Water flows through riverbeds on its way to lakes and seas. Seed is carried on the gentle breezes and wild whippings of the wind to find its place of germination in the soil. Blood moves through veins and capillaries to reach every organ of the human body. From two-wheelers to eighteen-wheelers, automobiles travel on paved highways to deliver people and goods to their appointed places.
Everything with a destination has its medium of transit and a purpose to accomplish.
God's love is no exception. It has a destination--your inmost heart and mine. It has, as well a channel of access through which it makes its crucial journey into out hearts--the perceptive faculties of the mind. Having reached our hearts through the medium of perception divine love has a vital purpose to accomplish--to impart needed strength so we can live a life reflective of its selfless beauty.
The apostle Paul communicated this concept in a powerful prayer he offered for every believer in Christ.
"For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ...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 in your hearts by faith; 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 passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God" Ephesians 3:14-19.
Paul realized that we have need of a specific kind of strength, the kind that resides on the inside. So he prayed that we would be "strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man."
Isn't that the quality of empowering for which we all so desperately long? Don't we sense our need for a spiritual energy that flows forth from deep within our hearts?
* Inner strength to resist temptation.
* Inner strength to obey God's law.
* Inner strength to share our faith.
* Inner strength to forgive our offenders.
Really, that's the only kind of strength that will prove sufficient in the serious heart matters of Christianity. Paul yearned that we should have more, much more, than a superficial, surface religious experience. He prayed that our relationship with God would reach down to the motive level of our inner person.
To be a good disciplinarian is not equivalent to being a good Christian, even if the code of discipline we follow happens to be the law of God. For "by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in His sight" Romans 3:20. There is no degree of law keeping, no good behavior good enough, no amount of effort sufficient enough to secure for us the release from sin that so often eludes our grasp. For the very moment we pursue salvation by means of the good we do and the evil we refrain from doing, grace is frustrated and we're on our own. "For if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died in vain. Galatians 2:21.
(We don't want Christ to have died in vain for us, do we? We must let Him save us in His way, not by our works lest any man should boast. There is nothing we can boast about, it is all Christ Jesus and His mercy that saves us. I am so thankful to have learned this wonderful truth.
Grandma Joan)
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