08/12/2022
December 8, 2022
HOW YOU CAN HAVE POWER IN YOUR LIFE
In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will, that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of His glory.
In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory. (Ephesians 1:11-14, NKJV)
I want to show how you can have Holy Ghost Power in your life. Writing in Ephesians 1v11, the Apostle Paul speaks of the ‘inheritance’ we have received in Christ, being predestinated according to the Purpose of Him who works all things according to His Will! In other words, God ALWAYS INTENDED, from the beginning, from the very foundation of the world, before God created Heaven and earth, God had ALREADY PLANNED – ANOTHER KINGDOM! Another world, something far more glorious! Here is only our training school, this is only our preparation... Jesus taught us that, for what we do here, we will receive a reward there! There are rewards in the Kingdom of God based on our faithfulness on earth! By what we achieve down here! Our whole experience here is looking forward to something FUTURE! The Christian life you have at the moment is not the end, it’s only the beginning. What we have down here is not the whole Glory of Salvation, it’s not the whole Glory of what we have in Christ – it’s just a foretaste, a glimpse into the future of what will be ours!
Paul writes in vv12‐13, God has chosen us to be the ‘praise of His Glory’, we who first trusted – IN CHRIST! All of this is coming about because of our trust IN CHRIST!
Therefore do not cast away your confidence, which has great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise… Now the just shall live by faith. (Hebrews 10:35-38, NKJV)
Faith is confidence, and confidence is trust. The Apostle Paul taught, in Hebrews chapter 10v35, 'Do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded.'
You have faith in someone when you have confidence in them. You trust a person because you have faith in them. The challenge to all of us is, don't throw away your confidence. Or to put it another way, do not throw away your faith. Faith is a gift. It comes from God. Because our faith is in Him. But our responsibility is to not loose that faith, that confidence. Faith brings a reward. By verse 28 of chapter 10, the Apostle Paul concludes, 'The just shall live by faith'.
‘Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen’. (Hebrews 11:1, NKJV)
If you want power with God, it begins with your faith, your confidence, your trust, in God's ability to do what He says. Hebrews 11 describes the phenomenal power of faith which made these people in the Old Testament so strong, that they were able to overcome EVERYTHING! They saw something more than this life. Like Moses, who chose to suffer for God rather than enjoy the pleasures of sin. They could do this because their faith, was a faith in the impossible. And because it was faith in a future Kingdom. With Abraham, it was the promise that he would be the father of a great nation, and out of Abraham, would come the whole Hebrew nation. But he himself, never saw the fulfilment of the vision. But he lived, and died, in faith, believing that God would fulfil His Promise.
Live in faith! We are not citizens of this world. We’re citizens of the Heavenly Kingdom! I am already living in the anticipation of what is to come, of what will come IN THE KINGDOM. No sacrifice is too great. If we just enjoyed the pleasures of this world, that’s nothing compared to what God will give us in the future.
