Welcome to the InTouch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Thursday, October 19th.

Are you able to maintain stability, whether things go for or against you?

Today's podcast helps you learn how to truly have strength for all times.

Every year an increasing number of men who are in the ministry and who have been in the ministry a long time bail out.

They just decide to walk away. And when you ask them why, there are probably several reasons but one of the primary reasons is they get tired and weary and worn and burnt out and they say, I just can't handle it anymore.

That's one thing to be tired. It's something else to be tired of serving God.

And as I look back and think about where I learned my first lesson about walking in the strength and the power of God and serving Him in His strength and not in my own, I learned it not in the seminary.

In fact, you would never guess where I learned it. I learned it at an airport.

Standing there waiting for the plane to arrive and this little lady got off the plane and she was about 73 years of age, somewhere there about.

Her name is Bertha Smith, 40 years of missionary in China. I said, Bertha, there's one thing I want to know.

And I had heard all the stories of things that she'd been through and I mean, bombings, I mean, you know, your name that she'd been through it.

I said, Bertha, would you please tell me at your age, how is it that you had three paces ahead of me? Everywhere we go, I will never forget what she said.

She says, I don't go on my own strength, I go on the strength of the Lord. And I said, well, now tell me that again, you mean what you're saying is that you don't go on your own strength, you go on the strength of the Lord.

She said, that's right, I don't have to go on my strength. I have his strength to go in.

And she says, if I'd been going on my strength, I'd have come home from China years ago. She says, I just go on the strength of the Lord.

Well, I'm sure I probably didn't understand what she meant at the time, but I want you to know that if she had said nothing else to me over the years,

I had to believe it because she died at 101. And not only that, I believe it was 101, 102.

And not only that, her schedule was out into 106 because she really expected to live until Jesus came.

And so here's a woman who learned a secret. When we think about the things that you and I have to do, the things that we call upon to do,

the truth is that God know where ever intends for us to serve Him, to follow Him, to do anything for Him in our own strength.

He says, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Now, it didn't say I can do all things, but all things through Christ who strengthens me.

What limits this? I can't do all things. First of all, because God doesn't want me to do all things. And I'll tell you something else.

...