The Special of the Day… From the Orange Moon Cafe…
“The Vast Measure”
“Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding, abundantly above all we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us” (Ephesians 3:20).
It is one thing to consider God acting in ways beyond word and thought when pondering His work in terms of His creation at large. It is a different matter altogether to apply the execution of His “wonders without number” to “the power that worketh in us” (Job 9:10).
The indwelling Holy Spirit in born again believers in the Lord Jesus Christ imparts His living and vital presence to our spirits. This contrasts with our bodies and natural faculties inherited from Adam declared by the Apostle Paul to be “dead because of sin” (Romans 8:10). We require resurrections to fulfill even the simplest tasks of faith and obedience performed in our Lord’s vineyard, a gift of grace He promises as we trust and submit to Him. “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 your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwelleth in you” (Romans 8:11).
The challenge we face involves the fact that our earthly members and faculties make themselves quite obvious in how they feel, appear, and respond to the issues of life in a fallen world. Conversely, the Spirit of God’s presence in our spirits must be known by faith in the Word He inspired, and in what most often seems “a still, small voice” easily ignored or neglected (I Kings 19:12). “The power that worketh in us… exceeding, abundantly above all we ask or think?” Nothing often seems further from truth and reality - if we base our perceptions on earthly and fleshly sensation and evidence. Little wonder our Lord calls us to “judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment” (Romans 7:24).
As in the life of the Lord Jesus, who lived more than 90% of His earthly days in a manner so inconspicuous His own brothers did not know who He was, God’s wondrous working in us will most often be manifested in ways that do not appear to meet the vast measure of enabling He promises (John 7:5). The Spirit of God dwells and moves in believers regardless, a truth and reality we must affirm regardless of fleshly sensation, appearance, thought, and emotion. How He manifests such vibrance of life will most often move under the surface as God presently fulfills the vast majority of His purposes in ways perceived only by faith. That He does so must be affirmed, first because it is true, and then because our experience of Christ’s life moving within and upon us ever awaits our confidence in its fact and reality. “The just shall live by faith” (Romans 1:17).
May we not have to confess with Jacob of old: “Surely the Lord is in this place… and I knew it not!” (Genesis 28:16). The Lord is indeed in this place of grace, namely, the spirits of believers wherein the teeming life of the Holy Spirit moves within us. He promises to enliven our human members and faculties as we “walk by faith, not by sight” (II Corinthians 5:7). No greater tragedy exists than to ignore “the power that worketh in us” that makes possible a life lived to the glory of God. Too much was sacrificed to “neglect so great salvation” (Hebrews 2:3). Moreover. too much dwells and works within us to forget or disbelieve the infinitely vast measure, the measure of “exceeding, abundantly above all we ask or think” God promises and fulfills as we believe His wondrous promise...
“And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that ye, having sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work.”
(II Corinthians 9:8)
“I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.”
(John 10:10)
Weekly Memory Verse
Oh the depths of the riches of both the wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!
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