Don’t Pray for Strength
You can stop praying for God to give you the Holy Spirit, for God to be with you, to have more love for people and God, or for strength. Yes, really. According to Scripture, we Christ followers already have these (Rom 8:9-11; 1 Cor 12:13; Mt 28:20; Rom 5:5; Phil 4:13; esp. 2 Pet 1:3). We just need to let the Holy Spirit work in us what God has already provided.
Chip Ingram, in I Am with You Always: Experiencing God in Times of Need, writes:
“God is our refuge and strength,
an ever-present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear,
though the earth give way
and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea.
The Lord Almighty is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress.” (Ps 46:1-2,7)“Throughout all three stanzas one phrase is repeated…. It’s a crucial little phrase that gets lost in some translations. We can’t afford to lose it. It’s found in verses, 1, 7, and 11. In verse 1, what reads, ‘God is our refuge and strength’ would literally read, ‘God is for us, a refuge and strength for us.’ Verse 7 would literally read, ‘The God of Jacob is for us a fortress.’ Verse 11 would literally read, ‘The Lord of hosts is for us.’ The point the repetition of this little phrase emphasizes is that we do not have to be afraid because God is for us.”
I think Ingram is saying what I said. We don’t have to pray for God to give us these things. He already has, because he’s given us himself. He is our safe place. He is our strength. He is our constant helper. When? Always. Even if all that we think we can count on in our lives (represented by the earth and mountains in v.2) is removed, we need not fear, because God is for us a refuge, strength, and a helper. The psalmist would say praying for more strength is as mistaken as praying for more of God.
So, how should we pray? Not, “Lord, give me more strength,” but “Lord, thank You for being my strength. Help me surrender my self-focused fear and walk in God-focused faith.” In the first prayer, we’re waiting for what we’ve already been given. The prayer has been answered before we’ve even asked, so we wait in vain. In the second prayer, we acknowledge that God is the source of all we need, and since we have all of him, we have enough strength for the day.
So don’t pray for strength. Pray that God would enable you to rest in him, because he is for you strength. You can. Because he says you can.
