When the Israelites came through the Red Sea, the water was a wall on both sides of them, and they walked through on dry land. The Egyptian army chasing after them was drowned. This was an astounding miracle.
After this, they said, “God is our strength and our song, and he has become our salvation” (Exodus 15:2).
When we know God as our strength and our song, we put ourselves in a position to experience his salvation. We are already saved eternally when we trust in Christ, but salvation is more than a one-time deal. In our lives, there are specific times we need deliverance from God – we need to be saved out of trouble. These specific manifestations of salvation will come to us more readily when God is already our strength and our song.
Strength is the consistent ability to do something. A song reflects our joy in the Lord.
We need God to be both our strength and our song. “The joy of the Lord is your strength” (Nehemiah 8:10).
God Our Strength
The Lord is our strength. Apart from God we have no real strength. We will falter and fail, but God can do anything. He is all-powerful, and there is nothing impossible with him (Luke 1:37). Jesus declared and proved that “with God nothing is impossible” (Matthew 19:26).
Sometimes we want God to do things he doesn’t want to do, and then when he doesn’t do those things, we think God doesn’t care about us. But God has his own timeline for doing things, and our timeline is not his. We need to learn to wait patiently for God, because he may be working something out during this time. Let’s not be disappointed in God when things don’t work out in the time or the way that we want them to. We can trust that he knows what he’s doing, and we can praise him that he is God and we’re not.
“Those who wait on the Lord will renew their strength” (Isaiah 40:31).
One of the keys to tapping into the strength of the Lord is waiting upon him. When we wait on the Lord our strength is changed from our own ability to God’s ability.
Waiting on God doesn’t mean wasting time on worldly or carnal things, or lazing around doing nothing. It means waiting actively, alertly, and expectantly upon God. It’s like a waiter at a table in a fine restaurant – he will alertly look to the tables to see if the diners need anything, and if they call for him or make a signal that they need something, he will come promptly to give them what they need. So it is when we are waiting at God’s table. When we wait on God, we actively look to him to see what he is saying and what he is doing. We are quick to respond to him as he leads us. We serve him in the small things while we wait for the big thing, and if we are faithful with little, he will entrust us with more.
If we can actually tap into God’s strength, we will find an inexhaustible fountain of power. This power will enable us to do all things. “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13). Christ is in us, he can do all things, and therefore we can do all things. We need to rise above the normal into the supernatural.
Strength from the Word of God
The word of God is our strength, because it is living and active. It is full of spirit and life – the life of God. We need to believe that, because if we believe the word of God is alive, then we will experience its life and power, but if we don’t believe that we won’t experience it. Our experience of God is often determined by our level of faith.
Satan will attack our reading of the word, but we need to overcome this inertia and spiritual deadness in order to spend time in the word of God. When we are strong in the Lord, we will read his word, but when we are weak in the Lord we won’t. Our interest in the Bible is a good barometer to measure our spiritual condition. If we are going through a phase of weakness in the Lord, then other things will seem more attractive than God’s word – we will fritter time away on videos, movies, podcasts, video games, or infotainment. This is not our strength, rather these things will weaken us. The word of God is our necessary food, and we can’t really live without it.
Strength from the Holy Spirit
The Holy Spirit will help us by imparting to us spiritual strength. We are to be “strengthened with all might by his Spirit in our inner man” (Ephesians 3:16). The Holy Spirit is power. When we were born again, the Spirit came into us, and this gave us a taste of this power. When we were baptized in the Holy Spirit we received much more divine power (Luke 24:49), and we were able to function more in the body of Christ. As we continue in our Christian life there are times we need to be filled with the Holy Spirit afresh (Ephesians 5:18). These times of filling are to be fresh impartations of God’s power.
Strength from the Body of Christ
We can also draw on the strength of the Lord in the body of Christ. In fellowship with our brothers and sisters there is a flow of divine power, for the river of the Lord flows through his city. There are spiritual resources within the body of Christ that we can draw upon – there is counsel, there is power, and there are divine words. As we look to Christ in his body we will receive these things and draw them out so we can be blessed (Proverbs 20:5). A singular person will not be able to overcome, the body of Christ is required for successful forward movement. Lone individuals will dry up, burn out, and be left on the wayside. The body together will move forward to inherit the land. This is the Lord’s requirement for forward progress especially in the end times – and it may not be easy. It will crucify our independence and self-reliance. But the only way successfully forward into the challenging future is in unity with the body of Christ.
The Lord Our Song
The Lord is our strength, and he is also our song. We sing about what we care about, about our dreams, and about what makes us happy. The world sings about sin, illicit love, revenge, and even demonic power. These songs that spew forth from the radio reflect the cares of humanity, and they further affect the subconscious minds of the masses, hypnotizing them with the spirit of this age. We need to tune these songs out and tune into the songs of God – spiritual songs from the Holy Spirit. We care about God because we know he is the most awesome, majestic, and amazing Person in the universe, and therefore he is our song. The Holy Spirit can cause a melody to bubble up in our hearts to God (Ephesians 5:19), and when our hearts are full of this song we will be full of joy.
Songs have become a very important part of many people’s lives, and they listen to songs almost all the time. We need to take this desire for a song and turn it to the Lord. A spiritual melody can be birthed in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. This holy song can sustain us throughout the day, and when we come together as a church, we can sing this melody and join together in a spiritual song to the Lord. This powerful symphony of voices to God will greatly edify the church.
The Lord is our Strength and he is our Song.
We need the Lord to be our strength and song now, before the problem hits. If he is not our strength and song now, then we may not experience the level of deliverance we need later.
When he is our strength and song now, we will surely declare like the Israelites did, “He has become our Salvation!”
Lincoln House Churches 