February 9

MIGHTY BY HIS SPIRIT
by Ray Prinzing

"This is the word of the Lord unto Zerubbabel, saying, Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts."                                                          (Zechariah 4:6).

How desperately the world seeks to marshall their forces, to give a show of strength, to unify and consolidate, so that by the very weight of their numbers they hope to gain an advantage.  While in contra-distinction to this, God is separating, drawing to Himself in a path of aloneness, to "take you one of a city, and two of a family, to bring you to Zion." (Jeremiah 3:14). As we are stripped of all human resource, no might or power in ourselves wherein we can trust, then out of this sphere of our nothingness He shall arise, totally triumphant.

The Lord would apprehend a man to bring deliverance to His people Israel, and He sent an angel to appear unto Gideon while he was threshing wheat by the winepress, to hide it from the Midianites.  The angel said to him, "The Lord is  with thee, thou mighty man of valour."  (Judges 6:12). But Gideon immediately challenged the whole statement.  "Oh my Lord, if the Lord be with us, why then is all this befallen us? and where be all His miracles which our fathers told us of?" " And the Lord looked upon him and said, Go in this thy might, and thou shalt save Israel from the hand of the Midianites." Because Gideon recognized his own lack, his emptiness, his weakness, God looked upon it as MIGHT, because when the weakness was turned over to God, then it entered into a new dimension - and the Spirit became the power for His victory.

The world would seek for talents rare,
the gifted men, the doctrinaire,
the outer form with beauty fair,
and on them all its glory share. 

The noble and the might rise
to blaze across the azure skies,
to claim again some earthly prize,
their hopes and dreams immortalized. 

How different is the higher way,
as God doth mold vessels of clay.
To choose the weak to take the prey, t
he things of nought for vict'ry's day. 

For thus He strips and bruises sore,
and multiples, the pressures more;
then uses troubles for the door
into His fulness, heav'nly store.