Orig: 12/8/02
EZR 7:27 Praise be to the LORD, the God of our fathers, who has put it into the king's heart to bring honor to the house of the LORD in Jerusalem in this way 28 and who has extended his good favor to me before the king and his advisers and all the king's powerful officials. Because the hand of the LORD my God was on me, I took courage and gathered leading men from Israel to go up with me.
Some songs I simply refuse to sing in church. I will not sing “wooh-oooh” parts (or any non-translatable jargon) unless it is a youth song with hand motions. I definitely will not sing a song that I believe is not accurate according to Scripture. Although Chris Tomlin is one of my favorite worship song writers, one song line I refuse to sing is from his “Your Grace is Enough”. See if you can catch his misinterpretation of Scripture, “Great is your love and justice God. You use the weak to lead the strong.”
What!
When do the weak ever lead the strong? This is a gross misrepresentation of 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 that says, “’My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
If this is the passage Tomlin interpreted, then he is wrong (at best). The weak never lead the strong in Scripture or real life. In life, weakness belongs to the coward who usually leads no one, but at best leads poorly-cowardly.
Courageous is a characteristic of the strong. It is the courageous that we read about in Scripture, made strong by their ruthless faith in God.
Fear invades us all; the weak and the strong, but they respond to it differently. The weakness of the coward results from a loss of trust in the self or his or her object of faith-God. The strength of the courageous is a byproduct of God’s ongoing faithfulness and man’s subsequent trust in that faithfulness. Ezra took courage (remember, we have to take it) or “was strengthened (NASB)”, as a result of God’s hand or blessing being upon him.
I know that I keep beating the same drum, but courage is action. It is action that is inspired by the faithful “hand of the Lord (28)” upon a life. To sit is to deny the power of God upon a given situation. To sit is to become a coward.
Sincerely waiting on God for marching (i.e. acting) orders leads to greater trust. Greater trust leads to greater action. Greater action leads to greater strength. But to wait on God yet refuse to act on God’s will is to not trust in God at all. Lack of action and lack of trust produces a coward for God. Cowardice is weakness birthed through an inability to act. Courage is the result of a person strengthened by trusting the faithfulness of God.
