Above our power

[AI translation] I would like to group the message of God that I have understood from this story around a single thought, around the message that the angel of the Lord gave to the prophet Elijah: "Arise and eat, for your way is above your strength." The whole Christian life, in its true reality, is an exercise above our strength. If it were not, it would not be necessary! It is this impossible, yet possible task that I would like to talk about now!"You have a way that is above strength" - this is what Jesus Christ says to all who will follow Him, without exception. He may not be saying it in those exact words, but everything He says about following Him requires a performance beyond human strength - I was talking to a young man once who told me that, although he could not believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ, he considered Him to be the most perfect man in the world, an ideal worth following. I asked him: well, do you follow him? He could not answer immediately. I said to him: If Jesus is your ideal, can you make up your mind to do everything according to that ideal? Will you be willing to put out of your life everything that is contrary to the opinion of this ideal man, and will you be willing to do everything according to what Jesus approves and recommends?He said, amazed, "That is impossible, I cannot do it!"Well, this man, who did not believe in the divinity of Jesus, felt that Jesus had set the moral standard so high that it was impossible to reach it by human power.
The day before yesterday I was talking to someone who believed in the deity of Christ. He opened up his heart and showed me the "sore wound" he had received from a close relative. There was indeed a great injustice done to him, and his anger and resentment was fully justified in human terms. Psychologically, he is perfectly justified in his anger at the memory of that sad affair.
All men do him justice - but Jesus alone. He would say: the anger that is in you is not the anger that was in me when I was abused, spat on, tortured and crucified. Not the impulse of forgiveness, but of retribution. I told him so: he looked down and said: I am unable to forgive! And I believed him, but if we only want to do as much as we can in our own strength, as much as we are humanly capable of, we should not follow Christ, any philosophical morality would be enough. If the Christian life were merely the maximum development of the fullness of man's capacity and not qualitatively different, then God would not have had to make such a great sacrifice for it as the cross of Christ! Many have died for fine ideals, but that in itself is not a redemptive death! Only a touching and honourable martyrdom. Christ's death is more than that, and the reason is that if we are to truly follow Him, we must soon find that we are in over our heads. To live with Christ's spirit, love, humility, faithfulness, service inwardly and outwardly - a task beyond our strength, a life beyond human. Of course it is: the life of Christ. And even if we look at this task that Christ entrusted to His followers not only in the vicinity of our own petty affairs, but also in a social, economic, national context, then the reality of this supernatural life is devastating.
Here, in the story, the obedience of one man, the prophet Elijah, to God, has implications for the future of an entire country. How much does the obedience or disobedience of one Christian church affect the life of an entire nation! Jesus entrusts to His followers the most wonderful tasks that He could ever entrust to a human being. And this is nothing less than to replace a world that is stretched by the forces of unloving, selfishness, disunity, with a world based on love, mutuality, solidarity. This is the new order: the kingdom of God on earth. It takes one's breath away to think of the tasks of making human existence Christlike in all its aspects! And in this transformation we ourselves are involved with the whole fullness of our life, our inner life and our outer life. Christ-following man and Christ-confessing Christian Church: you have a way in this world that is beyond your power!
Yes, but we are human beings, full of weakness and helplessness, like the prophet Elijah in this very story. Just when this call was made, he was at one of the lowest points in his life. He was depressed, depressed in body and soul. He was full of anxiety, complaints, bitter fear, he saw that his life was in vain, his toil was in vain, his work was fruitless, the people had killed the prophet, they had abandoned their God, he was alone, he too must go into hiding, they were seeking him for death. He has nothing to do, his life is empty, aimless, hopeless. It would be best not to live any longer, it is no longer life anyway. So he begs: enough, Lord, take away my soul, for I am no better than my father. This is how we drag ourselves along, bitter, disillusioned and unproductive in our faithful lives. There are some here who see that they are called to do more than they are accomplishing, but are discouraged by the fact that there are few to them, like Elijah who alone of the prophets was left, no understanding souls, only weary, sleeping masses. What are a few men to do with a whole world?! It's a waste of effort, it's a waste of effort, there's too much resistance. But the greatest failure, for Elijah as for us, is a lack of trust in God. It is written in the Bible, "The best of men shall faint, but they that trust in the Lord shall renew their strength." (Is 40:30-31) These two things are closely linked: weariness, weariness, relaxation on the one hand, and a shaking of trust in the Lord on the other. The flywheel of the threshing machine, when the steam is turned off, keeps on turning for a while, but slower and slower: it tires and can no longer do its work. To go beyond power, you need power beyond power. And if the trust, the connection, the inspiration from above is broken, the inspiration from below immediately starts to work, to relax you, to discourage you, to say what Elijah said: enough! Yes: the devil, through our circumstances, through our physical and spiritual gifts, is constantly inspiring us to retreat, to lower our standards, to stop trying to defy the world, because we are weak! You are incapable, you will fail, spare yourself! Stop it! There is no point! And so, under the influence of inspiration from below, a sick condition like Elijah's arises, which sees only gifts in life, but no opportunities! It sees only what is: the obstacle, the difficulty, only its own powerlessness, but not what it could become through the power of Christ!
Someone once said that the main characteristic of the Christian man is that he cannot settle for things as they are, because he feels that things as they are represent something else, something less than the kingdom of Christ! And that in every area of life. Well: the main characteristic of our spiritual brokenness is precisely that we put up with things as they are. Our family life does not represent the kingdom of Christ: at best we regret it, but we do nothing about it! There is no revival in the church, no new conversions: we put it down to circumstances! Our Church has become a salt without taste in the world: who can blame her?! We are still personally ruled by our old sins: we are, after all, weak people! And so we reassure ourselves. The Christian life is beautiful, but unattainable. We have no need of anything more than what every good man deserves, we do not expect anything extraordinary, something higher, something beyond our power from Christ, we resign ourselves to the state of moral and spiritual dejection in which we find ourselves, we are accustomed to living in spiritual limpness! We have become unimaginative, we can no longer imagine what we could be and what the world around us could be through Christ! We have become unimaginative: that is, we have become unbelievers!
The other day a friend of mine was sitting next to me and we were listening to something together. He has a habit of drawing and listening, because that's the only way he can listen. He took out paper, but he didn't have a pencil. He asked for mine. Suddenly, on the blank paper, my old pencil traced some clever caricatures. I was astonished: this pencil had never moved so deftly in its life! Not because I can't draw, but because an artist had taken it in his hands, and what can you do with a pencil that has always scribbled only angular, barely legible letters?
What can man be, what can the Church be, if the greatest artist takes it into his hands? What can God write and draw with him on the pages of the history of the world? And look at the converse: what can even a prophet Elijah, who has often trodden this path beyond his power, become, how weary, how empty, as soon as he breaks his trust in the Lord? And what shall we be, who have not even tried to walk in truth in this way above our strength?
And yet the consolation of this story is that it is in this very weakness of body and soul that the prophet Elijah hears the Lord's command: 'Arise and eat, for you have a way that is above your strength. See, Elijah, that in yourself you are as weak as any other man. You are right: you are no better than your fathers, than others, than your ancestors: you are a man! It is not your excellence that makes you fit to go beyond your strength, but I, and what I give .
Arise, and eat! - Arise: he saith the same to us, put thyself into my hand! And eat: you are destined for a life that you cannot achieve without extraordinary, supernatural power! Eat! Eat what? Jesus says: I am the bread of life. The nourishing power of the Christian life. Take it in, work it into you like food - Christ! Do you think that He walked the path from heaven through death to resurrection and back to heaven so that we can sleep soundly, or so that we can dwell well here in the church with some spiritual delight? No! But so that by His heavenly, divine power surging within us we can set out on that journey beyond our power!
Dare to believe that the power of this redeeming death can do what your own human ability cannot! Dare to believe that the journey of overcoming your sins, renewing your church, and Christianizing the world will give you the strength and the satisfying nourishment you need to go beyond your strength! That is what makes the Christian life so valuable, that it constantly presents insurmountable problems, but it is the fact that these problems can be solved through Jesus Christ that makes it so great!
In falling into weakness, our church is destroyed - in taking the way above strength, we are renewed by the strength above strength! It is true what we sing in the Psalm:
Blessed is the nation that rejoices in you,
All their work, O Lord, they do well.
Before thy shining face they walk boldly,
And in thy name they rejoice without ceasing,
For you exalt them to great glory,
And multiply thy good deeds upon them.
(Psalm 89:7)
Amen
Date: 12 July 1955.