Effort is great and necessary for a lot of things, but attempting isn’t always to be applauded. “E” for effort doesn’t mean that it is enough. Somethings can only come from abiding in Christ. A good example of this is love. It takes more than human effort to love others as we are commanded to do. John H. Jowett wrote:

Love is not a manufacture; it is a fruit. It is not born of certain works; it springs out of certain relations. It does not come from doing something; it comes from living with Somebody. “Abide in Me.” That is how love is born, for “love is of God, and God is love.”

How many people are striving who are not abiding. They live in a manufactory, they do not live in a home. They are trying to make something instead of to know Somebody. “This is life, to know Thee.” When I am related to the Lord Jesus, when I dwell with Him, love is as surely born as beauty and fragrance are born when my garden and the spring-time dwell together. If we would only wisely cultivate the fellowship of Jesus, everything else would follow in its train—all that gracious succession of beautiful things which are called “the fruits of the Spirit.”

And “herein is our love made perfect.” It is always growing richer, because it is always drawing riches from the inexhaustible love of God. How could it be otherwise? Endless resource must mean endless growth. “Our life is hid with Christ in God,” and hence our love will “grow in all wisdom and discernment.”

God, that comforteth those that are cast down, comforted us– 2 Corinthians 7:6

Paul here makes a general observation and then shares a specific testimony. First, he says, God comforts those who are cast down.

Over and over in Scripture we are reminded that it is precisely those who have fallen on their face before God who will be lifted up. It is the humble who will be exalted, and it is those who lose their life who will find it.

God, it seems, delights to show His abounding sufficiency in the weakness and shortcomings of His people. Therefore, we can rest assured that God will come to those who are spiritually cast down and will lift them up by His grace.

Paul further offers this, not only as a general observation concerning the goodness of God, but as a particular experience of his own life. This was, in other words, not a theoretical contention for Paul. “God comforts the disheartened,” Paul says; “I know, because He has comforted me.”

Paul himself knew what it was to be cast down, to be discouraged, to have doubts and fears. Believer, perhaps you have been thinking you are the only one who wrestles with such obstacles to joy. Not so…every Christian must learn over and again to live by faith, and not by sight.

When we do so, and look to Christ for our sufficiency, our experience will be the same as Paul’s — God will comfort us, as He does all who are cast down.–(Baptist Bible Hour)

“Hold Thou me up, and I shall be safe—.” Psalms 119:117

This should be the Christian’s daily prayer; his way is rough, the dangers are many, his foes are powerful, and he is liable to fall. If we from the heart present this prayer, it proves that we have a sense of our own weakness; a knowledge of the Lord as our strength; genuine humility working within; and a desire to honour God ruling in the conscience. We are in the world, and unless the Lord hold us up, we shall bring guilt on the conscience, disgrace on the gospel, and dishonour to God. We are in the church, and unless the Lord hold us up, we shall prove roots of bitterness, stumbling-blocks, and grieve the godly. We shall be, if we are not, in affliction, and unless the Lord hold us up, we shall faint, be angry with God, as was Jonah, or be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. O believer, lean not on earth; trust not in a friend; place no dependance on gifts; but let your daily, yea, hourly prayer be, “Hold Thou me up, and I shall be safe.” The ear of thy God is open, the heart of thy God is tender, the arm of thy God is strong.

Son of God! Thy blessing grant;
Still supply my every want;
Unsustain’d by Thee, I fall;
Send the strength for which I call;
Weaker than a bruised reed
Help I every moment need. —- James Smith

“Man … is of few days, and full of trouble.” — Job 14:1

It may be of great service to us,– to remember this mournful fact, for it may lead us to set loose by earthly things. There is nothing very pleasant in the recollection that we are not above the shafts of adversity, but it may humble us and prevent our boasting like the Psalmist in our morning’s portion. “My mountain standeth firm: I shall never be moved.” It may stay us from taking too deep root in this soil from which we are so soon to be transplanted into the heavenly garden. Let us recollect the frail tenure upon which we hold our temporal mercies. If we would remember that all the trees of earth are marked for the woodman’s axe, we should not be so ready to build our nests in them. We should love, but we should love with the love which expects death, and which reckons upon separations. Our dear relations are but loaned to us, and the hour when we must return them to the lender’s hand may be even at the door. The like is certainly true of our worldly goods. Do not riches take to themselves wings and fly away? Our health is equally precarious. Frail flowers of the field, we must not reckon upon blooming for ever. There is a time appointed for weakness and sickness, when we shall have to glorify God by suffering, and not by earnest activity. There is no single point in which we can hope to escape from the sharp arrows of affliction; out of our few days there is not one secure from sorrow. Man’s life is a cask full of bitter wine; he who looks for joy in it had better seek for honey in an ocean of brine. Beloved reader, set not your affections upon things of earth: but seek those things which are above, for here the moth devoureth, and the thief breaketh through, but there all joys are perpetual and eternal. The path of trouble is the way home. Lord, make this thought a pillow for many a weary head! –C. H. Spurgeon

I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me – Philippians 4:13

It is not uncommon in human experience to run up against things that are bigger than we are, that we simply cannot overcome in our own strength. It may be a lust that threatens to consume us, an addiction that repeatedly overcomes us, a resentment that is growing inside us, or a sorrow that seems to paralyze us.

It is also not uncommon to try to grit our teeth, hunch our backs, and seek to make it through by shear determination. We tell ourselves we can overcome if we just try hard enough. Isn’t that what being a good Christian means?

Yet here is the mighty apostle Paul admitting that his strength does not come from himself, or from his own willpower. He is not trying to do it on his own. Rather, he is looking to Jesus Christ for the power and deliverance he needs.

How can you make it through this trial? Through Christ. How can you overcome that temptation or addiction? Through Christ. How can you rise above your grief or depression? Through Christ. There is nothing that you cannot do through the strength that Christ has promised to you. Turn to Him, beloved, and find for yourself the confidence, the joy, the strength that Paul found through Christ. –Baptist Bible Hour