Powered By Grace

Transcript

Alright thank you very much, and hello again dear radio friends. How in the world are you? Oh, as I ask that question I have a mental picture of many of you whom I know personally, and then I realize that there are thousands of others whom I never met and probably will not meet until we get together over on the Glory side. But we’re together by way of radio, this modern miracle of radio, and the gracious provision of people who have made it possible for yours truly, to share the Word of God with you together around the Word. I treasure these times, don’t you? I’ve have just been asking God that He might fill every word of mine with the power and blessing of the Holy Spirit and with the love of God. So many of your hurting and needing a little encouragement. You don’t need somebody to yell at you or scold you-you need somebody to encourage and love you, and that’s the kind of person I want to be.

Well, we’ve been looking at Psalm 23. We came to the end of verse five where the Psalmist said, “My cup runneth over”, and we talked about the different meanings of this figure of speech: the essence of life for good or ill, the need to have the cup clean on the inside, and the blessings of God to us poured out, the judgment of God, a different kind of the cup, the will of God for you. This cup, Jesus spoke of, “Are you able to drink of the cup which I shall drink of”? The will of God for you and then the blessing of God as found in the Presence of the Savior when you sit together with Him at His table. The cup running over. I thought of the matter of how abundantly God deals with us. The Lord Jesus said, “I am come that they might have life and that they might have it MORE abundantly”. Paul said, “God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that ye always having all sufficiency and all things may abound to every good work”. That word abound of course means, just run over, a spillover. The divine spillover of blessing from your life. The Christian life is not a series of dedicated efforts, so much as it is the divine spillover of blessing so great it cannot be contained, it just runs over. Do you know anything about that? It must be admitted that many a dear Christian is still routinely doing certain things that he or she is supposed to do, instead of enjoying the enthusiasm of the overflow of God the Holy Spirit out of a life filled with the Word. Think of all the different abundant things, I have a list of them here: abundant joy. Psalm 36 verse 8, “They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of Thy house and Thou shalt make them drink of the river of Thy pleasures”, abundantly satisfied. The river of Thy pleasures, abundant joy’s, Oh I really can’t tell you, you have to experience it for yourself beloved. But all I can say is, linger in the Presence of your Lord with the words, “Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God”- linger in the presence of your Lord with the Word until He fills your life completely full and you’re spiritually satisfied. Most of us with our laundry list of requests when we pray, and we tell God all the things we want and all the burdens that we have and we go away quickly, without giving Him time to fill our cup to overflowing. It takes time with God for you to be abundantly satisfied. Would you give God a little more time? It doesn’t have to be an hour. Give Him a few more minutes, even when you pray. After you’ve said “amen,” just be still for a while. The Bible says be still and know that I am God. Your consciousness of God’s Presence will be enhanced and amplified and intensified, if you’ll just be still before Him and wait for Him to speak to your heart.

Small thought here. Whenever you’re waiting before God with His Word and in prayer, always have a notebook handy to write down the things that He says to you in those sacred moments. Don’t depend upon yourself to remember them because you may indeed forget them, but when you wait before your Lord have a notebook handy so that you can write down the precious things that the Holy Spirit of God says to you in those moments of worship and adoration and praise and waiting on God. Abundance. Oh to be satisfied. I remember traveling up in the area of upper Michigan, in evangelistic meetings, and we were in one little town where the host pastor was a real trencherman. He enjoyed his meals and showed it (laughs) But he would take us out to different homes for dinner you know, and the dear folk knew that that the pastor loved to enjoy a good meal, and so they would ply him with the fried chicken, the roast beef or whatever it may be, but finally came to the end of his capacity and they would say, “Well, Pastor have some more”, and he would lean back and pat his hands across that capacious paunch of his and say, “No tank you I have so plenty, so plenty”. Oh, to be satisfied with your precious Lord until your heart is full of His blessing. That’s part of the overflowing cup and you may have it by simply waiting on your Lord. “They that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings as eagles and they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint”. Wait on the Lord and He shall strengthen thine heart. Wait I say, on the Lord. This is God’s request. The Lord is out looking for people who’ll give Him time. Jesus, our blessed Lord, said, “The Father seeketh such to worship Him”. God’s looking for people who’ll spend time with Him, in sincere Holy Spirit guided worship. Wouldn’t you be one of them so that your cup may overflow? Then there’s abundant life, I gave you that verse a moment ago, Jesus said, “I am come that they might have life and that they might have it MORE abundantly, to be gloriously alive in the Lord Jesus Christ”.

Have you ever looked at a small child or a growing teenage young person, so full of bounce and energy they just didn’t know which foot to stand on? You and I who’ve had a few more years on us, might look rather enviously at that bouncing, healthy, young animal, and say , “Oh, I wish I had that kind of pep”. Well you don’t have that kind of pep, but you’ve got some other things that compensate for it, and you’ve got experience and wisdom and you got a possibility of ministry that only comes with the passing of time, but the intense energy of the very young is always a phenomenon that we watch with pleasure and sometimes as I said, with a bit of envy. Life more abundantly.

When it comes to spiritual matters, and they in turn, I must tell you filter over into the physical, Paul says in Romans 8, “That the Holy Spirit will quicken our mortal bodies”- you’re only mortal when you’re alive. After you’re dead you’re corruptible, so that the Holy Spirit of God actually takes hold of your body while you’re alive and quickens it with His own wonderful Power. Believe that promise and cash in on it. However, I think the main thought in John 10 verse 10, “Life more abundantly”, has to do, doesn’t it, with those eternal components that result from the incoming of Christ Himself as your living Savior. New eternal life, “He that heareth My Word and believeth on Him that sent Me”, Jesus said, “hath everlasting life and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death unto life”. You see, so that it’s a matter of hearing His Word and believing, that brings about an abundant life.

Maybe I’m speaking to someone today who is religious, but you’ve never really experienced this matter of an abundant life in Christ. It comes about through commitment of yourself to the Lord Jesus, based upon God’s infallible, inerrant Word the Bible. Take the Word of God, apply it to your own life, open your heart by faith to the Lord Jesus. Talk to Him. The Bible says, “Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved”, talk to Him, ask Him to come in to forgive your sins, to make you a child of God, and then trust Him to do so. He will, I promise you. And then there’s abundant grace. I gave you that verse at the outset of this broadcast, “God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that ye always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work”. All grace, all sufficiency, all things, all good works. What a tremendous coverage that is, and he says God’s able to make that grace abound toward you, “My cup runneth over”. What does it mean? More grace than you’ll ever need, more grace than you’ll ever need.

I was listening in on the conversation some years ago, between a salesman and a prospective buyer of a rather expensive automobile, and the customer was asking questions, and one of the questions of course, inevitably was how fast will it go? The salesman looked at him and he said, “Well, rather than give you miles per hour, I’ll simply tell you this: it’ll go faster than you’ll ever need to drive it”. More power there than you’ll ever need. Oh, hallelujah for God’s inexhaustible riches of grace and blessing and power. God is able to make all grace abound, not just enough. Now, it is sufficient. Over in 2ndCorinthians, God said to Paul, “My grace is sufficient for thee”. It is sufficient. It is enough, always enough, but it’s always more than enough. According to this passage all grace abound toward you, so that you can abound to every good work. Anything good that God tells you to do, He’ll give you the grace to do it, that’s what that verse tells me. Anything good that God tells you to do, anything that’s included in His will, God will give you the grace to do it. There will never be a command from your Heavenly Father that will not also be accompanied by sufficient grace. All grace abound, so that you can abound in every good work.

By the way, it says every good work. Take a moment to think about the areas in your life that are nonproductive, which could be productive and helpful if you’d let God give you the grace to abound in them. You think about that will you? There are some things that you could begin doing that would be of blessing to lots of people, if you’d let God just give His abundant Grace to you, “That you may abound to every”, not some, every good work”. There are areas in each of our lives that need to be cultivated so that a harvest of good works might result, because of God’s abundant Grace. Then He’s got abundant power of course, Ephesians 3:20, “Now to him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think. The only wise God our Father be dominion and power”, and so on. Ephesians 3:20 and 21. Oh, the power, “He’s able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think according to the power that worketh in us the work of His”, what kind of power is that? Resurrection power, the power that raised the Lord Jesus Christ from the dead, is the same power that’s available to the believer by faith, and God has more than enough power to meet your every need. He’s able to do exceeding, abundantly above all that we ask or even think. You can’t even imagine how much power there is for your life, filled with the Spirit of God, filled with the Word of God, yielded to the will of God, oh, try that on for size to they would you beloved? There’s a great big horizon of blessing waiting for many of you, if you just believe God for His goodness and greatness and power in your life.

Dear Father today, may we know the overflow of God’s abundant grace and power. We’ve already tasted your abundant mercy, thank you, in Jesus’ name, Amen.

Till I meet you once again by way of radio, walk with the King today and be a blessing!