Renewed Power

Transcript

Alright thank you very much, and hello again radio friends. How in the world are you? Doing alright?

You and I are in Colossians the first chapter, and we’ve been walking around in this concept of increasing in the knowledge of God. To know God you need to agree with Him, “Can two walk together except they be agreed”, the prophet says. Need to know something of His loving kindness. How loving He is and how kind He is. And you need to know something of His judgments, the decisions that can be made based on the will of God. “Let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth Me sayeth the Lord”. I’m turning the pages of my Bible to Jeremiah the ninth chapter, “Let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knowest Me, that I am the Lord which exercise loving kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth. For these things I delight sayeth the Lord”.

Judgment is decisions based on the will of God. Righteousness is of two aspects. One is imputed, the other’s imparted. God reckons you righteous the moment you accept the Lord Jesus Christ as your Lord and He becomes then, by faith, your Savior. God reckons to you, in other words, He puts to your account all of the glorious righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are accepted in Him, accepted in the beloved, complete you’ll read later on in the same book of Colossians, “Ye are complete in Him”. “Ye are complete in Him”. There is the blessed truth of the righteousness of Christ. There is nothing that God could ever ask of you, but that Christ can supply by His perfect righteousness. Isn’t that a wonderful truth? “In Him dwell of all the fullness of the Godhead bodily”, we read in Colossians 2:9, and Paul goes on then to remark in 2:10, “Ye are complete in Him”.

The righteousness of God is given to you freely because of the Lord Jesus. All that Jesus is yours by faith. You can look up today and, and accept, claim I guess is a better word, by faith, everything that He is and all that He’s able to do in your life. That’s imputed. Then, the other’s imparted, by faith that which is His becomes yours, it’s imparted to you.

My friend Elliott Stedelbauer who, during the years when I was President of Youth for Christ, was also a member of the Board of Directors and a warm personal friend who traveled with me to a number of foreign countries. Looked at me one day and it developed after in a conversation that he noticed that my clothes were a little shoddy and actually I wasn’t all that poor I guess, but I just hadn’t taken the time to go get a new coat and so on, and it was cold-weather up there in Toronto where he lived.

So he said to me without explaining what he was up to, he said, “I have to do a little errand. Do you want to go with me”? I said, “Well sure”, I don’t know why I should go with him to do an errand, but I was willing. So, we took off and stopped in front of a men’s clothing store. He went in and talked to the man for a moment and then he said, “Have you got a coat that might fit my friend here”? And the man looked at me; he said “Yes I think we do”. He went to the rack, pulled off a coat, tent and awning size I guess, whatever it was, and it fit me beautifully. “Well”, he said, “Why don’t you just take that along Bob and we’ll work it out”. Well, I was dumbfounded, but I had the coat on my back and he said to take it along, so I wasn’t one to fight with him about it.

When we got in the car he said, “You know, he owes me some money and I figured that was the best way to collect it”. He laughed. Now, the coat was mine. I took it. I accepted it. I didn’t pay for it, it was given and now it was on my shoulders warming my body and I was enjoying it.

The Lord Jesus Christ has, in His possession as part of His attributes, the glorious righteousness of God and He gives that to you when, by faith, you make Him your Lord and your Savior. The righteousness of God is imputed to you, that is, it’s reckoned on your account. The moment you are saved God looks at you as being as righteous as Jesus, but as the years go by, God puts to work in our lives His glorious righteousness so that it shows up in our character and in our conduct, and in that way we get to know Him, increasing in the knowledge of God. The better you know God, the more you’re going to know the thrill and the joy of His righteousness working in your own life. It’s a great truth, isn’t it? Increasing in the knowledge of God.

Let me stop here to ask you, beloved, do know God any better today than you used to? Is He more of a friend to you and do you feel more comfortable in His Presence or not? This I think is something that that we ought to pay attention to. Many a person is just as stiff and starchy and uncomfortable in the Presence of God today has he or she was 50 years ago. A strange and not too happy relationship. Other people seem to grow in the knowledge of their Lord and their relationship with the deity becomes one of delight rather than of duress. How is it my dear friend, with you? All the apostles pray for the folk at Colossae and he said, “Increase”, he wanted them to increase the knowledge of God.

Take a little time to be alone with your Lord and say, “Lord I want to know you better. I want to be better acquainted with my Heavenly Father”. You’ll be surprised what would happen. Your own heart will be warmed with the blessing of God. You’ll be glad that you spent that extra time with your Lord.

I still recall with delight the memory of the day I was making a pastor call on one of my church members. I was just about to turn away because there been some delay in answering the doorbell. I thought, well maybe they’re not home, and then the lady came to the door holding by the hand, her little three-year-old and she said, “Pastor, I’m sorry I was slow in answering the door, but we wanted to finish our prayer. Baby and I were just practicing the Presence of the Lord. And the little three-year-old gal looked up with a beautiful, heavenly smile on her face that was such a joy to see. Well of course I came in and we had a good visit and we had a chance then, the three of us as well to speak with our Heavenly Father. Practicing the Presence of the Lord.

Do you spend any time in His Presence? Do you just come to God without a laundry list necessarily of things that you want Him to do or supply? Just to love Him, just to be with Him, just to tell Him that you are worshiping Him as your Lord and as your Father, and as your God? Increasing in the knowledge of God. I trust that that may be your blessed portion in the days that lie ahead.

Now, Paul keeps on praying for these folk, “I’m praying for your people and Colossae, I want you to be filled with the knowledge of God’s will”. This involves wisdom, it’s knowing what to do with what you know and spiritual understanding, which is knowing what, why God is doing what He’s doing. “That you might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing”. Pleasing God in everything that you do because your living up to His reputation, not yours. Being fruitful in every good work. Fruitfulness in the work of God, and increasing, that’s what we’re talking about just now, in the knowledge of God.

Now he says, keeping on praying, “I’m praying that you might be strengthened with the Almighty according to His glorious power unto all patience and long-suffering with joyfulness”. There are three Greek words in the New Testament that are used for power. One is dunamis, for which we get our word dynamite or dynamic. It’s the concept of a power that never wears out, never gives up, never burns out. It’s the word that’s used in Romans 1:16, “I’m not ashamed”, Paul said, “of the Gospel of Christ, for it is the power”, the dunamis, the dynamite, the dynamic, the never burning out power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth. That’s that word.

Then, there’s another word exousia, which means authority. Jesus used that word when He said, All power’s given unto Me in Heaven and on earth”. Uses the word exousia, authority. And then there’s another word, kratos, which is a kind of a bulldozer word, it’s the chew up mountains kind of a word. It’s the concept of a power before which nothing can stand. You’ve seen these great earthmovers. R.G. Turner used to build them, and some of the other big companies, build great earthmoving machines which go along at up to a speed of 30 miles an hour and pick up railroad trains full of earth and move it from one place to another, and they can literally level a mountain. Well that’s the word there, kratos, it so, it’s the mountain mover word.

This is the concept then that we bring to our understanding of Colossians 1:10-11, “Strengthened with all might”. given the power that never burns out and given the power that chews up the opposition, the mountains. Oh boy, isn’t that tremendous? We hear a lot about burnout nowadays, don’t we? The people in professional life; nurses, physicians, clergyman, counselors, psychologists, psychiatrists, people in public life, statesmen, congressmen, politicians, what-not, and they talk about burn out.

What does it mean? It means you had so much of the job that you can’t stand anymore and that you don’t react with delight any longer to the challenges that face you, but they become instead a threat, instead of a delightful challenge, the circumstances that face you become a threat to you, and you feel like running away from them all and dropping them all. The newspaper the other day had the story of a mailman who simply got fed up with delivering the mail and he took 1100 pieces of mail and dumped them into a refuse container and went on his way. His explanation was he said, “I just got burned out”. He also got fired, but that is what happens to human nature when it is making a consistent effort along any given line.

Now, you don’t have to burn out when God is resupplying the power. That’s the point of the to make as we leave the air today. You don’t have to burn out when God is resupplying the power because this word dunamis, dynamic, dynamite is the word, applied to the shining sun, it never burns out. It keeps right on. God keeps on supplying His power. “God is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think according to the power that worketh in us”, Paul says in Ephesians 3:20.

Do you feel burned out today beloved? Any of you? If you do, seek your Heavenly Father and let Him resupply the power. “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength”, the Bible says. So, you try that will you? We’ll get back to this the next time we get together.

Dear Father today, may we get to know Thee better, and may we have a taste of Thy renewing power, in Jesus’ name, Amen.

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