Today, we hiked and visited people living in the foothills of the Himalayas for about ten hours. We visited three homes of people who are Christians, needing various encouragement and prayer. Visiting the homes was a lot of fun – we got food and fruit at each one AND buffalo milk at the first house. We heard testimonies of people who were the only Christians in their village, who loved to preach the gospel and/or were suffering persecution from their own non-Christian children. We prayed for healing and unity and strength. We sang and spoke words of encouragement to people who sorely needed it.
But the hiking. Oh, the hiking. If you know anything about me and/or read previous posts, you know that hiking and I aren’t best friends. I wouldn’t even call us acquaintances. More like enemies, let’s be honest. And today was rough. Lots of practically vertical sections, rocky steps and slippery slopes. Fortunately, my team was very patient with me and allowed me to go up at my own pace.
While I was wheezing and sweating my way up the mountain, I prayed for strength, for God’s power to be made perfect in my weakness, for tons of oxygen and words to speak at the next home we were visiting. And as I prayed, a very familiar song started running through my head:
Let mercy lead, let love be the strength in your legs
And in every footprint that you leave there’ll be a drop of grace.
Of course, it’s a Rich Mullins song, one of my favorites and part of which I have tattooed on my foot. I’ve listened to it a thousand times and prayed it over my life and been reminded of it any time I look down at my feet. But it didn’t take on a literal meaning until today, as I was struggling to put one foot in front of the other. I needed God’s love to be the physical strength in my legs, the motivation to propel me forward, up to the people who were waiting for us to come and breathe life into them.
Sometimes we need God’s love to be our strength in the spiritual sense, to help us love those who are unlovable or we just don’t like at the time, to push us go on a mission trip or donate to someone who already is on one, to forgive someone who has completely wronged us and doesn’t deserve to be forgiven.
But what I guess what I learned today is that God’s love can actually give us the physical strength to go on. He fills us up in those empty places and puts air into our empty lungs and pumps up our empty muscles. Isn’t that what we pray for when we ask for healing? For God to come in and strengthen the weak and cleanse the body – to give His divine strength where our small human strength has failed us.
My prayer and hope is that I can continue to be filled with God’s strength as I travel the world over the next eight months, so much that it pours out of me when I pray for healing for another, and that I can look at that person when the healing and strength comes and say, “I know. I know how wonderful it feels. And He’ll always be there to strengthen you, whenever you need. He loves you – so, so much.”
