When Terrie and I first drove through the Antelope Valley in early 1986, we were on vacation. A friend asked if I would preach a Sunday evening service while our family passed through, and I gladly agreed. After the service, he asked us to step outside for a moment while the church conducted a brief business meeting. When he joined us a few minutes later, he told me he had resigned and the congregation had just voted for me to be their pastor.
I was twenty-four. Twelve people had cast the vote. And I hadn’t even known I was candidating.
Initially, Terrie and I said we couldn’t come. We were happily serving on a church staff in Northern California. But God changed our hearts, and before we had even left town, He gave us a burden for this desert community and the small church who had asked for a shepherd.
In those early days, Terrie and I poured our hearts, energy, and meager savings into a struggling flock. But it was God who did the miraculous. We watched as He brought people to Himself, restored families, and transformed lives by His grace.
Looking back now, I can only marvel. The same God who called us then has proven Himself faithful at every turn. He has done far more than we ever dreamed.
There is only one explanation for what God has done here: God is able. He is able to take twelve people and a failing property and build a thriving church. He is able to bring fruit from desert places and strength from weakness. He is able to take small offerings, humble service, and persistent prayer and make them abound to His glory.
Through every need and every new beginning, God has proved what His Word declares: “And God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work” (2 Corinthians 9:8).
God is able to work in your life too. He is able to renew what has grown weary, to enlarge what is limited, to strengthen what is fragile, to multiply what is small, and to sustain what we entrust to Him. The work of God has never depended on the ability of man; it has always depended on the sufficiency of His grace.
God Is Able to Renew Your Spirit
Every Christian who has served the Lord for any length of time knows what it feels like to grow weary in well-doing. Fatigue settles in quietly—spiritual fatigue, emotional fatigue, sometimes even physical fatigue. The heart that once burned bright for God can cool under the winds of opposition or the weight of routine.
But God specializes in renewal. The same power that raised Christ from the grave is able to breathe new strength into tired servants. Paul prayed for the Ephesian believers to know “the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, Which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead” (Ephesians 1:19–20).
Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “God is able to make all grace abound toward you.” That word abound means “to overflow.” His grace doesn’t trickle; it pours. When our strength is spent, His supply is full.
For an example of God’s ability to renew your spirit, consider the prophet Daniel. Daniel’s life in Babylon was marked by loss, hardship, and personal attacks. Yet Scripture says he had “an excellent spirit” (Daniel 5:12). His circumstances didn’t define his attitude; his God did.
The same renewing grace that sustained Daniel works today. God is able to renew your spirit with faith when you’re surrounded by fear, with humility when pride creeps in, and with joy when duty begins to feel heavy.
History is full of examples of believers whose renewed spirits changed everything around them. One of the early Anabaptist pastors, Michael Sattler, knew his ministry would likely end in martyrdom. When arrested for his faith, he prayed for his persecutors and reminded his congregation that God’s grace would be enough, even in death. As the flames rose, he lifted two fingers—the sign he had promised his church to show that God’s grace was sustaining him. What courage. What grace. What renewal.
That same renewing grace is available to every believer who feels pressed, forgotten, or discouraged. You may not face what Sattler faced, but you may face your own fires of disappointment or fatigue. God has not changed. His mercies “are new every morning” (Lamentations 3:23). His Spirit still whispers hope where the world speaks despair.
When God’s grace renews your spirit, Christ will be magnified in and through your life.
God Is Able to Enlarge Your Vision
When God renews your spirit, He doesn’t do it merely to comfort you; He does it to expand your faith. Renewal always precedes vision. A refreshed heart begins to see possibilities that a weary heart could never imagine.
Biblical vision is not human ambition; it is spiritual sight. It’s the ability to see what God can do when His grace goes to work in impossible places. Proverbs 29:18 tells us, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” The opposite is also true: where there is vision—rooted in God’s Word and led by His Spirit—people flourish.
Spiritual vision is viewing my life and ministry through the lens of God’s Word. It comes from reading in His Word what He has commanded us to do, seeing in His Word what He is able to do, and believing by faith what He desires to do through me. Thus, the implementation of vision is primarily an act of obedience to the Word of God.
For instance, as a pastor, I have shared with our church family a vision for our fortieth year of ministry. That vision includes audacious goals related to outreach, discipleship, missions, and more. Yet each of these goals is rooted in Christ’s Great Commission and fueled by His promises and power.
Indeed, God delights in giving His servants a fresh view of His power. Sometimes vision begins with a burden, a prayer, or a dream that seems far beyond reach. David looked across the valley and saw a giant. While others saw a fearful threat, David saw an opportunity for God’s glory. Nehemiah looked at the crumbled walls of Jerusalem and saw what could be rebuilt. Every great work of God begins with someone who dares to believe that God is able.
Vision, however, does not come without challenge. The moment you begin to see what God could do, the critics begin to speak. Eliab mocked David’s motives. Sanballat and Tobiah ridiculed Nehemiah’s efforts. Yet those who fix their eyes on God’s promises instead of man’s opposition find the courage to keep trusting that God is able.
Every generation needs fresh faith. Every local church needs renewed vision. Every Christian needs to look beyond what is and believe again in what God could do. We must have faith to believe, make time to pray, exercise courage to do, and anchor our hope in God to endure.
God Is Able to Strengthen Your Hands
When God enlarges your vision, He also equips your hands. His calling never comes without His enabling. Yes, every new opportunity brings its own set of challenges, but every challenge becomes an invitation to experience God’s strength in fresh ways.
In Scripture, we see this pattern often. When Nehemiah saw the broken walls of Jerusalem, he didn’t stop at vision; he picked up a trowel and invited others to join him. The people responded, “Let us rise up and build. So they strengthened their hands for this good work” (Nehemiah 2:18). Their renewed vision gave way to renewed effort, and their effort was sustained by grace.
Serving God is not for the faint of heart. It takes endurance to build, courage to adjust, and faith to keep rowing together when the winds of adversity blow.
Forty years ago, on my first Sunday night as pastor of Lancaster Baptist Church, I stood before fewer than twenty people and preached a message titled “Striving Together” from Philippians 1:27: “Only let your conversation be as it becometh the gospel of Christ: that whether I come and see you, or else be absent, I may hear of your affairs, that ye stand fast in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel.”
As a young pastor, I longed for a church that would strive together to reach our community for Christ—to see people saved, added to the church, and growing as spiritual Christians who would love and labor alongside one another. At the time, I could never have imagined the incredible ways God would work through a church who did just that.
The Greek word translated “striving together” comes from the athletic term synathleō. It refers to rowing or contending side by side toward a shared goal.
There’s something powerful about believers pulling in rhythm. When one side rows ahead in pride or lags behind in discouragement, the whole boat veers off course. But when every heart beats to the rhythm of grace—when we serve humbly, give faithfully, and pray fervently—God strengthens the entire team.
Sometimes His strengthening grace takes the form of growth. He gives grace to grow spiritually when you feel stagnant, to grow relationally when unity is strained, and to grow in stewardship when faith is tested.
Other times His grace helps you adjust. When, like the early church in Acts 6, we find ourselves at capacity, we need to adjust our methods without compromising principle. You may be in a season that requires new rhythms, new partnerships, or new perseverance. Don’t retreat from the work. When your hands tremble, His hands hold you. When your strength fades, His grace abounds.
As we labor together in God’s vineyard, the goal is not comfort but faithfulness. We are not here to maintain; we are here to build. God is able to strengthen your hands to do what He has called you to do.
God Is Able to Multiply His Grace
The grace of God is never stagnant. It doesn’t stop with one generation, one ministry, or one life. When God strengthens your hands, it’s not only so you can build; it’s so you can invest in others. The same grace that renews and sustains us is meant to multiply through us.
Paul wrote to Timothy, “Thou therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also” (2 Timothy 2:1–2). That’s the divine pattern of multiplication: grace received becomes grace extended.
Every Christian is both a recipient and a steward of grace. We’re not meant to hoard it; we’re meant to pass it on.
In ministry, this happens when we invest intentionally in people. Training others is not just about transferring knowledge; it’s about transferring a heart. It’s teaching truth and modeling faith. It’s helping others see the sufficiency of Christ in both victory and hardship.
Sometimes that work feels slow. But there is no success without succession. The healthiest ministries are not those that depend on one person’s strength but those that rest on God’s grace multiplied through many hands and hearts.
If God has placed someone in your life to mentor, encourage, or equip, remember that you are part of His multiplying work. You’re investing in what will outlast you.
God Is Able to Sustain Your Faith
The longer you serve the Lord, the more you realize that strength for the journey doesn’t come from within; it comes from above. The same God who renews, enlarges, strengthens, and multiplies His grace also sustains His people when the winds of adversity blow hardest.
Paul urged the Thessalonian believers, “Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught” (2 Thessalonians 2:15). In every generation, the call remains the same: stand fast in truth and steadfast in grace.
To stand for truth in an unstable world takes courage, but to do it with grace takes maturity. It’s easy to grow sharp in conviction but cold in spirit. Yet the grace that strengthens our stand also softens our hearts.
Standing in truth has always required grace. The balance of conviction and compassion marks true spiritual stability. Jude 3 calls us to “earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints,” and Romans 14 reminds us to walk in love toward one another. We must hold our doctrine tightly while relating to our co-laborers in the gospel graciously.
True faith doesn’t waver with every cultural trend or theological debate. It endures because it rests on the unchanging character of God. He alone is faithful through every season of ministry, every moment of uncertainty, and every transition still to come.
Maybe you’re walking through a trial that has tested your endurance. Maybe you’re facing a future that feels uncertain. Remember, “Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it” (1 Thessalonians 5:24). Faith doesn’t survive because we hold tightly to God—it survives because He holds tightly to us.
God Is Still Able
Forty years ago, a handful of believers gathered in a desert town with little more than faith in their hearts and God’s Word in their hands. They didn’t see what was coming—the lives that would be changed, the families that would be restored, the students who would be trained, the missionaries who would be sent. But God saw it all.
Every answered prayer, every changed life, every milestone of ministry is living proof of one truth: God is able.
He has been able to renew our spirits when we were weary, to enlarge our vision when our sight was small, to strengthen our hands when the work was great, to multiply His grace through generations of faithful people, and to sustain our faith through every trial.
The same grace that carried us yesterday is the grace that will carry us tomorrow.
And He is able still.
There are more souls to reach, more children to teach, more cities and nations to touch with the gospel. There are new battles to fight and new leaders to train. There is another generation rising who must see in us the same confidence we found in Him—that God is able.
If these years have taught me anything, it is that God’s ability never diminishes with time. His grace is as boundless today as it was when we first believed.
Whatever season you’re walking through—whether you’re planting a new work, enduring a desert season, or simply trusting God to meet a personal need—His promise to you is the same: “And God is able to make all grace abound toward you.”
Look back with gratitude. Look around with grace. Look ahead with faith.
Our sufficiency is not in our wisdom, planning, or strength. It is in our God. The God who began the work is able to finish it. The God who met every need in the past will meet every need in the future.
So keep believing. Keep building. Keep standing. Because whatever comes next, God is able.
This article originally appeared in Issue 39 of the Baptist Voice. To read the full digital edition, click here:
