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We come now to the word of God today,
and I wanted to do this and invite all of us to read a couple verses
from 2 Timothy together. So let’s read the word of God as we start our
time in the word this morning. (2 Timothy 1:6-7)
For this reason I remind you to fan
into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my
hands. For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of
power, of love and of self-discipline.
This is God’s word for us this day.
Let’s pray.
Lord I can’t help but let that song
continue to reverberate in my mind. “I will sing of your glory because
you, oh Lord, are my righteousness.” You are our righteousness and we
thank you. So Lord we ask that you, because you live within us, would
quicken our heart by the power of the Holy Spirit, to hear what you have
for us this day. Lord we are grateful for that and to that end we
pray. Amen
Well I had the fortunate opportunity
last winter to travel with a group from Faith down to Mississippi to be
part of the Hurricane Katrina relief efforts. During that time, on one
of those nights, we had the opportunity to visit with a family that
actually went through the storm. They talked about life right after
that storm, when the lights were out. Their house was not too badly
damaged but they had no power. They had nothing to cook with. They
couldn’t go any where because of downed trees. The food that was in
their freezers was quickly defrosting. They did have some tanks full of
propane for their grills. So for the first few days after the storm it
was party time as they ate each others food and enjoyed each others
company and encouraged and supported one another. But pretty soon the
food was gone and the propane was long gone. At that point life became
a lot more difficult for them because they had run out of power; the
power to cook their food. For any of us who drive a car, we know the
pain that we are feeling at the pumps these days as the prices continue
to go higher and higher. We have to begin to say, “O.K. where can I cut
back on my gas? Where can I cut back on the power that I use?” If you
have ever had electricity go out in your house, you know how difficult
that can be, very quickly. We use power to run our lives. Many times
we don’t even think about it. We take it for granted; that is, of
course, until it is removed either by nature or economic forces. But
there is another kind of power that most of us want in our lives and
when it’s missing, our lives can be troubled and unsettled, to say the
least. It is an internal power to help us live and studies show over
and over again that the majority of people feel like they live powerless
lives.
We live in a world that is a crazy
place, don’t we? Bad things happen to good people, don’t they? Life
can change in a moment. An act of terrorism requires new adaptation.
We wonder what is around the next corner and will I be able to cope with
it? For some of us, life is just a plain struggle. There is no other
way to put it. There just doesn’t seem to be any easy answers. We
wonder, we wonder where can I get the power that I need to get through
my life. The truth is God never promised us an easy life, as hard as
that is to hear. That is because we live in a world that is filled with
pain and with brokenness; and that pain and that brokenness is not
always just kind of out there, this kind of nebulous “out there,” but
sometimes it is very close to home. So close in fact that it may be
sitting right next to you in the person that is sitting next to you.
While God doesn’t promise us an easy life, He does say that He doesn’t
want us to live a powerless life. He wants us to live life to the
full. That’s God desire for us and He is willing to do whatever it
takes to help us live that kind of a full life; for God wants to give us
the power to live that kind of a life that overcomes the powerlessness
that so many of us feel. Have you ever seen one of those persons or do
you know someone who kind of lives that life in God’s power? I’m
thinking recently about a woman who just passed away, but she was
friends with my wife Leslee and her family and I knew her as well. She
lived with God’s power. She is the person I think about when I’m
talking about this. Every where she went she had kind words and joy to
give away. She would travel far and wide to play her harp at the drop
of a hat. In fact, she would say that her husband was her harp moving
company because they were traveling around so much. If someone was in
the hospital she was there with a visit or at least a card. Yet, she
also knew the hard side of life because there were lots of problems in
her family; but it never seemed to get the best of her. I think that
was reflected in the amount of people that attended her funeral and the
wide variety of walks of life that they came from. She knew God’s power
was available to her and she used it to make the most of life. God’s
power is available to all of us, as well. That same kind of power, no
matter what’s happening in our lives, whether we’re just plain being
beating down by life, whether we are tempted to walk in ways that will
lead to trouble; or whether we’re just plain in pain, physical pain,
relational pain, emotional or spiritual pain. God’s power is always
there for us; but it is not an automatic. It is a co-operative effort.
Know that God is ready to bring His power to bear at whatever is going
on in your life, but we must do our part to help receive it. For God,
His part, He will bring the impossible but we must bring the possible.
That’s what I want to focus on for our time together, the possible.
What is the possible that we can do to pave the way to receive God’s
power into those areas where we need it. If you continue to doubt God’s
power, just read scripture. Great stories: parting the Red Sea, turning
water into wine, bringing people out of jail from behind bars, healing
broken minds and broken bodies. Receiving God’s power is there for us
and it starts when we admit our weaknesses. For that, I think about the
scripture from 1 Peter. “Humble yourself before the mighty hand of God
and He will lift you up.” That’s the starting point of God’s power.
God has the power to speak things into existence. “Let there be light”
and there was. It doesn’t work that way for me. “Let the lawn be
mowed” and it wasn’t. But our God does not have a power problem. Our
God of power asks us to admit that we don’t have all the answers; that
we don’t have the power; and we need help. So when we think about
admitting our weaknesses there is a couple different ways to go at
that. One, for some of us, it’s going to mean acknowledging our
wounded-ness. Our wounded-ness comes in many forms but it is always
hidden from the world but not from us. It is real. It is painful and
it can be debilitating. If you are wounded like this, then admitting
your weaknesses starts by simply acknowledging your wounded-ness and
crying out for God’s help. Toughing it out won’t allow God’s power to
come to bear on your wounded-ness. We need to humble ourselves enough
to say “Lord I’m broken. I’m this cracked vessel and I’m leaking pretty
bad. I need your help.” Read through the book of Psalms. Time after
time the psalmist cries out “Lord, I’m broken. Help me.” That is a
model if you are wounded.
Another part of admitting our
weaknesses is confessing our pride, acknowledging our arrogance, our
pride and how it makes us self-reliant. James says that “God opposes
the proud but gives grace to the humble.” It’s not enough for him to
say that God doesn’t like it when we are proud. He says when we are
proud God actively pushes us away from him. He holds us at arms length
and says, “I don’t even want you close to me because you are
anesthetical for everything I stand for and I desire.” For when we
admit our weaknesses when we are proud, that’s a hard one isn’t it for
us. It’s a very hard thing to do because we’re proud. So I think it
requires supernatural intervention. It requires the power of the Holy
Spirit working on your heart, chipping away those stony corners,
convicting you of your pride and your arrogance. I want to give us a
moment right now, just a moment of silence, to do a little business with
God. Take a moment, and just ask God to show you if there is any pride
in your life. Why don’t you just bow your head for just a moment of
silence and just ask God that. (Silence) Thank you.
You know, where there is pride, God’s
power will not be received because it is not desired. So to receive
God’s power it requires us to admit our weaknesses whatever they might
be, but it also means that we must be connected with God. Here I love
the verses out of John 15 where Jesus is talking about the vine and the
branches. He’s talking about bearing fruit, he’s talking about the
concept of abiding; and here bearing fruit is really letting God’s power
come into our lives, and that happens as we abide. Abide brings with it
the idea of being connected to the source. Being connected to the
source is not a one time thing. It’s not like you go, you get filled up
and then you go, like as if you’re filling up your gas tank at the gas
station and then going on. This idea of being connected brings with it,
I think, a little bit more of this idea of continuation; it’s something
that dwells and remains. I think about it like hanging out, hanging out
with somebody. When you hang out with somebody, you don’t have an
agenda. You just want to be with them. I think that’s a concept that
we need to recapture with God. We need to learn to hang out with God.
Perhaps that’s what is behind the verse where Paul says, “Pray at all
times.” For those who are wondering about the “hows” of hanging out,
look at the kind of choices that you make. What’s your intake of
scripture like? Do you read scripture just for information or study?
Do you read scripture for inspiration? Do you read large passages of
scripture just to get the flow of how God is moving? I think hanging
out with God needs all of that, and your prayer life. Too often it’s a
quick one two and then off to our daily activities. Do you linger in
prayer? How about allowing the Holy Spirit to speak into your life, to
guide your life? When was the last time you did something because you
believe that the Holy Spirit asked you to do that?
Being connected with God is going to
require for some of us getting off the busyness treadmill, to down shift
if you will. If we believe that Christ is our best friend then how much
time do we spend with him? Being connected means focusing on Christ, it
means leaning on Christ, it means running to Christ. Be connected.
Receive God’s power. If you are going to admit your weaknesses, you’re
going to be connected; then it also means that we need to be living a
current faith. I call that living a present tense faith. A present
tense faith is something that is active in our present lives, here and
the now. A present tense faith acknowledges our faith in the past but
it doesn’t lean on it in the present. It doesn’t count on it in the
present. Think about those places where you have been faithful in the
past. You trusted God as your Lord and Savior when you were a child.
You trusted God as you went through Chemo. You trusted God when you
lost your job. Those are all examples of past faith. They’re good;
they’re needed; but what about right now? Where are you trusting God in
your life right now? Where’s that faith being stretched? How active is
it in your life; and, as you are clicking those answers off in your
mind, ask yourself how is that faith getting lived out? What are the
actions that are coming out of that faith? A present tense faith is
active; it is alive and it is powerful. I think of the story in Acts 9
of Ananias when he is told by God to go see Paul, the guy who has just
been murdering all of his fellow believers; and he is the first one that
gets to walk in the room and say “Hey Paul, God has a wonderful plan for
you.” That’s a present tense faith. Think about those places where
you need a present tense faith in your life right now. Note as you’re
thinking about those, how that faith pushes you to choose God’s way.
God gives us a direction but we must choose in faith to act on it.
That’s a present tense faith. Joshua 1 is a great example of that, as
Joshua was preparing the people to cross into the Promised Land. God
gives us power along the way to step out in faith. We choose the way
that God leads. It requires that we admit our weaknesses. “Lord, I’m
broken. I need your help.” It requires being connected with God.
“Lord thank you that you are here right now.” It requires acting on our
faith when we know the right path, a present tense faith. God desires
to give us all the power we need, and more. Let us come before our
powerful God and receive all that he desires for us. Amen.
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