The people are craving meat. They are craving their “free” food they bought with the sweat of their brow back in slavery. They are forgetting the Lord and His great deliverance. They are craving the lusts of the flesh. They claim their strength is dried up. Where do you go when your strength is dried up?

When your strength is gone, it’s a time of weakness. It’s a time of temptation. It’s an all-too-easy time to crave the lusts of the flesh. There was a reason Satan came to Jesus after He had been alone in the wilderness and hadn’t eaten in forty days. He was weak in the flesh.

This is why you should probably avoid acting on most thoughts that come to you when you are tired, hungry, lonely, angry, or fearful.

So, how do we avoid weakness? Jesus overcame the adversary that came to Him in His time of physical weakness. We avoid weakness by living in a constant state of inner strength. We know that in our weakness He is made strong in us. Paul said:

Therefore I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in distresses, in persecutions, in difficulties, in behalf of Christ; for when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Corinthians 12:10 NASB)

Paul delighted in weakness. He delighted in difficulties. He delighted in distress. The danger doesn’t lie in the troubles. It lies in the comfort. The danger is in the easy life where we think we can walk in our own strength, where we think we have it made and can keep going on our own. The joy in the troubles is the remembering that we can’t do this on our own. We don’t “got this” at all. We need Him to carry us through, to guide us through, to give us the strength to continue, to give us every last bit of what we need because we have nothing in ourselves to offer.

Dried up strength is a gift to a believer. It means you have no choice but to be carried on eagle’s wings. It means you have no choice but to allow God to work in and through you to accomplish the work He’s given you. Find delight in your troubles today. Let any temptation to complain and grumble be a wake-up call to remind you to be grateful for what the Lord has done, for who He is, and to find delight in what He’s doing, because it is good.