How to Find Strength for Hard Situations by Partnering With the Holy Spirit

Do you ever feel helpless and weak in certain situations? Whether you’re up against a life-threatening disease, served divorce papers, contending with an unreasonable boss or agonizing over rebellious children, nobody likes to feel powerless. What if I told you those are precisely the places where God loves to demonstrate his strength?

Teaching in an inner-city school, I experienced the power of the Holy Spirit strengthen me to do and say right things boldly, even though my jelly knees and icy hands told a different story. One time, the Spirit empowered me to stand fast when a student hurled a chair towards me, screaming obscenities and challenging my authority. In the silence that followed the crash of the chair on the linoleum, something supernatural happened. I remained unmoved, looked at the student sadly, handed her a detention slip then asked her to remove herself to the hall. She did. Quietly, in fact.

I experienced many incidents like this with troubled students from families living on the edges of society. Each encounter tested my reliance on God and ultimately demonstrated his strength in my weakness. One of the greatest displays of the Holy Spirit’s partnering power I ever witnessed at this school though, occurred with my husband, after a choir concert.

Some of the students’ family members belonged to local gangs. Before the concert, I noticed some disturbing body language exchanged between two groups of folks seated across the aisle from one another. I suspected that rival gang members unwittingly sat too close to one another or wore the wrong colors, or who knows.

I prayed for Christ’s peace to fill the auditorium and allow the choir to present the music we worked so hard to prepare. After the concert, I became caught up talking with various parents, completely forgetting about my uneasy feelings of earlier until a student’s voice rang out, “Mrs. Stults, Mrs. Stults you better come see what your man is up to!” Simultaneously, I noticed much of the remaining crowd running over to the auditorium windows which overlooked a parking lot.

Two groups of men clustered in opposite corners of the lot, clearly hostile and gearing up for a brawl. Worse yet, my husband, stood alone in the middle of the two groups of Goliath-sized, angry men. Three stories up, I watched, amazed, as it appeared that average-sized Ken spoke to both groups. Within a few minutes, the men dispersed and left the lot.

I asked Ken why he went out there and what in the world he said. “I saw what was about to happen and felt like I was supposed to intervene and share a few facts, he said. “I pointed out the working security cameras in the parking lot and the group of witnesses up in the windows. I guess they decided it wasn’t worth it,” he finished.

That, friends, is what it looks like when our weakness partners with the Holy Spirit’s power. Ken was smaller than most of the men. They didn’t know him, nor did he possess any authority as a teacher or administrator. There was no good reason they allowed him to walk into the middle of their conflict, but they did, because the Holy Spirit partnered with Ken and brought peace into strife.

In Zechariah 4:6, Zerubbabel, the governor of Judea, feels weak in his God-ordered task to rebuild the temple. His small group of laborers are overwhelmed by the massive piles of rubble and chaos created when invaders destroyed the building. When Zechariah prophesied, these guys had been working for twenty years and yet, tons and tons of broken stone and metal sat on the temple site. When God saw Zerubbabel’s discouragement, he spoke these beautiful words through the prophet,

“Not by might, not by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts. Who are you, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel you shall become a plain” Zechariah 4:6-7.

In other words, God said to Zerubbabel, “This temple isn’t going to rise because of the strength of your workforce. The power will come from my Holy Spirit who is so strong, these mountains of wreckage will become like flat plains.” As Dr. Thomas Constable says in his expository notes on Zechariah, “If success is to be gained in the achievements of the people of God it will not be secured by what man can do but by the Spirit’s work.”

The prophet Hosea echoes this same thought.

“But I will have mercy on the house of Judah, and I will save them by the Lord their God. I will not save them by bow or by sword or by war or by horses or by horsemen” Hosea 1:7.

Paul the Apostle says it this way.

“For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak then I am strong,” 2 Corinthians 12:10.

Dear brother and sister, whatever the situation is that’s confronting you, making you feel defeated and kicked down, it will not be overcome by your willpower or determination. What does partnering with the Holy Spirit to become an overcomer look like?

Admit that we are powerless to change people or situations with human strength alone and stop making ourselves crazy trying to do that.
Yield to the Holy Spirit and ask him for understanding and insight as to what our role is. Just, as he did with Ken, he will tell the listening heart what to do or say. Sometimes he wants us to do or say nothing and leave things be for a bit so he can work on moving some mountains and softening some hearts.
Obey whatever he tells you to do, even if it seems goofy.
Trust God for results remembering his timeline is usually different from ours.
Study and memorize Scripture. When I faced tough financial strain, I memorized verses about God’s provision and goodness and spoke them out loud every time I felt powerless about money. God’s Word changes environments and brings hope into hopeless situations.

Let feelings of weakness be a trigger reminder going forward, like the Apostle Paul. Recognize those times as opportunities for God to manifest his glory and power through you and around you.

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