How Do I Find the Strength of Christ? — Carter Conlon

God bless you this morning, Times Square Church. I don't do this very often, but I feel it released you today. There's a new movie, the same company that made the movie Fireproof and Courageous, have put out a new movie called October Baby.

And I had the privilege of having an advanced viewing of that. And I have to honestly say, it might be the best Christian movie I've ever seen in my lifetime. It's the story of a young lady who had severe medical problems, found out through it that she was the result of a failed abortion.

She was adopted. And it's the journey to find her natural mother and to find forgiveness. Powerful story. I do recommend, even the toughest guys here, if you go to see it, bring a handkerchief with you.

If you don't cry in this movie, you're dead. I tried not to. I tried my, there was another gentleman sitting with me and I tried, I tried, I tried, but I lost it. And that's powerful. It's clean. You can take your family there.

There's not a word or scene that will make you uncomfortable with your children or teenage children. Tastefully done, powerfully done. So we need to support people who are making these kinds of movies.

Strength in Christ Through Tested Experience

Philippians chapter four, please, if you'll turn there. How do I find the strength of Christ? How do I find the strength of Christ? Father, I thank you, Lord, with all my heart for your presence in this sanctuary today.

I thank you, Lord God, for the anointing of your Holy Spirit that makes your word come alive. You quicken your ministers, Lord, those of us who are called to take these words and bring them to the people, Lord, you quicken us so that they're not affected by the dullness of our natural minds.

I pray for that quickening, God, to speak. And I ask you for the quickening of those online, those in the sanctuary, in the annex, other places, Lord, to be able to hear this. Send it deep into our very being so that these words become part of our expression and experience in Christ.

Lord, thank you for who you are and for what you do. Thank you that you're gonna give us strength for these days we're living in. Thank you, Lord, with all my heart, in Jesus' name. Philippians chapter four, words of the apostle Paul, title, How Do I Find the Strength of Christ?

Beginning at verse 10. But I rejoiced in the Lord greatly that now at the last, your care of me has flourished again, wherein you were also careful, but you lacked opportunity. Now, Paul is saying, you wanted to give to me, but there was a season where you couldn't, but now you have.

Not that I speak in respect of want, for I have learned in whatsoever state I am therewith to be content. I know both how to be abased and I know how to abound. Everywhere and in all things I'm instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need.

I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me. Phenomenal statement. I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me, but it's a statement that can only honestly be made through experience.

Now, verse 10, Paul says, you've helped me and for that I'm deeply grateful. Verse 11, I'm paraphrasing him, but he says, I'm not saying this because my personal need had put me in a situation where I would've been overwhelmed.

Now, Paul was in jail and he wrote this letter from a jail cell and he wrote it to one of the churches that had sent to him through messenger some assistance. And he says, thank you for helping me, but I'm not in personal need, I would not be overwhelmed for I have learned that Christ in me is a victorious strength over everything that I have faced and will have to face in this life.

Phenomenal statement. Of course, it was a real statement in the life of the apostle Paul for it had been a word of God in him that had been proven. Who could argue it after all that Paul had been through?

Now, Paul didn't learn this by study, nor by revelation. Now, he had studied the scriptures, he knew the scriptures, he was a calculated, as it is, debater of truth everywhere he went. And of course, he tells us elsewhere in the scriptures that he was lifted up into the presence of God, a higher place than normal men could go.

And he was given such incredible revelation that it required a thorn in his flesh to keep him from becoming proud. But all of this study and all of this revelation didn't produce this knowledge in him, what produced it was experience.

Now, we can study the word of God like we're doing today. I'm opening a text of scripture, and I've read to you a verse that is one of the most profound in the New Testament. I can do all things through Christ, which strengthened me.

Now, we're studying it, and we could memorize it, and you could leave here today and you could be quoting it everywhere. You could quote it on the subway, quote it to people on the street. You could talk to your children about it when you get home.

But study just exposes us to truth, but it's the practical experience of it that brings us to the place where the real power of that truth is known. Now, there's a great difference sometimes between the person who says, I know the scripture, and the person who's like Paul says, I have learned.

There's a huge difference. Now, you think about it for a moment. In Mark chapter four, the disciples had been on one side of a lake, and they were with Jesus doing ministry, and then suddenly he turns to them and says, let's go to the other side.

Now, at that point, they know they're going to the other side. They have the word right from the mouth of Jesus. Let's go to the other side. Jesus didn't say, I hope we make it. He said, let's go. It was a definitive statement.

So they could have at that point turned to the crowd and say, folks, we're going to the other side. Jesus just said, we're going to the other side, and I know, I know this is true. And so they got in the boat, and they began to row the boat, and the scripture, of course, tells us that they came into a fierce storm, so fierce that they feared for their survival.

Jesus appeared to be asleep in the back of the boat, and they woke him up, and they said, master, don't you care that we perish? And he said, why are you so fearful? Where's your faith? The scripture tells us he got up, and he rebuked the wind and rebuked the sea, and I think it went from a virtual mini hurricane to just a mirror.

And the scripture says they were stunned and astonished, and they said, what kind of a man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him? Now, they got to the other side of this journey. Now, can you imagine how they had the same message, but how different it would be after facing the storm, their own fears, their own mortality, and experiencing the incredible power of God.

Now, you can imagine being on the other side, the boat pulls up, the nose of it hits the shore, and 12 guys get out. Their hands are rubbed raw from holding those oars and trying to make it through the storm in their own strength.

They look so bedraggled. They've been up all night. Their eyes are bloodshot. They've got seaweed in their hair. Their composure is completely gone. Their clothes are soaking wet, and they step out of the boat.

And on the beginning of the journey, it was, I know, but at the end of the journey, what was it? I have learned. When Jesus says you're gonna make it to the other side, you're gonna make it to the other side.

Joseph as a Tested Vessel of Provision

My point is simple. People with experience have much more weight in their speech than people who just have knowledge. Now, God needed vessels like Paul. He needed to encourage these young believers not to quit when their own circumstances became so difficult that it threatened to overwhelm them.

God needed to send somebody ahead as it is, as a tangible proof to those coming after that what he says is what he will do, and who he says he is is who he is, and that there is a sovereign and supernatural keeping power of God that is available to those who are willing to put their trust in him.

Now, think about this for a moment. In Genesis, God knew that his own people were going to have to endure a time of great famine. And in Psalm 105, the scripture tells us that he sent a man before them, a man called Joseph.

Let me just read it to you, just for time's sake. It's Psalm 105, beginning of verse 16. It says, moreover, he called for a famine upon the land. He broke the whole staff of bread. I don't know why that had to be, but it had to be.

There are seasons in history when God will shut the supply down to get ahold of his people, to get his people into the place where they need to be to produce a certain cry that will cause him to do again what he can only do among his own people and perhaps in that society.

You see it all throughout scripture. People become, I'm not saying it's the case here, but they become very casual with the things of God. They let slip through their fingers, precious truth, a precious reality and relationship.

And so in mercy, folks, it's mercy, he shuts the supply, turns off the tap as it is a provision. And that's what he's done all through history. And he called for a famine and he broke the whole staff of bread.

But before calling for the famine, the scripture says in verse 17 of Psalm 105, he sent a man before them, even Joseph, who was sold for a servant, whose feet they hurt with fetters. He was laid in iron.

Until the time that his word came, the word of the Lord tried him. That means put him through the tests. He was given a promise. He didn't fully understand it, but he understood that somehow it would affect his family.

And suddenly after being given the promise, he finds himself in a fire. He finds himself in places he never dreamed he would be, where his only strength could be God. His only way to get through could be not to lose confidence in the word that God had given him.

He was a type of the disciples crossing the lake in the boat, except it lasted for 13 years in his case. 13 years of having a promise, 13 years of going into almost unspeakable hardship where the word he had been given was working something.

That's what it means it tried him. It was working something in him, not for himself, but for the sake of those who are going to be coming in after him. There was a myriad of people who are going to need provision, not only his own family, but the nation in which he found himself.

People were going to be starving. There was going to be no hope. And God wanted to put something in his hand, but you can't put this kind of treasure in the hands of an untested vessel. You can't put it in an unformed character.

You and I don't have the strength of character to represent Christ until Christ forms himself in us, until he becomes our source of supply and thinking and strength, until we have been broken and remade into the image of the one who came to this world and went to a cross for your sake and for mine.

Verse 21, it tells us that he made him Lord over his house and ruler over all his substance. He became a man with authority to dispense the provision of God, both for his own people and for others. I want to suggest to you that we're facing a similar situation in our time.

We're going into difficulty. We're already there. I know there's some people here say today, pastor, that was a year ago for me. Did you ever occur to you that the mercy of God will send you and I through first and prepare us to be able to dispense the supply of mercy and kindness of God and the compassion of our Christ to be able to lead people to that source of supply, not as somebody who just knows, but somebody who has learned.

Paul's Sufferings and the Furtherance of the Gospel

Somebody who could say like Paul, you see, Paul listed the classrooms that he had been in. Now he had been in a lot of classrooms where the truths that he had preached had become so real that he no longer doubted them.

He believed that wherever he was, he was still fully in the care and purposes of God. And he'd been in some awful places, but it produced something in him. When he was able to say to this young church, he wrote to, thank you for sending help to me, but I'm not overwhelmed.

I'm not cast down by my circumstances. I know whom I have believed. I am persuaded. I have learned to be content, whether I have an abundance or it seems that I have nothing, whether I'm in health or whether I'm sick, whether I'm a based or whether I bound, I can do all things through Christ because he had been put into the classrooms where only Christ could have taken him through.

Listen to the classrooms of the apostle Paul. Let me read them to you. He says in 2 Corinthians 11, beginning of verse 22, are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they the seed of Abraham?

So am I. Are they the ministers of Christ? I am more. In labors, more abundant. In stripes, that means whipping, beatings above measure. In prisons, more frequent. In deaths, or that's in threats of death, often.

Of the Jews, five times received die, 40 stripes save one. In other words, five times I was whipped, five times tied to a pole, five times given 39 lashes. Folks, most, a lot of people didn't survive the 39.

Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times suffered shipwreck. A night and a day I've been in the deep. That means in the ocean. In journeyings, often. In perils of water, in perils of robbers, in perils of my own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren.

In weariness and painfulness, in watchings, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness. On top of all these things that are without, that which cometh upon me daily, the care of all the churches.

You know, whenever I get discouraged, you know, it's a good thing to go back and read these things again. You see, though in prison, he wrote our opening text. And he could write these incredible words to many that were going to have to follow him into their own trials.

Listen to what he says in Philippians chapter one. In verse 12, he says, "'But I would you should understand, brethren, "'that the things which happen to me, "'have fallen out rather to the furtherance of the gospel.'".

That's incredible. Paul says, I want you to understand something. I've gone through all of these things. And he's actually writing to them from prison, as if it couldn't get any worse. He's writing this letter and he says, I want you to understand something, that all these things that have come upon me, have come to me for the sake of the gospel advancing.

Now that is such a foreign concept to our generation, where we just simply live to come to church to escape suffering, don't we? In this generation, we wait for the altar call so that we can get out from under all our burdens.

But Paul says, no, all these burdens were put upon me to prepare me in a sense for you. Now listen to what he says in verse 20. "'According to my earnest,' in chapter one of Philippians, "'my earnest expectation and my hope, "'that in nothing I shall be ashamed,' or that means triumphed over, "'but that with all boldness as always, "'so now also Christ shall be magnified in my body, "'whether it be by life or by death.'".

That's incredible. Paul says, I'm not triumphed over, but I stand boldly as I always have, believing that Jesus Christ will be magnified, whether he chooses to let me live or whether he chooses now to take me home.

That he will be magnified. He will be glorified through me. Now, how could Paul know? He's writing these words. How could he know that we'd be studying them today? 2 ,000 years later, here we are reading the words of the pen that are coming from his hand, and he says, I know that whether I live or whether I die, there's a divine purpose to this.

I know I haven't fallen out of favor with God. The trials in my life haven't come to me because I am somehow a deficient Christian. I know that these things have come for a divine purpose. And folks, he's writing, the hand of God is over his hand, writing these words on a parchment, as far as he knows, to a little church that has sent a small offering to help him.

And having this confidence in verse 25, I know, now, between 20 and 25, he says, living for me is Christ and dying is gain. In other words, he says in verse 23, I'm caught, in a sense, between the two.

I'd like to leave this world and to be with Christ, which is far better. Nevertheless, he says, to abide in the flesh is more needful for you. And having this confidence, I know that I shall abide and continue with you all for your furtherance and joy of faith.

Now, here's what it means. Paul says, I have this confidence. This confidence is that the Lord is leaving me where I presently am and possibly will be tomorrow for you. For your sakes, he's leaving me here.

As an example, just like Joseph, to be giving out a supply, in a sense, a visual example, a word that has more power than a casual observer who talks a great talk about trials and suffering in the word of God, but flees at the least opposition.

No, God had a man who he brought through floods and famines and betrayals and difficulties. And he said to one of the churches, he said, I don't want you ignorant of the trials that came to us when we were in Asia.

He said, we were so pressed down, we had no strength left. He said, we despaired of living, but we had the sense of death, he said, in ourselves that only Christ, in a sense, could raise us from the dead and only Christ could keep us.

And then at the end of the journey, Paul could say, and Christ did. I know, I have learned that I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. I have this confidence that the Lord's leaving me to where I am for you.

Amazing. How foreign scripture is to this present generation. That the thought that Jesus could let you and I suffer for somebody else's sake. Like in an age where, especially in this country, where everybody theologically lives to escape hardship and to the point where the focus is all about being blessed and healthy and prosperous and socially relevant and having impact.

Where did the scriptures go in this generation? Where did the understanding of the word of God go? That these are not the people who will make the difference in these coming days. I'm telling you, these people will mostly scatter.

The people who will make the difference are those who are now going through flood and famine and trial and fire. Are they high profile? No, almost nobody is. But they're going through these things in advance.

Then when hardship and famine and trial come, suddenly, these are the people who find themselves with keys in their hand to a supply of God that is not available to those who just know but have never learned.

Folks, there's a season where you and I are gonna have to know Christ. We're going to have to be able to say, I have learned to be content. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. I made it through an impossible family situation and found the strength I needed in God to become the man or woman that I need to be.

I made it in the workplace when people mocked and ridiculed me and laughed at me daily and tried to take me down and stab me in the back. And I would feel such pain when I went home and I'd feel such pain when I went in.

But I trusted Christ for my strength and he brought me through. It's a person without resources today who could say, I had to believe him to feed my family. I had to believe him to put something on the table.

And it came miraculously time and time again, various different sources. But there was a despair that threatened to swallow me, it threatened to overwhelm me, it threatened to take away my very heart.

It seemed like it would never end. But God finally, the light came into my heart and I finally understood the reason. He has been faithful to me. I have learned that I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

I've learned that God doesn't fail those who trust in him. I didn't get it from New Believers class. I didn't get it from Friday night Bible school. I got it by bowing my head in my apartment and believing God for food on my table.

That's where it came from. And I'm telling you folks, these will be the warriors in the last hour of time. These will be the nobodies and nothings who suddenly come out of a cave where they've been shedding with God and are willing to take on giants and lions and have a word for this generation.

Paul says that you will be able to continue in your journey of faith with the same joy and confidence of Jesus Christ that I have come to know. I'm left here for you. This is in great measure what it means in Romans chapter 12 and verse one, when you and I are exhorted to give our lives as a living sacrifice, which is reasonable service, the willingness as it is to be brought through my present trials, not looking for a quick way out, but understanding that God may be leaving me there as is necessary for the sake of others.

Suffering as Preparation for Ministry

I'm not aloof to what I'm talking about. There are weeks sometimes when I can't explain it to you. There's no words for it. When I have to fight this encroaching darkness, I can't even explain it. There are no words in my vocabulary.

I was talking to somebody recently. I said, I don't know how to tell you what I have to fight because I don't have words that explain it. I can't put my finger on it. It just seems to be a pressing down on every side, an oppression in the mind, going to bed happy and waking up under a cloud, and there's no reason for it.

Other than God is teaching me. God is preparing me just as he's preparing you to not just have to stand here and just give you something that I have learned or known or studied, but something that has become part of my character, the knowledge that only Christ can keep me.

Only Christ can get me through this journey. Only Christ can give me the power that I need to finish this journey that's before me. Being left as long as is necessary for the sake of others. Incredible concept, isn't it?

That suffering might be appointed for a reason. Remember when God came to Ananias and said, you're gonna go to a street, and there's in this house, Peter, there's a man, or Ananias, there's a man in this house, and he says, you're gonna lay hands on him, and I will show him the great things he must suffer for my name's sake.

So there was an appointment in his life. This was a man who was going to pen much of our New Testament, and he couldn't have penned it. There'd be no weight to it. It would be just thoughts about God.

No, it had to go deeper than that. It had to be, he had to have provision. There had to be a weight of something in Paul's life. In order to get that in him, he had to go through painfulness and fastings and nakedness and peril and sword and beatings to get to the point where he's in prison and say, thank you for your gift, but I'm not overwhelmed by my circumstances.

I have learned to be content. I've learned how to survive. I've learned because I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. It has been Christ who kept me when I was a night, day and a half in the ocean, hanging onto a piece of wood.

It was Christ who kept me in the belly of the ship. It was Christ who kept me when I was chained to a pillar, my back bleeding and my skin in shreds. It was Christ who kept me when I was stoned in the Roman arena.

It was Christ who kept me when I stood before kings and governors and rulers. It was Christ who kept me when I stood and faced blasphemous accusation about my motives for standing and preaching him. It was Christ who kept me.

It's Christ who keeps me now. It's Christ who will always keep me. Now folks, this generation doesn't need another Bible study. This generation needs to see a church, the church of Jesus Christ. In the days ahead, it'll be people who said, I've come through fire.

I've come through flood. I've come through trial. I've come through difficulty and it's all been for you. I've come through it because God loves you and he wants you to know that he is your forgiveness.

He is your resource. He is your provision. He is your eyes. He is your heart. He is your mind. He is your hope. He is your future. And he brought me through the valley of the shadow of death for your sake, not for my sake.

As more I study the scripture, the more I experience God, the more appalled I am at what we preached in our generation. It borders on blasphemy. Will I let Jesus prove to me that he's truly my strength?

Will my willing to let him prove inside of me that through him, I can do all things? Am I willing? See, did I come to church today to escape my present trial? Or am I willing to find the higher purpose of God in it?

The Church’s Calling to Bear Fruit for Others

Phenomenal thought. Why am I living for God? You see, this doesn't even make sense. If our whole focus of being a Christian is about ourselves, this message makes no sense whatsoever. But once we understand that the reason the church is on the earth is not about ourselves, it's about others.

Then it starts to make sense. Then all the index cards start to fall in the right places. Then we begin to realize, God, you have to do what you have to do. If your cry is the same as mine and others around, then Lord, I wanna make a difference.

I don't wanna get to heaven with an empty basket and a whole bunch of knowledge. Lord, I'm supposed to bear fruit. If I'm truly in you and you are in me, there's gotta be life. There's gotta be fruit.

So Lord, whatever you have to take me through, wherever I need to go. Now, folks, as with all of us here, it's not necessarily our first choice. We would love to just sort of coast in. You know, just suddenly empowered and filled with knowledge and have the power to raise the dead and heal the sick and do all this with no character worked in us, with no heart of Christ, no understanding of spiritual realities, shallow as a rain puddle and preaching about depths that we know nothing about.

But God in his mercy takes us into these places if we are willing to be poured out for other people, if we're willing to let our trials produce faith. There's such a peace in this when we're finally resigned to it.

I'm not saying that we pursue trial. It will pursue you. Don't worry about it. It'll come your way. But you know, we're coming into a time of famine. I don't know how difficult it's gonna get, but I sense it's gonna be very difficult.

And so, and I don't know how long it's gonna last, but am I willing, are you willing to be the Joseph to our generation, the Paul, to those who are coming after, who are afraid and don't fully, they haven't had the privilege of the journey.

They don't have the voice of a father or a mother or a brother or sister speaking from the other side, saying, listen, God will be faithful. You might be a little windblown and wet and have seaweed in your hair, but God's gonna get you through.

He promised to, he took me and he's gonna take you. If we take the easy way out, we'll never know this. We'll know about it, but we won't know it. And our biggest strength will be able to say, I know this or I know that.

We'll never be able to say, I have learned. There's a huge difference between knowing and learning. You know, I could invite somebody here today to say, listen, tomorrow, next Sunday, I'd like you to do a 15-minute presentation on patience.

And so you could spend your whole week studying, get your concordance out, learn all about patience, and then get annoyed because I take too long introducing you and take some of your time. You know about patience, but you haven't learned it.

And that's the difference. I know a lot. I know a lot of scripture, but I haven't learned it all. It's only God can bring that into my life. But ultimately, it ends up with one testimony through Christ.

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Praise be to God. I wanna give an altar call. It's a little bit different today, but here it is. This is for people who don't want to escape their present trial, but to find the higher purpose of God in it.

It's to come to an altar and say, Lord, I came here thinking I'm gonna hear a word that's gonna get me out of this, but now I understand that you might be working something, you might be working something out in me that only this trial can produce.

But you also tell me, Lord, that you'll not let me be tried above I'm able to bear it. When it starts to threaten to overwhelm me, you'll show me a way out. That's the mercy of our God. But for those who are willing, for the sake of other people, Lord, I'm not content to be shallow as a Christian.

I'm not content to live on the surface of an ocean. I'm not content to just quote scripture and have so little of it living in me. I honestly want to make a difference. I want to have the supply of Christ in my hand for this generation.

I want weight in my words that when I look at you and say, you're gonna make it, it has a lot more weight coming from somebody on the other side of the storm than before the storm begins. Now, Father, I thank you for this word today.

I thank you, Lord, for giving us the grace to receive it and to let it be worked out in our hearts. Jesus, thank you. I praise you in your precious name. Now, if this is you, this altar call applies to you, I'm gonna ask as we stand that you make your way to the front of the sanctuary and the annex.

You could stand between the screens. Same thing at Summit, the School of Ministry and Roxbury. And for those who are watching from their homes, just go to your knees in your living room. Let's pray together and let's believe God for great strength for this generation.

And his mercy endures.

Encouragement From Those Who Have Endured Trials

It's an awesome thing for those who are going through trial right now to know that you are somebody's Joseph. You're somebody's Esther. You are exactly the prescription of God for somebody that's coming after you.

When you go through trial trusting in Christ, he's going to put weight. Every one of your words falls like a lead hammer. Those who've never struggled quite often, their words are like feathers. Just the wind blows them away.

But for those who have walked with God and know God, there's something so different when they speak. Their speech has weight. And just the words, you're gonna make it. From somebody who's gone and you know, you look at their hands and you hear it in their voice.

And you can see they've been beaten up a bit along life's journey and they look at you in the eye and they say, you're gonna make it son. And there's a power in that spoken word. A lot different than if my grandson is two and a half looks at me and says, Papa, you're going to make it.

You know, it's cute, but there's not a lot of weight behind it yet. Whole lot different when Ben Crandall, Pastor Ben Crandall looks at me and says, you're gonna make it pastor, you're gonna make it. So you have the privilege of understanding why that you're going through what you're going through.

How else do we prove Christ? How else do we enter this school where Christ becomes our life? Unless he has to be, otherwise it's just an academic concept, it's not a reality. You know, Paul could have easily penned words, you know, that he had had that were revelation, but where the real strength, as a matter of fact, God told him he couldn't write it down.

He couldn't even speak it, lest I think we'd be diverted from it. He could only write down what he had experienced and what experience had taught him. It's quite phenomenal when you think about what he could have written about heaven and spiritual mysteries and revelations he had, but yet the great power of his life was the fact that he went through fire and flood and trial and betrayal and everything else he had to go through and he made right choices and trusted Christ and at the end of his life there's such an incredible weight that we're talking about it today.

I don't know who's coming after you, whether it's just the influence God will give you in society in general or it's your own family, nephews, nieces, aunts, uncles, cousins, brothers, sisters, I don't know, but I do know that if you make the right choice right now, the right choice, Christ in me, I can do all things through Christ.

I can get through this. I can prove God, I can prove the reliability of God by trusting in Christ. It's no deeper than that. And when I get through, I'm gonna have something to say on the other side, thank God.

Prayer for Strength and a Faithful Testimony

Now, Father, I just simply pray for all of us here today. Lord Jesus Christ, be God in us. Give us strength we don't have. Give us desires of our hearts that are not even our own, they're yours. Give us faith to get through our present storm, even if we can't see the light where we come into the tunnel and we can't see the light at the other end either.

It's a season of incredible darkness, but Lord, yet still, you're the one who said we're gonna go through the valley of the shadow of death. We will come out with the testimony of goodness and mercy following us all the days of our lives.