When I
think of all this, I fall to my knees and pray to the Father, the
Creator of everything in heaven and on earth. I pray that from his
glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through
his Spirit. Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him.
Your roots will grow down into God's love and keep you strong. And may you have the power to understand, as all God's people
should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to
understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life
and power that comes from God. -- Ephesians 3: 14-19 (NLT)
Yesterday we started looking at the above verses from the
Apostle Paul to examine the great love God holds for us, His children. The love
of God is key to the power we are supposed to walk under in this life but too
often Christians fail to grasp this love. Beaten down be religion and not
properly developing a relationship with Christ, we can fall into the trap of
trying to please God through works and fall under condemnation when we feel we
haven't met some kind of mark. None of us met the mark required, which is why
God sacrificed His only Son to be reunited with us. THAT is a demonstration of
the love God has for us beloved. Yesterday we looked at the opening of this
prayer from Paul and how he always reflects first who God is because we need to
remind ourselves. He is our heavenly Father -- not some distant entity. He also
is the Creator of everything, so we need to approach the throne of His grace
boldly.
Continuing in the key verses today we see that we serve a
God of unlimited resources. That may sound simple but how many times do we put
God in a box? How many times do we actually limit Him? We do not bring Him our
lives as we said yesterday only the consequences of our decisions.
My old self has been crucified with Christ.
It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly
body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. --
Galatians 2: 20 (NLT)
The truth is that sometimes we do not grasp
the depth of the love of God in our lives because we are still holding onto our
lives instead of trusting the Son of God who loved us and gave Himself for us. But
besides being the God of unlimited resources Paul also paints for us the
picture of how the power of God is made manifest in our lives. We are empowered
by God with inner strength through the Holy Spirit within us! Let's break this
down further. Empowered by God means exactly what it says. It means that we
would walk in the power of God. We were not saved to be cowering in the corner
from the enemy. We were not saved to be defenseless against this world. We were
not saved to be victims of our own flesh.
No, in all these things we are more than
conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor
life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any
powers, neither height nor
depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the
love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. -- Romans 8: 37-39 (NIV)
We are more than conquerors through whom?
Through Him who loved us! Yet far too often we see Christians not walking in
this power. Not being conquerors. One of the main reasons is we fail to grasp
the love God has for us because we do not understand this system of
empowerment. We are empowered with inner strength. Well what does that mean? It
means that in order to walk in the power of God, we must decrease. It means we
must not rely upon ourselves and learn how to defer to God in our lives. God
revealed this to Paul when he asked God to remove a thorn in his flesh he was
suffering from:
Each time he said, "My grace is all you need. My
power works best in weakness." So now I am glad to boast about my
weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me. -- 2Corinthians 12: 9
(NLT)
Does the power of Christ work through you? Or are we still
chasing the wind after it? We need to think of our inner strength as our inner
God. Too often we rely upon our own strength in the natural and then wonder why
we have no power in the supernatural. It is about stripping out the "me" until
all that is left is "He." How is this accomplished? According to the key verse
it is through the Holy Spirit. We are empowered by God with inner strength
through the Holy Spirit. The most misunderstood member of the trinity, the Holy
Spirit inside of us is the same Spirit that raised Jesus Christ from the dead!
That is the power we have inside of us if we would ever learn to tap into it.
How do we know that God loves us? He gave us not just a piece of who He is to
live inside of us, but all of who He is! He held nothing back in giving us His
Spirit. He did this so we could build our inner strength and to empower us. That
is how much He loves us.
We will continue tomorrow
Rev.
Anthony
