The Special of the Day… From the Orange Moon Cafe…
(Friends: this is an addendum to yesterday's message, a repeat from 2022)
"Weak or Strong?"
"We also are weak in Him" (II Corinthians 13:4).
"Be strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might" (Ephesians 6:10).
So, which is it, strong in the Lord, or weak in Him?
The answer is both. Apart from the Lord Jesus Christ, even devoted believers have no inherent strength to take even the first step of a genuine journey of godliness. "Without Me, ye can do nothing" (John 15:5). We forever exist as the dependent party in the relationship between the Lord Jesus and ourselves. We serve as vessels of His content, that is, God made us to receive and assimilate His vibrant life whereby our spirits, minds, emotions, wills, and bodies become His means of revealing Himself through us. Innately weak, but immeasurably strengthened by the power of Christ as we trust and submit to Him - this characterizes the born again believer, whose "can do nothing" serves as the conduit through which flows "can do all things through Christ" (Philippians 4:13).
Never must we forget or neglect the awareness of our need for our Lord's strength. However, never should we emphasize our weakness as the primary truth of our being. God's living, involved, and active presence provides this reality: "Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Colossians 1:27). "I will dwell in them and walk in them" declares the Lord of His trusting children (II Corinthians 6:16; emphasis added). God does not sit on a throne in our hearts, as it were. He rather "worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure" (Philippians 2:13). This we must believe because it is true, and because to the degree we affirm the gift of our Lord's mighty working in us will be the degree to which we experience the power thereof. "The just shall live by faith" (Romans 1:17).
We face a far greater challenge regarding faithfulness than we likely realize.
"If Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin" (Romans 8:10).
Our human faculties and members inherited from Adam possess no independent strength for true obedience to God. In this sense, they are "dead." Thus, God calls us to "labor according to His working, which worketh in me mightily" (Colossians 1:29; emphasis added). Like the lamp that sits on my desk, providing illumination not of itself, but rather of electrical energy received, our Father made us to access by faith "the power that worketh in us" as the means whereby we trust and obey Him. "Weak in Him?" Yes, but weak for the purpose of realizing our opportunity to "be strong in the Lord and in the power of might." This defines the Christian life, or rather, the life of Christ revealed in Christians as we humbly acknowledge our need, but even more, as we confidently affirm His dynamic and involved presence in us.
"If Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken (enliven) your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwelleth in you."
(Romans 8:10-11)
"Now unto Him who is able to do exceeding, abundantly above all we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us."
(Ephesians 3:20)
Weekly Memory Verse
And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge, and in all judgment."
(Philippians 1:9)
7232
No comments:
Post a Comment