MY STRENGTH AND MY SONG

BREAD

2 The LORD is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation. He is my God, and I will praise him, my father’s God, and I will exalt him. Exodus 15:2 (NIV)

1 I love you, O LORD, my strength. 2 The LORD is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge. He is my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. 3 I call to the LORD, who is worthy of praise, and I am saved from my enemies. Psalm 18:1-3 (NIV)

1 The LORD is my light and my salvation– whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life– of whom shall I be afraid? Psalm 27:1 (NIV)

1 My soul finds rest in God alone; my salvation comes from him. 2 He alone is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will never be shaken. Psalm 62:1-2 (NIV)

16 But I will sing of your strength, in the morning I will sing of your love; for you are my fortress, my refuge in times of trouble. 17 O my Strength, I sing praise to you; you, O God, are my fortress, my loving God. Psalm 59:16-17 (NIV)

4 Then Joseph said to his brothers, “Come close to me.” When they had done so, he said, “I am your brother Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt! 5 And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. 6 For two years now there has been famine in the land, and for the next five years there will not be plowing and reaping. 7 But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance. Genesis 45:4-7 (NIV)

2 Surely God is my salvation; I will trust and not be afraid. The LORD, the LORD, is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation. 3 With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation. 4 In that day you will say: “Give thanks to the LORD, call on his name; make known among the nations what he has done, and proclaim that his name is exalted. 5 Sing to the LORD, for he has done glorious things; let this be known to all the world.” Isaiah 12:2-5 (NIV)

32 And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel and the prophets, 33 who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, 34 quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. 35 Women received back their dead, raised to life again. Others were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection. 36 Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. 37 They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated– 38 the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground. 39 These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised. 40 God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect. 1 Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. 2 Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. 3 Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. Hebrews 11:32 – 12:3 (NIV)

BUTTER

“When God is our strength, it is strength indeed; when our strength is our own, it is only weakness.” St. Augustine

“A primary qualification for serving God with any amount of success, and for doing God’s work well and triumphantly, is a sense of our own weakness. When God’s warrior marches forth to battle, strong in his own might, when he boasts, ‘I know that I shall conquer, my own right arm and my conquering sword shall get unto me the victory’, defeat is not far distant. God will not go forth with that man who marches in his own strength. He who reckoneth on victory thus has reckoned wrongly, for ‘it is not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts’. They who go forth to fight, boasting of their prowess, shall return with their gay banners trailed in the dust, and their armour stained with disgrace. Those who serve God must serve Him in His own way, and in His strength, or He will never accept their service. That which man doth, unaided by divine strength, God can never own. The mere fruits of the earth He casteth away; He will only reap that corn, the seed of which was sown from heaven, watered by grace, and ripened by the sun of divine love. God will empty out all that thou hast before He will put His own into thee; He will first clean out the granaries before He will fill them with the finest of the wheat……Your emptiness is but the preparation for your being filled, and your casting down is but the making ready for your lifting up.” C. H. Spurgeon

“In God’s hands intended evil becomes eventual good. Joseph tied himself to the pillar of this promise and held on for dear life. Nothing in his story glosses over the presence of evil. Quite the contrary. Bloodstains, tearstains are everywhere. Joseph’s heart was rubbed raw against the rocks of disloyalty and miscarried justice. Yet time and time again God redeemed the pain. The torn robe became a royal one. The pit became a palace. The broken family grew old together. The very acts intended to destroy God’s servant turned out to strengthen him.” Max Lucado

“There is in Him an all-sufficiency of grace and strength; all our springs are in Him, and all our streams are from Him.” Matthew Henry

“Our strength is discovered in our dependency upon the One Who spoke the world into being and Who loves us with an everlasting love. It is His all sufficient power and not our weak strength we are to lean upon. The horse is made ready for battle but victory rests with the Lord.” BHY

“I have not given you the spirit of fear but of a sound mind. Therefore today I call you Fearless, the way I called Gideon a valiant warrior when he was afraid to fight. I am the same God who gave Gideon the strength to win his battle with the enemy, and I am your God. The only time something will overtake your heart is if you take your eyes off Me. I don’t want you bound up in terror. As long as you are walking in My power and Truth, you have nothing to be afraid of, and no matter what it looks like now, Victory will always be yours. So fear not, my beloved; I will never leave your side–day and night I am fighting for you. Love, Your King who removes all fear.” Sheri Rose Shepherd

“God’s work done in God’s way will never lack God’s supply.” Hudson Taylor

“The strength of the vessel can be demonstrated only by the hurricane, and the power of the gospel can be fully shown only when the Christian is subjected to some fiery trial. If God would make manifest the fact that ‘He giveth songs in the night,’ He must first make it night.” William Taylor

“See God in everything, and God will calm and color all that thou doest see! It may be that the circumstances of our sorrows will not be removed, their condition will remain unchanged; but if Christ, as Lord and Master of our life, is brought into our grief and gloom, ‘He will compass us about with songs of deliverance.’ To see HIM, and to be sure that His wisdom cannot err, His power cannot fail, His love can never change; to know that even His direst dealings with us are for our deepest spiritual gain, is to be able to say, in the midst of bereavement, sorrow, pain, and loss, ‘The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’ Nothing else but seeing God in everything will make us loving and patient with those who annoy and trouble us. They will be to us then only instruments for accomplishing His tender and wise purposes toward us, and we shall even find ourselves at last inwardly thanking them for the blessing they bring us. Nothing else will completely put an end to all murmuring or rebelling thoughts.” Hannah W. Smith

“The foundational principle of grace is that God’s kingdom priorities are completely inverted from those of the world. God’s plan is to magnify His saving mercy and grace not through human strength but rather through its weakness…The gospel of grace would remind us that we can’t be used until we operate not out of our own strength but in weakness, as we depend on Christ’s Spirit to show the reality of the cross.” Paul Kooistra

“Despair whispers, ‘Lie down and die; give it all up.’… But, however much Satan may urge this course upon you, you cannot follow it if you are a child of God. His divine fiat has bid thee go from strength to strength, and so thou shalt, and neither death nor hell shall turn thee from thy course. What if for a while thou art called to stand still; yet this is but to renew thy strength for some greater advance in due time.” Charles H. Spurgeon

HEART SAVOR

• God puts a new song in my mouth – a hymn of praise to our God.
• I will sing of the Lord for He alone is worthy of praise.
• All power and all might are His alone – when He acts who can reverse it?

Read Full Post »