Take Hold Of My Strength

¹“Or let him take hold of my strength, that he may make peace with me; and he shall make peace with me.” (Isaiah 27:5). Some of us think that if we have been at odds with God, then making peace with Him is all on us. It makes a certain kind of sense. After all, we know that God loves us perfectly and completely so if there is no peace between us and God, then it must be on us to put things right. But most of us have learned by now that we can't hardly ever do anything all on our own power so why should this be any different? If we think we have to be clean and pure every whit before we dare think about taking hold of God's strength, we need to get that thought out of our heads. The woman who reached out to touch just the hem of Jesus's robes had no strength left in her. She was utterly wasted by her disease. I'm sure she would have loved to meet the Messiah looking and feeling her best but since she didn't have that option, she took hold of His robe and His strength in her abject weakness and was healed all the same. If we are burning with hatred and resentment and enmity towards God but are exhausted from being at war with the whole universe, we can still take God's strength to help us make peace with Him. We don't even have to believe that it will work. Notice the verb change in the verse above. If we take hold of God's strength, we may make peace with Him. God isn't depriving us of our agency and forcing peace on us. We can still take His strength with a divided and doubtful heart, but inevitably, as we are filled with God's strength and His love, we shall make peace with Him. So what are we waiting for? Nobody loves being at war, and being at war with the Creator of Heaven and Earth and everything is especially foolish. All we really have to do is entertain the idea that peace is possible and accept the fact that God will take us just as we are and will lend us His strength, even if we hate or mistrust or have doubts about Him or His methods or His motives. For as long as it takes for us to work through our pride and our ill will, God will make His strength available to us so that we don't have to overcome all of the barriers to peace all by ourselves. And I do know that with God all things are possible, including making peace with Him.