
He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength.
Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted;
but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40:28-31)
Through Isaiah, God drives home the point that even the strongest, healthiest, most vigorous human beings are mere mortals. Their strength is always limited. But God’s is not. In fact, God’s own strength is not only limitless, he has limitless strength to give away.
But to whom does God give that strength? To those who “wait on the Lord,” or who “hope” in the Lord. That means those who wait patiently, expectantly, and faithfully for it, trusting that God not only can, but in his perfect faithfulness, will give it—and give it generously.
There’s an important word in this passage that helps us to understand this strength. Verse 31 says, “those who wait on the Lord will renew their strength.” That word renew doesn’t mean that God takes our strength and enhances it or makes it like new. Nor does he take our incomplete strength and “top off the tank” with a little extra of his own. The word “renew” here means to exchange, or to replace.
Isaiah isn’t telling us that God will work with our strength and somehow make it sufficient. He’s saying that God will do a wholesale exchange when we trust in him—he’ll completely replace our inadequate strength with his own, all-sufficient strength.
Whether it’s in your role at the firm, in your family, in your spiritual life, or wherever else, God is not only able but willing to take your finite strength that ultimately fades into weariness and exchange it for strength that soars like an eagle, runs without running out, and walks without giving up.
