Stone, Bronze, Rock & Gold: Finding Strength To Hope

From the end of the earth I call to you, when my heart is overwhelmed: 

Lead me to the rock that is higher than I.

Psalm 61:2

I had no strength to hope and my mind wouldn’t rest. The tension from work wouldn’t let go when I fell into bed. After 20 years on the job, this kind of conflict is new, complex, and unique.

Hopeless And Sleepless

But I rest my head on the soft pillow of providence. So I should still able to sleep, right?

Because compared to Afghanistan and New Orleans and a friend who can’t eat because of radiation rampaging her mouth, my troubles are nothing. Because I believe to my core that my times are in his hands. And because I trust that in this messiness God is working for good.

But my anxious mind wouldn’t let my tired flesh sleep. Despite casting my cares and reciting a verse, two days in a row I awoke by a mind awash, weary and weak.

Then sometime in the third watch of the third night, totally unprompted, stones and a rock entered and settled me.

Strength Of Stones

I can’t explain how they came except to say, if you put God’s Word in your heart, the Spirit pulls it out.

He brought stones to mind first: What is my strength that I should hope? Is my strength the strength of stones, or is my flesh bronze?  (Job 6:10-11)

Job was my man. He felt my pain and I felt his. He was strong. I was strong.

I’ve been strong. My sisters and cousins and I joke about our strong genes and high tolerance for pain. After all, we milked kicky goats and weeded field gardens and bailed August hay. We Considine girls are strong.

Depending Strength

My flesh is strong, but it is not the durable strength of bronze. My heart is strong, but it it is not the staunch strength of a stone. It’s true: my flesh and my heart fail me. That happens when my hope dims, like it did in the dark this week when I couldn’t solve my way out of the tension at work. The truth is, I still don’t see the way out.

But I’m not alone. Centuries ago the Puritan Matthew Henry was also taken up by Job’s words.

He noted,

What is my strength, that I should hope? You see how I am weakened and brought low, how unable I am to grapple with my [moods], and therefore what reason have I to hope that I should outlive them, and see better days?

Is my strength the strength of stones? Are my muscles brass and my sinews steel? No, they are not, and therefore I … sink under the load […]

What is our strength? It is depending strength. We have no more strength than God gives us; for in him we live and move. 

The only real strength that we stones have is a depending strength. That is not a bug. It is a design feature.

Because, as Paul Tripp says, It is not your weakness that will get in the way of God’s working through you, but your delusions of strength. His strength is made perfect in our weakness!

God created us weak and needy, not with the unyielding strength of stones.

Strong Enough To Stay Upon

The truth is, I still don’t see a way out of the conflict at work. But my perspective is changing. This depending strength is giving me hope. I know He will be with me with the tension is high. Trusting Him for that brings peace.

Which is the second truth God sent in third watch of the third night. It was Isaiah 26:3-4,

You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you. Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord God is an everlasting rock.

Stayed upon means my mind is fixed on, focused on, stayed upon Jehovah. That is the only way to perfect peace. The Hebrew word sawmak comes from the root “to prop.” A Bible dictionary says it has the idea of “to lean upon or take hold of … lay, lean, lie hard, put, rest self, set self, stand fast, stay (self), sustain.”

No sugarcoating: staying our minds takes work. It means first we press on to know God. Because we won’t trust what we don’t know. And we certainly won’t focus and fix and lean and stay our minds on what we do not trust.

But I’m here to tell you that there is perfect peace when this dependent stone stays her mind on the everlasting Rock.

Come Forth As Gold

I actually started this post nine years ago when as I first pondered those “strength of stone” words of Job. Infertility wearied me then. It took massive depending strength that I didn’t always have to hope in God’s goodness—whether it came through a third child (it didn’t) or by knowing Him more (it did).

To tell you the truth, most of my adult life feels like a series of tests. Maybe yours does too. And maybe that’s normal for every believer. Maybe it’s God’s way of testing us lumps of gold.

I’ve got some theology for that too. It didn’t come in the third watch of the night like the Rock and stones. But I know what Job knew (23:10): that he knows the way that I take; when he has tried me, I shall come forth as gold.

No, my flesh is not bronze and my strength is not the strength of stones. But as I trust in the Everlasting Rock, I gain perfect peace and strength to hope.

And when he has tested us, we will come forth as gold. 

In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

1 Peter 1:6-7

My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

Psalm 73:26