Grace
The Unbelievable, Incomprehensible, Indescribable, Mind-Blowing Power Available to Us
If you believe in Jesus Christ, you have more power available to you than you can possibly imagine. It is a power so great that it often takes a revelation from God to even begin to comprehend it. God asked me to share a little about it with you, starting with that beautiful song above.
God also asked the Apostle Paul to share it with the members of the Church in Ephesus, whom he called saints. I call them "believers." But, he liked using the word "saints," as he did the word "beloved," which he used when he spoke with members of his Church in Rome (Romans 1:7).
ln Rome, his congregation was similar to believers today in that they lived with many people who believed in many gods and worshipped idols of them. As Paul continued his missionary journeys, he found that living among unbelievers was difficult for believers at times. Everywhere he went, he exhorted Christians to crave the Word of God as infants who crave milk (1Corinthians 3:2 and 1Peter 2:2).
You see, Christian believers were few back then while the local population were in the majority. It was just too easy to acquire local habits and customs and they had to live by their laws to keep the peace too. They also had not been believers very long.
It sounds similar to circumstances in which many believers find themselves today, doesn't it?
So, in Rome, Paul wanted to help believers understand Who they believed in and that their belief was proven by actions demonstrated in how they lived their lives.
But, in Ephesus, Paul wanted to blow his believers' minds. He wanted to get their attention because they had yet to experience stuff like the lighting bolt talk he had with Jesus on the Damascus road. When Paul told them, little did they know that he was actually praying that they would come to know Jesus Christ as he did. So, this is how Paul put it to the Ephesians:
I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. (Ephesians 1:16–21)
Paul prays that the saints would know “what is the immeasurable greatness of [God's] power toward us who believe.” But, if we don’t know about it, we won’t access it and if it involves our personal interactions, most likely we won’t benefit from it or even ask about it.
I didn’t know the truth in Romans 6:1-23 my early years as a Christian. I did not know how to not live under the dominion of sin. I just wanted to get along as many people do. It seemed to be a lot of Scripture to digest and apply. The gist of it boils down the Gospel into concepts that I have simplified, basically that:
- Christ has died in sacrifice for our sins (Grace).
- Believing that, then, Christ actually lives through our lives as we demonstrate the life that He would have demonstrated in person if He had not died for our sins.
- The benefit true believers receive manifests Eternal salvation when we die.
How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed?
How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard?
And how will they hear [without your telling them]? Romans 10:14That's all, you may ask? Does that mean we have a free pass even if we continue to miss-characterize Jesus with our slovenly actions and thoughts for the sake of keeping the peace? May that never be, Paul says (Romans 6:15).
Living our lives according to earthly values does not often demonstrate Christ-like characteristics. It is pretty difficult to do that. Many, many one time believers lose faith and fall away from emulating Christ. He calls them out on it too, telling them that though they professed to believe in Him, He disavowed them because of their practicing lawlessness (Matthew 7:21-23). Only with the guidance and power of The Father, Son and Holy Spirit combined will we be able to demonstrate Christ-like characteristics.
It may be hard to grasp, but sinfulness is incompatible to a loving relationship with A Holy God. Adam and Eve sinned by disobeying God when they ate the fruit off the forbidden Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. More repugnant and insulting, was their desire to be equal to God, which is why Adam and Eve were thrown out of the Garden of Eden. But God sacrificed Jesus, His sinless and only Son, so that believers in Jesus can live.
God is consistent in how He deals with sinners. He threw out Adam and Eve from The Garden of Eden. After flourishing the world, with their offspring growing to as many as 9 billion by some estimates, "God looked on the earth, and behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth." (Genesis 6:1-2) Notice the verse quoting God said ALL flesh were corrupted.
Generally, "all" means "all and that's "all" that "all" means. But Noah and his family demonstrated lives worth a second chance to God.
While up to 9 billion people were drowned, only Noah and seven others, his wife and three sons and their wives were spared. As their offspring grew to flourish the world, they too demonstrated a desire to be like God. Predictably, God separated communities and changed their languages making communications difficult. (Genesis 11:7-9) And He has already told us that He will clean house again one last time without a Flood.
So in Romans 6:1-23, the Apostle Paul is telling those to whom he is talking to believe that Jesus sacrificed His life as the only suitable sacrifice to a Holy God for their sins. But, if they kept on sinning, then they must not have believed in Jesus in the first place. If they did not believe that Jesus existed, then how could they expect that Jesus died for them?
What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it? Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.
For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin.
Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace.
What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? May it never be! Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness?
But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed, and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.
I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, resulting in further lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness, resulting in sanctification. For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.
Therefore what benefit were you then deriving from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the outcome of those things is death. But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit, resulting in sanctification, and the outcome, eternal life; for the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
As I mentioned earlier, even a after becoming a believer in Christ, fourteen years passed and I still did not know what was expected of me to justify His sacrifice for my sins. I tried to live the life in a manner that glorified God and failed miserably over and over.
Was that my fault? Yes, partly. But, another fault was nobody proactively reached out to determine if I understood the relationship to which I had committed.
I did not know, what I did not know.
One evening twenty-six years ago, when life wasn’t going the way I wanted it to go, rejected and dejected and in a hotel room by myself, I was brought to tears in my perceived predicament as I threw the Gideon Bible across the room. It hit the wall and fell opened face down across the room on the carpeted floor. Today and every day I thank God that He treated and counseled me as the father I had lost to a head-on collision on a dark, single lane road in northwestern Mexico when I was three years old. My throwing His Word around needed to be addressed. So I thank the Lord that He chose to counsel me about my hasty and appalling behavior towards His Holy Word.
I went to the Bible I had thrown, picked it up and began reading where it had been opened by the violently throw. I began reading at Hebrews 10:19-25:
Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.
Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful; and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day drawing near.
To me that immediately told me that I should go to church, or Bible study, or to talk to a Christian someone who can and will counsel me as much as I needed to be counseled because what I did was unacceptable, period.
And then God’s Holy Spirit told me what I would face if I did anything less in Hebrews 10:26-31:
For if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a terrifying expectation of judgment and THE FURY OF A FIRE WHICH WILL CONSUME THE ADVERSARIES.
Anyone who has set aside the Law of Moses dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much [more severe] punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of grace?
For we know Him who said, "VENGEANCE IS MINE, I WILL REPAY." And again, "THE LORD WILL JUDGE HIS PEOPLE."
It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
I definitely remember how small I felt knowing that God could have squashed me like a bug. He had every right to do just that. I thought, “Oh, man! Game over man! I’m toast!”
Instead, I read on and was so surprised. What I read made me realize that my efforts to being a Christian had not gone unnoticed. The proof came in what I read in Hebrews 10:32-34:
But remember the former days, when, after being enlightened, you endured a great conflict of sufferings, partly by being made a public spectacle through reproaches and tribulations, and partly by becoming sharers with those who were so treated.
For you showed sympathy to the prisoners and accepted joyfully the seizure of your property, knowing that you have for yourselves better possession and a lasting one.
I really felt God Himself gently rubbing my shoulders and hugging me as I read His words. But when I thought about it, I concluded, “We shouldn’t expect to get rewarded; after all, we don’t expect to get a bonus just for doing our job; rewards are for going above and beyond the call of duty, right? Why should I have been surprised that God had not said anything to me until now? I had not even realized that it was I who ignored God.
Nobody seemed to notice what and how I did what I did growing up in His name. I never even thought how God may have felt about my accepting Jesus as my Savior and Lord, until I read those words. And then I realized that He had noticed; He had written those words through a scribe just for me thousands of years before I was born, as though I was His son...
I had had many “woes-me” days of feeling unwanted by God because I had no father to guide, counsel or love me from the age of three. I did not feel lonely; I felt alone, period. Then, I did the math. From the age of three to that evening in 1996, I was exactly 40 years.
Just as God allowed the Israelites led by Moses to wander in the wilderness desert for 40 years before their remnant found The Promised Land which God promised them, the Lord ended my equivalent 40 year wilderness journey once I realized that I could not be a Christian and be my own god at the same time. I gasped at the relief from the weight and responsibility He lifted off my shoulders, a burden I had never let Him carry before. Since I didn’t have a father from the age of three, even after I accepted Christ as my Savior at twelve, I had been trying to do it on my own. Nobody had ever told me what He could do. I rarely went to Church or Sunday school, especially after noticing the Pastor’s own son hypocritically breaking windows by throwing rocks. I could never understand what was written about God in the Bible.
God’s Holy Spirit then started to guide me out of the wilderness of the life I had been living, with guidance and direction as I read on in Hebrews 10:35-39:
Therefore, do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised. FOR YET IN A VERY LITTLE WHILE, 80HE WHO IS COMING WILL COME, AND WILL NOT DELAY. BUT MY RIGHTEOUS ONE SHALL LIVE BY FAITH; AND IF HE SHRINKS BACK, MY SOUL HAS NO PLEASURE IN HIM. But we are not of those who shrink back to destruction, but of those who have faith to the preserving of the soul.
And then I asked Him what pleases Him and how I could please Him more.
I know now what wilderness journeys are because I lived one. The Holy Spirit, our Counselor, took me through a whirlwind tour to answer that simple question, “God, what pleases you?” He guided me through the entire Bible in less than six-months. The experience was similar to a firehose of words gushing out of a firehose from which I was trying to get a little drink.
He didn’t lead me to read it from front to back. He had already witnessed my frustration at how those seemingly endless genealogies of names confused me so much that I would always give up.
God sent His Holy Spirit to guide me according to the questions that came up in my mind as I was reading. I would find something it Romans that I would wonder about, and He had me go to Genesis to add context to it. In and of itself, reading for context became a lesson I would learn over and over. Reading and knowing the context of something made it easier to remember; I related to it better and found it much easier to apply. And then I began reading His Word again and again. Each time I read, I learned something new.
I felt His clear calling to teach others what I had read after awhile. Soon after, I walked to the front of the worship center to tell the Pastor that God had wanted me to be a Bible Study Teacher, and I asked him that whenever and wherever he needed for a Bible Study Teacher, I was available and ready to fill the need.
Being single, the obvious position was as the Bible Study Teacher for the 20’s and 30’s singles when that position opened up. The singles attendance at my church soon exploded from maybe 30 to over 300 over the next two to three years. And then the members of the church anointed me to be the first and only single Deacon their church had ever had. The other Deacons referred to me as, “Oh, you’re the one.”
I wondered how long Paul stayed in Damascus after he converted to Christianity before he proclaimed Christ, as it was said in Acts 9:19-20. Verse 22 of Acts 9 says that he immediately thereafter began preaching Christ. While he was in Damascus only a “several” days, he had already learned the Gospel. The Bible tells us that Paul was a Pharisee in favor of the Sadducees (Acts 23:6-8) and commissioned by them to dispute and purge Christian claims relative to the Law of Moses. It did not take him long to proclaim Christ after his talk with our Jesus on the road to Damascus.
He was in Arabia for about three years proclaiming Christ. Christ’s ministry was also only three to three and a half years. Sure enough, after three years teaching the Bible to the Singles in my church, I followed The Lord’s will to be His witness as a public school Middle and High School Math teacher. That mission was to last 14 years until I finally retired.
I had never realized what being a Christian was until The Lord put me to work in His ministry. He continues to ask me these things to this day: "How will they know if you do not tell them?"
I slip occasionally; afterall, I'm not God. Not realizing how my sins grieved God, I didn’t know that I had the power of the Holy Spirit to put my sinful desires to death. Alas, I did not even ask for help for forty years without corporate discipleship and thinking that the church members I had witnessed early on were all hypocrites. I wasted a great deal of time ignoring God’s Grace.
My ignorance of the power available to me resulted in much needless misery. It appears by this Ephesians 1:16–21 passage that similar experiences have befallen humanity for a long, long time. So, Paul wants his readers to know about this awesome power they can access; he prays that God would enlighten their hearts to know the “immeasurable greatness” of God’s power toward them. I did not ask the Lord for discipleship assistances until after my frustration in being unable to disciple myself reached its fever pitch and popped.
They Do Not Know What They Do Not Know!
Just how great is this power? It is the very power of God. Immeasurable would be easy to measure if we knew how great it was. Astronomers say that the Universe is always expanding, so in that sense, the Universe is infinitely great. But today that distance is equivalent to a diameter that is 93 billion light years across.
- God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. (Psalm 46:1)
- He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. (Isaiah 40:29)
- but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength;
- they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
- they shall run and not be weary;
- they shall walk and not faint; (Isaiah 40:31)
- I can do all things through him who strengthens me; (Philippians 4:13)
- that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being; (Ephesians 3:16)
- being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience (Colossians 1:11)
In terms that fit my feeble mind, God’s power is the power that raised Christ from the dead and seated him in heavenly places. It is a power greater than the mightiest angels have, a power “far above all rule and authority and power and dominion.” It is a power greater than all the power of Satan and demons. It is a power greater than all the power of the nations combined. And it is a power greater than all the power of sin and temptation.
It is the power that gave us life and raised us from the dead. It is the power that transforms us into the likeness of Christ. It is the power to become like Christ, to serve others, to persevere in trials, to endure persecution, and to lay down our life to love others. It’s the power to fight temptation and to proverbially kill sin. For every believer young and old, it’s the power to obey God’s commands, to share the Gospel, and the power to pray. If non-believers and even the newest Christian knew, they have as much access to this power as someone who has believed for 60 years.
We get this power by praying for it, as Paul did for those for whom he prayed in Ephesians 1:16–21. The big problem is first they must know that this kind of power exists and that it is available to them just for the asking. The Almighty one, the Warrior of Heaven is waiting to come to our aid with his infinite power, as he tells us in these verses:
The Christian life is harder than life itself. Jesus calls us to hard things, like dying to ourselves and loving the unlovable. Imagine telling that to someone who has asked you why they should be a Christian. “Die to myself?” they would wonder. “Are you trying to tell me I have to drink that Jim Jones “Kool-Aide” Story and commit suicide or the Branch Davidian Tragedy being overrun by the US Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms, or be like those Moonies of the Reverend Sun Myung we have heard about following some leader blindly?” they would ask incredulously. Be ready to answer them, because their life and soul depend on how you answer and what you say.
That is indeed kind of funny. The fact is there are numerous simple references which the Bible uses that only taken literally confuse unbelievers and new Christians. Like, “Drink Christ’s blood,” for example. No wonder there are satanic followers that mutilate animal and human sacrifices and drink their blood thinking they will live forever.
You can assume that you are going to have to explain this. It will come up, I assure you. Somebody’s 40 year wilderness period is at stake. They will wander and wander, wondering and applying their own thoughts to it. That is how Texas Chain Saw Massacres happen.
God calls us to fight the good fight against spiritual powers, and our own sinful desires and weaknesses.
We come to know that we have infinite resources in Christ, like the cattle on a thousand hills (Psalm 50:10), including His mighty, incomparable power when God takes you under the tutelage of discipleship.
42% to 45% of young adult Christians do not have a discipleship relationship with the church.
A recent Barna survey statistic found that two-thirds of young adults in the U.S. profess to be Christian, but only one in ten are resilient Christians and 42% to 45% do not have a discipleship relationship with the church. (Faith for Exiles) That was me during my 40 year wilderness exile when I separated myself from people and tried to please God by my own concept of what would please Him.
If we believe in God, why would we not tap into this infinite power? What would we not read the Bible? Why would we not share God’s Word with everyone with whim we come in contact and know? No matter what you are facing today, Jesus has more than enough strength for you. Just ask Him for it for yourself and may the power of the Holy Spirit propel you to tell others about it so they will ask!
Take it upon yourself as a Christian to discuss, inform, or shout from the top of your Bible with everyone with whom you come into contact that “We can receive the very strength of God himself just by asking!”
THEY WILL NEVER KNOW WHAT THEY DO NOT KNOW UNTIL YOU TELL THEM!
I praise the Lord for allowing me to have seen and lived the results of telling them. Once I stepped into my church with a sincere heart to learn about being a Christian, the Lord led me through the Bible in very short order relative to the time I had wasted. It wasn’t as though I didn’t believe; I just never knew that I could ask for help. I probably sat down to intentionally read the Bible from cover to cover hundreds of times during my 30 years of wandering in my life’s desert, only to lose purpose and focus somewhere between Deuteronomy and Numbers. But you will learn as I did that there is a reason and purpose for all of those seemingly endless names. Even the order in which they are written is important.
Therefore [do] not to lose heart at … tribulations …, for they are your glory.
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is:
[The] breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God. Ephesians 3:14-19
Unbelievable, Incomprehensible, Indescribable
