What Beyond-Your-Strength Thing Is God Asking You to Do?
What beyond-your-strength thing is God asking you to do?
Is there something God is calling you to that feels completely overwhelming? A task that seems too big, a step that feels too risky, a cost that feels too high? Are you looking at what lies ahead and telling God, “I just can’t do this”?
In a recent sermon, one of our pastors asked whether our “yes” was on the table. He was speaking about missions, but that question applies to every part of life. When God calls us to something, do we first look at our own resources and decide what is or is not possible? Or do we look to God, trusting that with him all things are possible (Matthew 19:26)?
Often his call means stepping into the unknown and trusting that he will do more than we can ask or imagine there. Abraham “went out, not knowing where he was going” (Hebrews 11:8), when God called. Are you willing to follow him like that—to let him lead and obey when you don’t have the plan mapped out?
Looking at the Giants or Looking at God
When the twelve spies returned from Canaan, ten of them brought a report that silenced the camp. Yes, it was a land flowing with milk and honey—just as God had promised. But the people were giants. The cities were fortified. The Israelites felt like grasshoppers in comparison (Numbers 13:33). The ten spies had looked at what they were up against and decided that God’s promise could not stand against those odds.
But Caleb and Joshua had seen the same land and the same people and came back with an entirely different report. “The land we passed through to spy out is an exceedingly good land,” they declared. “He will bring us into this land and give it to us. Only do not rebel against the Lord. And do not fear the people of the land, for they are bread for us. Their protection is removed from them, and the Lord is with us; do not fear them” (Numbers 14:7–9).
Same land. Same giants. Completely different response. The difference was not courage, but focus. The ten spies looked at the obstacles and concluded the task was impossible. Caleb and Joshua looked at God and concluded that nothing was impossible with him. Those two viewed the situation through the lens of God’s presence instead of their own limitations.
The people, swayed by the majority report, were consumed by fear. They wanted to go back to Egypt, back to slavery, back to the familiar misery they understood. At least they knew what to expect there. In the wilderness they were completely dependent on God—and that felt far more frightening than the chains they knew. They looked at their own resources and felt powerless against the giants. Where Caleb and Joshua saw opportunity, they only saw risk.
God Is Not Asking for Your Strength
Throughout Scripture, God has worked through people who faced impossible odds and were asked to do far more than they could manage. God reduced Gideon’s army to just three hundred men so that everyone would know the victory belonged to the Lord, not to human strength (Judges 7). The Israelites watched the Egyptian army drown while they walked through the sea on dry ground (Exodus 14). A shepherd boy named David killed Goliath with a stone in his hand because this was God’s battle and not David’s (1 Samuel 17:45-47). When Jehoshaphat faced a vast enemy army, God told the people simply to send singers ahead of the troops, praising him for his steadfast love—and God destroyed their enemies while they sang (2 Chronicles 20:21–22). Jesus told the disciples to feed a huge crowd when all they had was five loaves and two fish from a boy’s lunch. They offered what little they had, and Jesus multiplied it to feed five thousand people (John 6:9–11).
In each of these situations, God was not asking people to rely on what they could do themselves. He was looking for willingness. He was asking for a yes. We look at our own resources and strength, but God has never depended on human strength. He works best through our weakness.
When God called Jeremiah, the young prophet’s first response was to list his inadequacies: “Alas, Lord God! Behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a youth” (Jeremiah 1:6). God’s answer did not address the inadequacy, because it was irrelevant. Instead he said, “Do not say, ‘I am only a youth,’ for to all to whom I send you, you shall go, and whatever I command you, you shall speak. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, declares the Lord” (Jeremiah 1:7–8).
God was not asking Jeremiah to be capable. He was asking Jeremiah to be available.
The Lord Is Our Strength and Shield
David understood his dependence on God and wrote: “The Lord is my strength and my shield; in him my heart trusts, and I am helped” (Psalm 28:7). Strength came as he trusted, not before. God was the one who helped and protected him; David’s role was to lean on the Lord.
We want to feel safe. We cling to what feels predictable and under our control. But safety—at least the kind we try to create for ourselves—is an illusion. We cannot truly keep ourselves from harm or guarantee outcomes, no matter how hard we plan. The Israelites who wanted to retreat to Egypt were not choosing safety—they were choosing slavery. Only God can truly protect us, and when we cling to what feels secure and build our lives around avoiding risk instead of following where he leads, we are trusting in an illusion. Sometimes God asks us to step into things that feel frightening precisely because he wants us to rely more fully on him.
God may be calling you into something that feels completely beyond your ability: a mission field far from home, or a hard conversation close to home. Standing your ground in the face of opposition. Walking through an unexpected diagnosis. Giving up something precious or laying down a dream. Moving toward someone you’d rather avoid. Taking a risk when you’d rather stay where you are. Speaking truth when silence would feel safer. Or perhaps he is simply asking you to trust him in circumstances you would never have chosen.
When you think about that call, what comes to mind? “Send someone else.” “This is too hard.” “I’m not strong enough.” Or are you willing to say: “Yes, Lord. I feel inadequate. I don’t know how I can do this. But I trust that you will go with me and give me everything I need.”
A Yes That Depends on God
When I think about the hardest seasons of my own life, I realize God has repeatedly asked me for a yes that I did not feel capable of giving. A yes to suffering. A yes to weakness. A yes to uncertainty. A yes to continuing to trust him when I did not understand what he was doing. Often I wanted to say, “Don’t ask that of me. I can’t do it.” But God was not asking me to do it in my own strength. He was asking me to depend on him daily.
So where is God asking for your yes? Where is he asking you to step forward in faith instead of certainty? Where is he asking you, like Abraham, to go out not knowing where you are going?
Perhaps the deeper question is this: What is your source of strength? Are you counting mainly on your own resources? Or are you willing to trust beyond what you can see, believing that God will provide what you need when you need it?
God has always done his greatest work through people who knew they could not do it on their own. And perhaps that is exactly where he wants us: dependent enough to say yes.
Say yes. And trust that the strength he requires, he will supply.