Some days, what we need most isn’t a change in our circumstances—it’s a change in what’s happening inside us. Psalm 138:3 reminds us that when we call on the Lord and He answers, He doesn’t just respond; He fortifies the soul. His reply carries strength with it.

Boldness Begins in Prayer

There’s a holy confidence that shows up when you’ve actually spoken to God and you know He heard you. Not because you worked yourself into a spiritual mood, but because the living God meets you. David’s experience pushes us to stop treating prayer like a last resort and start treating it like the first door we open. “Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16).

And notice the order: we cry out, He answers, and courage rises. Often we want boldness before we pray, but God frequently gives it through prayer. If you feel hesitant, small, or overwhelmed today, don’t wait until you feel strong to seek Him—seek Him so you can be strengthened. “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God” (Philippians 4:6).

God’s Answers Build the Inner Person

Sometimes His answer is yes, and we rejoice. Sometimes it’s no, and we learn. Sometimes it’s wait, and we’re refined. But in each case, He is doing something deeper than fixing the moment—He is forming the heart. The strength Psalm 138 highlights is not mere grit; it’s God’s own strengthening in us. “For this reason I kneel before the Father… that He may grant you… to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in your inner being” (Ephesians 3:14,16).

This kind of strengthening changes how you carry the day. You may still be in the same room, facing the same problem, but you’re no longer alone in it, and you’re no longer relying on your own resources. God’s presence becomes backbone. “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is perfected in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).

Strength That Turns Into Witness

When God strengthens you, it rarely stops with you. Strength becomes steadiness, and steadiness becomes a testimony. People notice when you don’t collapse under pressure, when hope stays alive, when your words carry peace instead of panic. That’s not personality—that’s God at work. “Always be prepared to give a defense to everyone who asks you the reason for the hope that is in you” (1 Peter 3:15).

So today, ask the Lord not only to answer, but to do what His answers always aim to do—make you brave, faithful, and fruitful. Let His strengthening push you toward obedience: making that call, offering that apology, resisting that temptation, taking that next faithful step. “Be strong and courageous… for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go” (Joshua 1:9).

Father, thank You for hearing me when I call and for strengthening my soul; make me bold to obey You today and to reflect Your hope to others. Amen.

What is the worst enemy the church faces today? This is where a lot of unreality and unconscious hyprocrisy enters. Many are ready to say, The liberals are our worst enemy. But the simple fact is that the average evangelical church does not have too much trouble with liberalism. Nobody gets up in our churches and claims that the first five books of Moses are just myths. Nobody says that the story of creation is simply religious mythology. Nobody denies that Christ walked on the water or that He rose from the grave. Nobody gets up in our churches and claims that Jesus Christ is not the Son of God or that He isn't coming back again. Nobody denies the validity of the Scriptures. We just cannot hide behind liberalism and say that it is our worst enemy. We believe that evangelical Christians are trying to hold on to the truth given to us, the faith of our fathers, so the liberals are not our worst enemy. Neither do we have a problem with the government. People in our country can do just about whatever they please and the government pays no attention. We can hold prayer meetings all night if we want, and the government would never bother us or question us. There is no secret police breathing down our backs watching our every move. We live in a free land, and we ought to thank God every day for that privilege. The treacherous enemy facing the church of Jesus Christ today is the dictatorship of the routine, when the routine becomes lord in the life of the church. Programs are organized and the prevailing conditions are accepted as normal. Anyone can predict next Sunday's service and what will happen. This seems to be the most deadly threat in the church today. When we come to the place where everything can be predicted and nobody expects anything unusual from God, we are in a rut. The routine dictates, and we can tell not only what will happen next Sunday, but what will occur next month and, if things do not improve, what will take place next year. Then we have reached the place where what has been determines what is, and what is determines what will be.

Our citizenship is in heaven; from whence also we wait for a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ. - Philippians 3:20

The figure of citizenship is, of course, originally drawn from the registers of the tribes of Israel. In that use, through not without a glance at some higher meaning, it appears in the Old Testament, where we read of "those who are written among them living in Jerusalem "; or "are written in the writing of the house of Israel." And the thought that comes out of this great metaphor is that all of us, if we are Christian people, belong to another polity, another order of things than that in which our outward lives are spent. And the plain, practical conclusion that comes from it is, cultivate the sense of belonging to another order. Just as it swelled the heart of a Macedonian Philippian with pride, when he thought that he did not belong to the semi-barbarous people round about him, but that his name was written in the books that lay in the Capitol of Rome, so should we cultivate that sense of belonging to another order. It will make our work here none the worse, but it will fill our lives with the sense of nobler affinities, and point our efforts to grander work than any that belongs to "the things that are seen and temporal." Just as the little groups of Englishmen in treaty-ports own no allegiance to the laws of the country in which they live, but are governed by English statutes, so we have to take our orders from headquarters to which we have to report. Men in our Colonies get their instructions from Downing-street, The officials there, appointed by the Home Government, think more of what they will say about them at Westminster than of what they say about them at Melbourne. So we are citizens of another country, and have to obey the laws of our own kingdom, and not those of the soil on which we dwell. Never mind about the opinions of men, the battlements of the people in the land you live in. To us, the main thing is that we be acceptable, well-pleasing unto Him. Are you solitary? Cultivate the sense of, in your solitude, being a member of a great community that stretches through all the ages, and binds into one the inhabitants of eternity and of time.

Remember that this citizenship in the heavens is the highest honour that can be conferred upon a man. The patricians of Venice used to have their names inscribed upon what was called the "golden book " that was kept in the Doge’s palace. If our names are written in the book of gold in the heavens, then we have higher dignities than any that belong to the fleeting chronicles of this passing, vain world. So we can accept with equanimity evil report or good report, and can acquiesce in a wholesome obscurity, and be careless though our names appear on no human records and fill no trumpet of fame blown by earthly cheeks. Intellectual power, wealth, gratified ambition, and all the other things that men set before them are small indeed compared with the honour, with the blessedness, with the repose and satisfaction that attend the conscious possession of citizenship in the heavens. Let us lay to heart the great words of the Master, which put a cooling hand on all the feverish ambitions of earth: " In this rejoice, not that the spirits are subject unto you, but rather rejoice that your names are written in Heaven."