HOPE AND RENEWED STRENGTH

By Denise Trio  

“Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”—Isaiah 40:28-31 (NIV)

“Eight . . . nine . . . ten!” I count in my head as I put the weights back down on the rack and wipe the sweat from my forehead. I lift weights because I know it’s good for my health and increases my physical strength. The way my muscles get stronger is with the resistance of the weight. The tiny tears in my muscles at the end of a hard workout are painful. My arms and legs feel weary. 

Our hearts are like this as well. Sometimes the weight of life makes us tired and weary. Maybe you lost your job and you’re worried about how you’ll make ends meet next month. Perhaps a friend or family member is ill and the doctors are not optimistic about their diagnosis. Or maybe you’re suffering silently with depression, anxiety, and loneliness. It’s as if you’ve done one too many reps and there’s no way for you to carry on.

But the irony about lifting weights is that it’s proven to make your muscles stronger. Resistance makes you stronger. 

The best news for our hearts is that we don’t have to face resistance alone. We have a supernatural, everlasting, all-powerful source of strength in our Creator who never grows tired or weary. The promise from Isaiah in today’s Scripture says that He will give strength to our weary hearts and increase our power when we are weak. 

The psalmist says, “Great is our Lord and mighty in power; His understanding has no limit” (Psalm 147:5 NIV). We could spend our entire lives learning about the Lord, and we would still never gain full comprehension of who He is. In our weariness and our depleted strength, over and over again, we can turn to God and discover more about His character and His ways. In the depths of those moments of discovery of about our Father is where our hope is built. 

“Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength.” This promise is for you!

The Hebrew word for hope here is qavah and is also translated as “to trust, to wait, to look for, and to expect.” It’s used in other places in the Bible when describing binding material together, collecting, and holding fast as applied to strength. 

Hope is not passive. Just like I have to grasp the dumbbell with my hands to perform each rep, there is action involved with hope. The protein-packed meal I eat after a workout provides my body energy and replenishes my strength. If our physical bodies are strengthened by weights and food, how much more will our hearts be strengthened by our almighty and everlasting God? 

Put your hope in the Lord today and find your strength in Him.

“Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! ‘Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?’ ‘Who has ever given to God, that God should repay them?’ For from him and through him and for him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen.”—Romans 11:33-36 (NIV)

Pause and Reflect: How can you look for and expect hope in an area of your life that seems hopeless?

Practice: Knowing that God is the source of all power and strength, consider what you can do to bind together, collect, and hold fast to strength.