Friends in Christ Message for November 19, 2011

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Friends in Christ Weekly Message
November 19, 2011

[NOTE: This message was originally published May 25, 2001.]

I want you to know about the great and mighty power that God has for us followers. It is the same wonderful power he used when he raised Christ from death and let him sit at his right side in heaven.
Ephesians 1:19-20 (CEV*)

There are a number of aspects of God that are important to the believer. One of these is God's power. This is not a distant thing, as Paul reminds us. It is something God has for us.

In his exposition on this passage (The Interpreter's Bible, 1953), Theodore O. Wedel points out something really worth our attention:

It comes as a shock to find that Paul and other N.T. writers pay so little attention to the Sermon on the Mount, or the parables, or the miracle stories, or the other moving scenes pictured by the evangelists. When they want to point to the most impressive fact which Christianity connoted to that first Christian age, they point to themselves. ... they witness first of all to what Christ has done for them in their own lives.

If we truly have faith, God's power will be manifest in us. There's no formula for how that is manifest; God works within each of us according to our own unique selves and our circumstances. But, even though we may not always recognize it ourselves, God's power is working in us and will manifest itself in ways that can be seen by others.

In our worship in Friends in Christ, we often hear participants share about how God's power has manifested itself in their lives. These heartfelt testimonies are very moving. The power we read about in the scriptures is manifest today in the lives of ordinary men and women.

How is God's power manifest in your life? Have you thanked God today for the working of his power within you?

Bill Samuel