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Music For the Soul
Devotional: September 6th

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ALL STRENGTH IN CHRIST

I can do all things in Him that strengtheneth me. - Philippians 4:13

"I can do all things." That rendering of Paul’s words does not exactly represent what he really meant. In one aspect they say more than Paul says, and in another less. For he is not only speaking about what he can do, but also of what he can endure. Action is but half - and often the lesser half - of life; so we have to widen the expression to include both doing and bearing. But, on the other hand, "all things" must be subject to some limitations. Common sense dictates these. The Apostle is making no preposterous claim to a kind of quasi-omnipotence. He felt himself ready for anything that might come. "I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. ... I have learned in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content." But "content" is not Paul’s meaning. The plain rendering is "self-sufficient." Take away from that word all the arrogance that is in it, and understand it to mean independent of circumstances or lord of externals. What Paul says is that he is ready for everything, equipped for any fortune, able to do whatever is commanded, able to bear whatever is imposed.

We have here just the true attitude for a Christian soul: to be so far self-sufficing as that externals do not gain the mastery. We should be able always to keep the bilge-water down by working the pumps, and to have our hands on the tiller and follow the course which the Alaster-Navigator has chartered out for us, whatever winds blow or waves roll. So shall we have strength for all things, and be equal to any variety of fortune. In some great cathedral the temperature will vary little between midsummer and midwinter. The walls are thick; and it matters not whether the sunshine be blazing on the piazza outside or whether icicles be hanging from the cornices of the building, there is the same atmosphere within. We should carry our atmospheres with us. Our spiritual heat, like the temperature of our bodies, should keep pretty nearly the same at the poles and at the equator.

" I have strength for everything." Now, that may be said in a great many different keys and moods, and may be the expression of almost opposite feelings. It may be the proud boast of an unnatural and over-strained stoicism which tries to crush down the sensibilities of human nature, and thereby destroys the nature that it is trying to steady. Or the boast may come from an underestimate of the difficulties and vicissitudes that fall to be encountered in every life, and an over-estimate of our poor powers to face them. Many a young man flings himself into the battle of life with an unbounded confidence that he is equipped for all its events, and by the time that grey hairs begin to show upon the black head, instead of saying, "I can do all things," he is ready to wail, "I can do nothing; I am an utter failure." But " I can do all things" may be said, and ought to be said, by us, as the result of our simply leaning on an Almighty strength. Then levity, ignorance of one’s own weakness, ignorance of the serried ranks of enemies that beset every attempt at noble life, disappear, and what on other lips sounds like the most arrogant and insane presumption, which is sure to be punished, comes to be an utterance fitted for the lips of the humblest and the most self-distrustful. " I have strength for anything," and yet not I, "but Christ in me."

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