He was a very disillusioned young man.
He related that sometime earlier in his life he would come forward in a service.
A counselor had dealt with him personally from the word of God.
But in dealing with him the counselor had said, if you will trust Jesus Christ as your
Savior, all of your problems will be over.
And now some time had passed, his wife had gone through with the divorce that she had
threatened earlier.
He still struggled with his alcohol problem.
And he said, the Christian life may work for some people, but it just doesn't work for
me.
I don't know where the idea came from that when one trusts Jesus Christ all of his problems
are finished.
But I wish somehow we could take that idea and stuff it back in its bottle and throw
it away.
Because the fact is when one comes to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ there is no guarantee
that all of his problems will be over.
Becoming a Christian does not relieve one of a single potential problem, trial, or pressure
in life.
Thank God it does settle some things, it settles the eternal questions, the matter of forgiveness
of sins, the sins that separate us from God, the sins for which Jesus died on the cross.
What a wonderful provision God made in the death of his Son that our sin question could
be once and for all dealt with at that point that we trust in the Lord Jesus.
That is a question that is settled forever when one is saved.
And then the question of one's eternal destiny.
To know that one will enjoy heaven instead of suffering the judgment of hell.
That is settled forever when one trusts the Lord Jesus Christ.
And becoming a Christian does not provide escape from the problems of life.
The Christian is not in a bubble, protected from those experiences that are common to
all persons.
The greatest of saints have their struggles to face and their battles to fight just like
all of the rest of us.
However, becoming a Christian does provide for life's problems, challenges, and opportunities
something that one is totally without otherwise.
And that is the power of God operating in our lives to help us.
Now is it just my imagination or is there a ringing?
Do you hear that?
I don't know if we can do something about that or not.
We'll try.
I thought it was my hearing aid for a moment there.
Becoming a Christian does provide something for life's problems, challenges, and opportunities
which otherwise we would be totally without.
And that is the supernatural divine power of God operating in the inner person.
The Christian possesses resources of the spirit that mystify the ungodly.
God provides power for life's pressures.
And you and I can learn to draw upon that resource every day of our lives.
I'd like for us to consider several things that need to be examined in light of that
statement so that we might learn how to draw upon those resources.
First of all, let's consider the source of the power.
Our power is not in self-sufficiency, but rather in Christ's sufficiency.
We're not talking about generating the power within ourselves to help us through the tough
times.
We're not talking about picking ourselves up, dusting ourselves off, and starting all
over again, as the old song used to say.
We're talking about a power that invades our lives at the moment of salvation.
The source of the power is Jesus Christ and not ourselves.
There are three words that relate to power in verse 10.
Notice Ephesians chapter 6.
I didn't tell you what chapter.
Our memory verse for today.
Finally, my brethren, he says, be what?
Be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might.
There are three words there that relate to power.
The first one is the verb.
It's a command.
And it says, be strong.
In dunamao is the word.
It comes from the word from which we get dynamite or dynamo.
And it means to be strengthened.
It's the same word as Philippians 4.3 uses.
I can do all things through Christ who, what?
Strengthens me.
It's the very same word.
Then there is the word power or strength.
The original word is kratas.
It refers to power that is manifested, power that is measured out, power that is exercised.
And then the final word in my translation might is the word iskus, which refers to ability
or power that one has inherently in his possession.
It may be hidden.
It may be invisible, but it's ready for action.
It's power in reserve.
And so if we were to somehow try to paraphrase the verse, we might say it this way, and be
strengthened in the Lord and in the exercised power flowing from his great reservoir of
strength.
For that's the meaning of it.
The source of the power is Jesus Christ.
Power is not an entity in itself, but it comes from our union with Christ.
In other words, it's not as though Jesus is over here and the power is over here.
The two are inseparable.
There was a group of people who learned this the hard way in the book of Acts.
Seven brothers, their father's name was Sceva, might be appropriate to mention that since
it's Father's Day.
They were all Jews and they were in a profession called exorcism, that is part of their business
was relieving people of demon spirits that oppressed them.
In their ministry in Ephesus, they noticed the power that came from a man named Paul
who was ministering there.
He would name the name Jesus and demon spirits would flee immediately.
They said, we want that power.
They went out trying to exercise the name Jesus, but in their minds, they were separating
the power from the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.
That cannot be done.
When they attempted on an occasion to exercise a demon through a man, the demon said, Jesus
I know and Paul I recognize, but who are you?
And with that, the demon leaped upon the seven men all at once, stripped them, beat them
up and they fled out of the house.
It is a serious mistake to try to separate the power from the person of the Lord Jesus
Christ.
It is our union with Christ that puts us in touch with God's power.
It is the enthralling Holy Spirit who personally brings to us that power.
To the apostles, Jesus said, you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.
The Holy Spirit came on the day of Pentecost and permeated them with power.
The Holy Spirit comes into the heart of every new believer and at that moment, all of the
power of God is resident within that believer.
It's there, may not be used, but it's there.
The source of the power is the Lord.
Be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.
But I'd like you to think with me secondly about the significance of the power.
We must not overlook this significance as it relates to our personal lives.
The power of God gives us the ability to stand victoriously in spiritual battle.
It gives us the ability to be useful and fruitful as witnesses of Jesus Christ proclaiming His
word.
But there's a third sense in which it is very significant and it's the one I want to focus
on this morning.
The power of God enables us to live like the Lord Jesus.
That's what I want us to think about regarding the significance of the power in our lives.
The significance of the power of God is that it transforms you and me to be like the Lord
Jesus.
It is a revolutionary power, a power that overthrows the old actions and the old patterns,
replacing them with new ones.
No longer does the stamp of sin have its way in us, but we have the molding work of the
Spirit of God creating Christ inside of us in our character so that we become new wives
and new husbands.
And the power of God makes us new daddies and new mommies, new sons, new daughters,
new brothers, new sisters, new friends.
We are a new creation because the power of God is active in our lives.
The significance of the power is that it enables us to do kind deeds that meet the needs of
others even if we don't like them or even if they mistreat us.
Or should they not appreciate our efforts on their behalf, we nonetheless do the kind
deeds for them.
That's love.
The power of God in us enables us to delight in God with an inner satisfaction even when
our circumstances are disappointing, uncertain, or threatening.
That inner delight, that's joy.
The power of God within us enables us to experience calmness of Spirit, resting in assurance of
God's sovereign loving care even when we're faced with heartache, with loss, or being
treated unfairly.
That calmness of Spirit, that's peace.
The power of God in us enables us to endure and to hold out from reacting in anger, frustration,
or retaliation even when we're annoyed or opposed or challenged.
That's what we call patience.
The power of God within us enables us to display a courteous, thoughtful disposition, being
considerate and compassionate even when we're confronted by uncaring, demanding people.
Or when we're overwhelmed by the pain and the hurt of others to reach out to them in
kindness.
The power of God enables us to prove active and energetic as a force for good, for honesty,
morality.
Even when we are faced with selfishness, impurity, greed, and dishonesty in others.
But when we are confronted by lethargy and lack of involvement on the part of others,
the power of God enables us to go on to prove active and energetic as a force for good.
That's goodness.
The power of God within us enables us to prove trustworthy and dependable.
Keeping our commitments even when doing so means that we do not do something that we
would rather do.
Or when it means that we pass by an opportunity that would have brought us advantage, we keep
our commitments and our word.
That's faithfulness.
The power of God within us enables us to manifest a quiet, submissive spirit, refusing to vent
an outburst or to be reactionary and violent even when we feel great stress and tension
from our relationships and circumstances.
That submissive, gentle spirit is gentleness.
The power of God enables us to govern and to master our passions, drives, and appetites,
bringing them into check even when we feel they're a luring pull or hear their siren
voices, ruling us to self-fulfillment.
That's self-control.
You may have recognized those nine qualities, the fruit of the Spirit.
You see, the significance of the power is that it enables you and me to live like Jesus
did.
The power of God produces through our character the fruit of the Spirit.
The power of God works in us to cause us to live soberly, righteously, and godly in this
present age.
He enables us to stand strong against pressure even if it means we stand alone.
The power of God working in us enables us to swim against the current of the trends
even if it means being different.
The power of God working within us enables us to soar on eagles' wings even when others
are tossed and driven by the blast of life's storms.
My Christian friend, this power makes you a living testimony of Jesus in a world that
sorely needs to see him.
This power of God makes you a transformer rather than a conformer.
The fact is, though, that all of us fall short of its perfect expression in our lives.
As much as we would desire to know it perfectly, all of us come short.
My point this morning is this, that you and I can learn to experience more consistently
God's power.
We can learn to do that.
How do we experience it more consistently?
That brings us to our final point, and that is the secret of the power.
It's not really a secret, except that often it is to us, and how to apply it, how to appropriate
it.
The secret of the power.
How do I experience this power of God that resides in me and the person of the Holy Spirit?
How can I get plugged into that resource so that it's flowing through my life, changing
me, making me like Jesus, and enable me to minister to others with fruitful effectiveness?
Or just three thoughts very quickly.
One is, there must be a conscious yielding to the Holy Spirit.
Unless there is that conscious yielding to the Holy Spirit, the power of God will not
flow through us.
The verb here is in the passive.
Be strengthened in the Lord.
I repeat, we're not pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps, but it says be strengthened
in the Lord.
In other words, we are passive.
It's something that we experience that happens to us.
We don't originate it.
The Holy Spirit is the origin, the source of it.
But we passively cooperate so that we are strengthened by the Spirit from within.
Ephesians 5.18 puts it in a beautiful picture.
It says, be filled with the Holy Spirit.
The filling there is the picture of a sail on a boat.
The boat is on the water, the wind blowing over it.
But until the boat pulls up the sail, the boat will basically drift with the tide.
But once the sail is up, it catches the wind, and then there is power to move the boat in
the right direction.
Likewise, you and I can have the Spirit's power within our lives.
But until we, as it were, put the sail up, we will simply drift in our Christian lives.
What is the sail?
It is the attitude of yieldedness to the Lordship of Christ.
It is saying to Jesus, I put you first and only as Lord.
I take myself out of the picture.
I'm off the throne of my life.
You take charge.
See your life as a great house with many rooms in it.
Let there not be one room where Jesus is not allowed to enter and to do what he wants to
do there.
When you and I have that kind of an attitude, then the sail goes up.
To use a different analogy, a great reservoir of water is dammed.
It's held in abeyance.
Tremendous energy just sitting there.
And then a gate is opened somewhere in that dam, and the water floods down a conduit and
goes into units with turbines and begins to turn the great turbines, which in turn turn
the generators producing electricity.
What's happened?
That power in the great reservoir of water has now been allowed to be channeled down
through the dam as it was made to do, and it generates power that you and I use.
We need to open the gate.
The Spirit of God as a reservoir is within us, but we open the gate when we yield ourselves
to the Lordship of Christ.
Then he is allowed to flow through us and to do his holy work.
Open the gates.
A second thought is that there must be time spent communing with God every day in the
garden of our hearts.
We talked about the garden last week.
You and I need to cultivate a garden where we get alone with God every day.
A place where just you and God talk together, quietly.
Last Sunday we suggested a project for you to follow through on this week called journaling.
I know that some of you did that because you shared with me during the week as we met your
experience early on in the week regarding journaling.
I hope many of you did that.
Tonight in the service there will be an opportunity for some of you to share what it was like
this week, journaling, keeping track of your garden experience this past week.
I'm looking forward to that.
That will be an exciting part of our evening service.
Every day if you and I are serious about allowing the power of God to be released in our lives,
there has to be that garden experience.
A time when we quietly step aside from the busy affairs and the rush and the bustle of
life and we step into that garden and we're quiet before God.
We might say it this way, that keeps the gates open.
If yielding to the Lordship of Christ opens the gate, it is that daily time of communion
with him that keeps the gate open so that the water of the Spirit flows through us and
does its work.
Then a final thought.
There must be quick acknowledgement of failures and sins.
The very moment that we become aware that some sin has taken place in our actions, our
words, at that instant we need to breathe a quick prayer to God and acknowledge what
we've done.
To say the same thing as he says or to confess that action, that word as being sin.
To say to him that thought pattern that I allowed to develop in my life was unhealthy
and sinful.
Father, I acknowledge it.
When you and I are careful to keep short accounts with God and we do not allow our sins to build
up as it were, that keeps the gates open too.
For it is sin that causes blockages in our lives.
It's sin that hinders the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit, you know, is a person.
He is not an it, a person.
Just as you as a person can be hurt, can be grieved, so can the Holy Spirit.
Our sin in mind causes him to be grieved or to be quenched.
Is it not a sad commentary on our lives that when we sin, so often our first thought is,
this makes me feel bad or I wonder if I'm going to get caught or how am I going to clean
up this mess in my life?
And actually the first thought ought to be, Jesus, that hurt you and I'm sorry.
If you and I want to know the secret of the power, it's in opening the gate and then keeping
it open and not allowing any obstacles or hindrances to build up to stop the flow of
the Spirit.
And I think it would be appropriate for us for just a moment to take a time out and allow
the Spirit of God to search us.
And if in fact there is some area of our life not yielded or there's some sin that hinders,
if we failed in that quiet time, that we today begin afresh as we often have to do, surrendering
to His Lordship, committing ourselves to that daily time and making sure there's nothing
hindering.
Would you bow with me please in prayer?
Dear friend, take this moment to remove any blockages.
If the Holy Spirit is grieved, He will tell you, listen to His voice.
If there is something there that's believing Him, He will bring that incident to your mind
right now.
Please don't try to deny it or to push it away, but acknowledge it, confess it.
And yield afresh to Christ's Lordship.
Oh my friend, open the gate right now.
Will you do that?
Let there not be one room in your house that's locked to Jesus.
Give it all to Him.
Oh Lord Jesus, that we might know the fullness of your power, that we might enter into the
secret of it and experience it, transforming our lives, making us like you.
Amen.
There is a project I'd like to suggest to you to follow up on this message, a way for
you to apply practically in your life what we've talked about this morning.
You may want to pull out the outline if you've not done that yet from the worship folder
and just jot down two or three notes.
The project for this morning is to think of two or three situations that you anticipate
this coming week where you know already the pressure is going to be on you.
It may be at work, at home, some other relationship, it may be some circumstances coming up in
your life.
Don't allow just general things to come to your mind, but try to be as specific as you
can.
Where do you know right now today that this coming week the pressure is going to be on
you to compromise as a Christian?
To do wrong.
To depend upon yourself.
To react in some un-Christ-like way.
And once you have those two or three situations in mind, why don't you just write them down
on paper?
Now if it's the person sitting next to you, you may not want to write that down except
abbreviated fashion, if that's your trial.
But can you think already today of two or three situations where the pressure will be
on this week?
Now after you've isolated those, I want you to think about each one of them and ask this
question, how would Jesus respond in that situation if he were there?
What would Jesus do in that situation at work?
How would he handle that co-worker?
What would he say to the boss?
What would Jesus do in that home situation where there's conflict?
What would Jesus do when that pressure is on?
Think about it.
Again, not in general thoughts and don't allow these minutes just to pass daydreaming.
What would Jesus do in those two or three situations that you can't anticipate?
Then I would like for you to find some time today when you can get along with God in that
garden that we've talked about and pray and talk to him about those situations that you
anticipate and ask the Holy Spirit in advance to give to you the power to live as Jesus
would in those moments that you've anticipated.
Ask the Holy Spirit in advance to give you the power you need in those moments that you're
anticipating to react as Jesus would.
If you will do this, you're going to find some amazing things happening this week, transforming
you perhaps, transforming people and circumstances.
I challenge you to do this.
Do not be robbed of this opportunity to see God's power at work in a specific way.
And then the final step, if you are continuing to journal, which I hope many of you will,
record those instances in your journal as they take place.
Be transparent about them.
How did you feel about it?
Did good come out of it?
How did the other person respond?
What are the results?
That's the project.
Remember, the Holy Spirit will empower you if he is allowed to.
You have to open the gate.
But if you will open the gate, the flood gate, he will rush into your life and through your
life, transforming you in the meantime and then working through your life to touch others.
My friend, that's the power of God.
Get in touch with it.
The source of the power is Jesus himself.
Be strengthened in the Lord.
The significance of it is that it transforms you.
And the secret of it is that by appropriating it, you can know the power of God this week
in your life.
Let's pray once more.
Would you join me, please?
Fathers, we bring this message time to a close.
I want to thank you for the power that you've caused to dwell within us and the person of
the Holy Spirit.
Teach all of us, I pray, to draw upon your resources and not to be self-reliant only
to fail.
But may we know victories this week, more consistency because we're learning to draw
upon our resources.
Father, I pray that your power will be released from within to make us stand in the battle.
May your power from within make us effective in our witness.
May your power released from within to make us new in our character, just as one day we
will be new in our bodies and be like the Lord Jesus.
Lord, make us to experience, I pray, the joy of your power producing a perfect heart within.
In Jesus' name, amen.
Worrying Son, light of creation, grassy fields of velvet floor, silver clouds of shimmering
curtain, is designed a perfect world.
I'm amazed at His talents, standing up, I'm so great.
Now my soul begins to sing out to the source from which it came.
Bless the Lord who reigns in beauty.
Bless the Lord who reigns with wisdom and with power.
Bless the Lord who fills my life with so much love, he can make a perfect heart.
Bless the Lord who reigns in beauty.
Bless the Lord who reigns with wisdom and with power.
Bless the Lord who fills my life with so much love, he can make a perfect heart.
Bless the Lord who reigns in beauty.
Bless the Lord who reigns with wisdom and with power.
Bless the Lord who fills my life with so much love, he can make a perfect heart.
Bless the Lord who reigns in beauty.
Bless the Lord who reigns with wisdom and with power.
Bless the Lord who fills my life with so much love, he can make a perfect heart.
A perfect heart.