“When I am afraid, I will put my trust in You.”  Psalm 56:3

Have you ever thought about what makes you strong?

Most of the time, we hear about someone’s strength in the context of what they are good at or, literally, physically strong in.  While, yes, some people are fit and strong, most of the time we are speaking of strengths far beyond what someone can do physically.

Strength comes from the root word, strong.  It can involve “mental power, force or vigor; moral power, firmness or courage; power by reason of influence, authority, or resources.”  See Strength. It arises with “effective force…or the power of resisting force, strain or wear.”  It may even appear when someone or something brings encouragement to another.

You can see that to be strong, your strength is measured by what you are strong in.  It can be in your physical abilities or mental power.  It is found in your firmness or courage as well as in your ability to influence or have authority.  It can even be found through the resources available to you.  While you can be strong enough to affect change, you can also be strong enough to resist an attack or aggression.  You can be decisively unyielding or strong in not compromising what you stand for.  Being strong impacts almost all the different arenas that our lives are involved in.

Seeing the various ways that we can exhibit strength leads us back to the word, in.  As we unfold the word in, we end up with the word, fortify.  Interestingly enough, the root of fortify is strong.  How do we then fortify our strengths or strengthen our weaknesses if we do not know what they are in?  This is especially true as we seek to build our faith by putting our trust in the right spot.

So let’s ask that question again:  What makes you strong?  Where are your strengths located?  What do they reside in?

Here are some arenas in life where you might find strength’s presence:

• Faith/Believing
• Leadership/Guiding
• Organization/Interacting
• Love/Nurturing
• Compassion/Relating
• Encouragement/Giving
• Education/Learning and teaching
• Service/Helping and aiding
• Assistance/Serving
• Kindness/Empowering
• Theater/Imagining
• Growth/Sowing and Reaping
• Development/Building
• Craftsmanship/Detailing
• Management/Directing
• Prayer/Interceding
• Courageous/Asking
• Quietness/Persevering
• Boldness/Collecting

When we experience something that incites fear in us, it is extremely helpful to know where our strengths are and where they are not.  Knowing what they are not should help us fall to our knees faster, and knowing what they are should help us discern that we need to turn to God first before employing them.  Understanding them should help us to fortify our faith in God.

Fortify is to:

1. to protect or strengthen against attack, surround or provide with defensive military works.
2. to furnish with the means of resisting force or standing wear.
3. to make strong; impart strength to.
4. to increase the effectiveness of.
5. to strengthen mentally or morally.
6. to confirm.  See Fortify.

By turning to God with our trust when we are afraid, we begin to strengthen our connection with the One who will see us through.  The choice to turn to Him and willingly put our trust in Him protects us against fear gaining the upper hand in our hearts.  While it doesn’t magically solve the problem, it is the beginning of what we need to face what is before us.

If we are going to let God be our strength, then it would be wise to consider how we can strengthen and fortify our faith in Him.  Almost all strength is built through exercise of some sort.  Exercise is defined as “bodily or mental exertion, especially for the sake of training or improvement…; something done or performed as a means of practice or training…; to use or display in one’s action or procedure.” See Exercise.  You see, exercise is not limited to just moving our bodies.  It is also something we can do mentally with training for the purpose of improving our cognitive responses to fear and its friends.

So what kind of exercise can we do when faced with fear?  Resistance.  Resistance is often used in physical strength training, and can be a crucial cognitive exercise to fortify our mental stamina and prowess in the face of fear.  And maybe, just maybe, resistance is one of the keys to building our mental and spiritual strength in God by specifically choosing to resist fear’s demands and, instead, put our trust in Him.

If we look back at the definition of in, which includes “the transition from one state to another” See In, we learn that many of our experiences will involve such transitions.  It is a beautiful thing to understand that there will most likely be a very natural movement out of one state and into another throughout much of our lives, if we are only willing to embrace such movement.  When we are faced with something frightful, knowing this truth should help us move more quickly towards God.  And we can propel that movement by actively resisting fear.  Through resistance, we will be able to loosen the feelings of being afraid from the grip they seek to have on our minds and decisions.   While we know that fear is a part of the natural response to concerning circumstances, we need not dwell with it.  We should oppose such dominating thoughts as we strive against fear’s domination and seek to restore God as our focus.

Let’s look a bit deeper into resistance:

1. the act or power of resisting, opposing or withstanding.
2. opposition offered by. See Resistance.

To resist goes on to include:

1. to withstand, strive against or oppose.
2. to withstand the action or effect of.
3. to refrain or abstain from, especially with difficulty or resistance. See Resist.

Now the question becomes how often do we actually resist the feelings associated with fear?  How often do we actually oppose them as they arise?  To withstand is “to stand or hold out against”. See Withstand.  Can we withstand the effect of fear when it comes calling?  Can we make efforts to oppose its presence in our lives?  I am thinking we can and should be, or God wouldn’t be telling us…repeatedly…throughout His word…to not to be afraid.  So, knowing this and in trusting Him, can we exercise our faith and trust that He knows what is truly best for us?

By resisting fear, and its many friends, we can strengthen our faith in Him.  When we actively seek to put our trust in Him, we should expect to be struggling against something else trying to take His place.  Moreover, it is not realistic to think that fear will just go away without a fight.  Rather, we need to trust that it is our job to resist and oppose it.  We can search for God and steady ourselves with the many strengths we know He has already given us.  In what we lack, we can build ourselves up with the knowledge that where we are weak, He is strong.  We can choose to believe that the strength He will give, or has already given to us, will furnish us with the ability to fight fear’s onslaught while trusting that God is truly the most powerful strength that we have to draw on.

Let us examine our strengths, know where they lie, and fortify our trust in God so that when fear comes, we are ready to resist it.

“The Sovereign Lord is my strength; He makes my feet like the feet of a deer, He enables me to tread on the heights.”  Habakkuk 3:19