Then Asa called to the LORD his God and said, ‘LORD, there is no one like you to help the powerless against the mighty. Help us, LORD our God, for we rely on you, and in your name we have come against this vast army. LORD, you are our God; do not let mere mortals prevail against you.’
Plymouth, 1895. Edith Cherry, a young woman of 23 wrote a hymn of trust in God that was to become a global favourite. Here’s the first verse:
We rest on thee, our Shield and our Defender!
We go not forth alone against the foe;
Strong in thy strength, safe in thy keeping tender,
We rest on thee, and in thy name we go;
Strong in thy strength, safe in thy keeping tender,
We rest on thee, and in thy name we go.
The song takes its inspiration from the verse above, in 2 Chronicles. Asa was king of Judah nine centuries BC, when this little nation faced an invasion. Asa called out to the LORD as the God who uniquely helps the powerless against the mighty. He answered, and a great victory was won that day.
The God of the Bible does indeed help the powerless against the mighty. The long history of His people, recorded in the Old Testament, is testimony to that; so, too, is His preservation of His church despite many difficulties over twenty centuries. Above all, He helped each of us who trust Christ from the powerlessness of sin and guilt to new life, through the gift of His Son: You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly, wrote Paul (Romans 5:6, NIV).
Edith Cherry knew a measure of powerlessness in her own experience. She was crippled by polio, and lived only for two more years after she wrote the song. But her sense of dependence on God, so vividly expressed in the hymn, has resonated with so many down the years. Famously, the missionary Jim Elliot sang it with his colleagues in January 1956, just before they made contact with South American tribespeople who would kill them – but who themselves would later go on to discover the living God.
For you and me, and for our churches, what a song to sing as we look into 2025! With many challenges to our churches and to us as individuals, if we – like Asa, Cherry and Elliot – know this same God, we can indeed rest in Him, as the One who uniquely helps the powerless against the mighty.
Here’s a picture of this verse in our old family King James Bible – you can see where Edith Cherry got her lines from.
