True Power

God is not the God of scraping by. God is the God of abundance, abundant life, abundant supply.


Scripture: Ephesians 3:13-17, Philippians 4:19, Romans 15:13

Transcript

Alright, thank you very much. And hello again, radio friends, how in the world are you? Yes, this is your friend, Bob Cook, and I’m glad to be back with you. Believe me, I look forward to these times when we can get together around the Word of God. The most important thing you will ever do is to transmit some of God’s truth to somebody else in the power and enablement of the indwelling Holy Spirit, that’s the prime purpose of God and leaving you here in this world. Jesus said, “Ye shall be witnesses unto me.” A witness tells somebody else what happened to him or her. So, I look forward, I look forward to being with you and sharing from the word of God, believe me.

We’re in Ephesians 3. We looked at this verse that said, “We have boldness and access with confidence through the faith of Him.” You can walk right into the throne room of heaven and cry, “Abba Father,” because the Lord Jesus opened the door for you by His death on Calvary.

Now, he says in Verse 13 of Chapter 3 of Ephesians, “Wherefore he said, I desire that ye faint not, at my tribulations for you,” when you see somebody else going through trials, it can either stimulate you to greater faithfulness or it can discourage you. And Paul knew that. Here is the Apostle Paul, the greatest mind of all of his century and possibly of all the centuries, tremendous servant of God and now he’s going through troubles, and he’s writing this letter to them from jail and he said, “Now, don’t let it discourage you.” Why? Because he said, “My tribulations for you, which is your glory.” There is a mysterious and deeply spiritual sense, in which, when you share through your love, and your faith, and your dedication when you share with another person’s trials for Christ somehow, it adds to the shine of your life. As the years have gone by I can recall seeing a person concerning whom I would ask, “Who is that person?” And I would find out that this was a prayer warrior. This was a person who spent much time in prayer for others. And as a result, it seemed that the very presence and glory of God was resting upon that life. Now that’s happened, not once but a number of times. I know it’s something more than happenstance.

He says, “Don’t be discouraged for what’s happening to me because he said, As you share in it, it heightens the shine of God’s glory in your life.” Now how do you make that real on Main Street on a Wednesday? Well, number one, realize that your real usefulness is not in getting to where you feel good spiritually, but in helping other people to Jesus. Joy and peace are by-products of commitment to the Lord Jesus and obedience to His will. Romans 15:13 says, “Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing,” that word believe is commitment, “In commitment to Christ, the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace, in commitment to Christ, that you may abound in hope through the power of the Holy Ghost.” Love and joy and peace and hope are by-products of commitment to Christ, and obedience to His will. So if you want to heighten the shine of God’s glory on your life, number one: Commit yourself completely to the Lord’s will, second get interested in what’s happening to other people, for his sake.

Get under the burden of their needs. That’s why we urge you to support missionaries, to support your Christian radio stations ministry, to support Christian education, to support of course your own local church with your tithes and offerings, why? When you get under the burden of what God is doing in other people’s lives, your own life begins to shine a little brighter. The light that shines the farthest, shines the brightest nearer home. OJ Smith used to say.

Now what else does he say, “For this cause,” he goes on into one of these wonderful Apostle Paul prayers now, “For this cause, I bow my knees under the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell,” it means feel at home, “in your hearts by faith, and that ye being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height, and to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God.” What a prayer that is for you and for me as believers.

Lets go back to verse 14. He says, “For this cause I bow my knee.” Small thought here, what is the value of kneeling in prayer? Some people say, “Oh well, you don’t have to kneel down.” And I agree, David sat before the Lord and so may you, I guess [chuckle] of course he was old and infirm, so that’s the reason he did his praying sitting down, he prayed on his bed. As a matter of fact read the Psalms, and he says, “I’m gonna call on you in the night watches when I can’t sleep, I’m gonna pray.” So he prayed lying down, he prayed sitting down. And Moses, of course in Deuteronomy 6, advises that we should have God on our minds all the time, when we were sitting in our house when we were standing up when we were walking by the way, and when we were working, and when we were going to sleep. So I guess it is true that you can be in an attitude of prayer any time during the day or night and in any position, physically speaking, you can pray. Having settled that, let’s come back to the question. Does it do any good to kneel down? The answer is yes.

There is a very subtle but very real connection between kneeling down before God and really being able to pray. Now, if you don’t want to don’t argue with me, that’s Alright. [chuckle] My father used to say, “We’ll be in heaven someday and you’ll know I was right.” [chuckle] He settled every argument that way. You’ll know I was right when we get to heaven, but don’t bother with it, don’t sweat it if you don’t agree with what I just said that’s alright. God isn’t nervous about it. But I do wanna tell you that when you get down on your knees before God you have an easier way of opening your heart really to pray, really to cry out to Him really to get through to God. Paul said, “I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of Him Christ the whole family in heaven and earth is named that He would grant you according to the riches of His glory.” Now here’s another reference to the riches of His glory. What’s another one? Do you remember? Philippians 4:19, “God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus,” the riches of His glory.

You see what God is giving us is not just the scrapings but the overflow. The abundance of all that He is and all that He has because of the Lord Jesus, and He prayed that way, he said, “I pray that this is life eternal,” he said, “that they may know thee, the only true God in Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.” “I am come,” He said in John 10, “That they might have life and have it more abundantly.” God is not the God of scraping by, God is the God of abundance, abundant life, abundant supply. Somebody listening to me is broke and you say, “Well Cook… It’s alright for Cook to talk like that. He probably has a dime or two in his pocket, so he’s not broke.” Well, you’d be surprised how often I am broke as a matter of fact, but that isn’t the point, the point is that whether or not you have $2 in your pocket you have all the abundant blessing that God can give you and you can be a victor in any given situation, with or without money, with or without physical comfort. Maybe you’re feeling bad today, maybe you’re ill, maybe your body is hurting fiercely whatever.

See, the glory part and the abundance part, goes beyond anything like that and your spirit can just spill over with joy and victory regardless of the circumstances. It’s a kind of a Hallelujah anyway approach to living. No, you don’t have to kid yourself you don’t have to live in some never, never world of self-delusion, not at all. I’m a realist, I’m as tough minded as any of them, but I wanna tell you, when you’re up against the tough times in life and when you’re up against the rough experiences in life, you can turn to your Heavenly Father and you can echo what Paul said in 2nd Corinthians 2, “Thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ and maketh manifest the fragrance of His knowledge by us in every place.” The more pressure the more perfume. God’s fragrance coming from your life under pressure. Grant you according to the riches of His glory. God hasn’t run out of blessing. I run out of practically everything. I run out of strength, I run out of vision, I run out of faith, I run out of dedication all that depends on human trying comes ultimately to its end. God never runs out of anything, God is faithful, by whom we were called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord.

And He being confident of this very thing that He which hath began a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ, God has an interest in you and He’s not gonna dump you now. He didn’t bring you this far just to drop you and discard you. “Grant you,” he says, “To be strengthened with might by His spirit in the inner man. Grant you that you’d be strengthened with might, by His spirit in the inner man.” Let’s look and see what this says here now, verse 16 there we are, “That you would be strengthened through the Spirit of Him in the inner man.” Now he uses two Greek words for strength and might. The one is our familiar word dunamis from which we get dynamite and dynamic. The other is a Greek word kratos which stands for sort of brute strength that like a bulldozer. There’s three words in the New Testament for power: One is dunamis, the dynamite word, one is kratos the bulldozer word that chews up the mountains and the other word is exousia which means authority. And so he says, “I want you to have the dynamite of God wrapped up in bulldozer power that just doesn’t quit at anything.”

Isn’t that a concept for you though? Well, think it over. We’ll come back to this the next time we get together. God has an over-flow of power for you.

Holy Father, we worship Thee, we love Thee for what Thou has done for us through Jesus, and we commit ourselves to doing Thy will in the spill-over of divine power in His name I pray, Amen.

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



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