Giving Thanks

Speeding through the life of Jesus and the birth of the early church has really been refreshing.  There are so many great scriptures, I have actually have had a hard time narrowing down what and how to say it.  After two other drafts that I scratched, I decided to write a Thanksgiving themed post.  This is my Top 7 Thank You List.  Why 7?  Because it’s a holy number!!!  Hee hee

Disclaimer: This has been ordered by those scriptures that spoke most powerfully to me last week.  In no way is this meant to imply a value judgment of one scripture over another. 

7.    Thank you, God that you give practical, simple advice.  Sometimes I focus on passages that are not clear to me and get so consumed with them.  My pastor and other pastors have asked their congregations, “How are you doing with the passages you do understand?”    Here is one I find simple and straight forward.  I Thess. 4:11 “We urge you, brothers and sisters… to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.”   

6.  Thank you that our gospel is not just words, but power, the Holy Spirit and deep conviction. I Thess. 1:5 (my paraphrase)

5.  Thank you that you give us armor of protection for both our mind and our hearts, “putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet”.  I Thess. 5:8  Discussion point:  “How does God’s faith and love protect our heart?  How does the hope of salvation protect our mind?

4.  Thank you for 1.  making the world, 2.  giving all men life, 3.  making every nation and 4.  determining the times and exact places that they should live so that we would seek you and find you, even though you are not far from us.  Acts 17:24-27 (paraphrase mine)

3.  Thank you for giving us explicit scriptures to tell us what your will is for us.  According to I Thess. 5:16-18 Your will is that we would be joyful always, pray continually and give thanks in all circumstances.  Giving thanks helps me to remain joyful, and I cannot remain joyful without praying continually.  Please accomplish this is me.    

2.  Thank you for those in my life who have shared not only the gospel but their lives, as mentioned in I Thess. 2:8 Help me do the same when you lead. 

1.  Thank you for your grace.  Help me never to “set aside the grace of God” Gal. 2:21.  I have been picturing myself holding a priceless power.  I have been asking God when I set this power down and pick up something else.  Or perhaps I just set this God given gift down to admire my treasure, instead of using the powerful gift of grace for the purposes God has planned.  
  
This is my top 7 scripture thank you list. 
Happy Thanksgiving!!

Assessing the Power of the Holy Spirit

I know this post is late, but it seems we're all having trouble getting out the posts on time. This time of the year can get really crazy if we aren't careful. I have been blessed by Amy's posts (as

always), but I miss hearing from the rest of you as well.

Do you ever have those times with God when He is working and speaking and revealing

marvelous truths to your spirit, yet, He seems to ever-so-slowly, step-by-step, reveal only

glimpses at a time? That is exactly how God has been working with me these past weeks

concerning the great power of His Holy Spirit for His people.

It all began as I looked more closely at Ephesians chapter 1 as Paul prays for the believers in

Ephesus. He asks that the eyes of their hearts would be enlightened in order that they might

know 3 important truths, one being, the incomparably great power for us who believe. He goes

on to say that this power is like the working of God's mighty strength, which He exerted in

Christ when He raised Him from the dead. WOW! The same strength God used to raise Jesus

from the dead is FOR me? I had to know more, so I looked up power and it means to be able,

ability, achieving power. In this passage of Ephesians it means the great power of God, the

Messiah, His almighty energy. And the preposition "for" here is defined as meant to be

received by or belong to a specified person or thing, or to be used in a specified way.

Now let's put that all together. God desires for the eyes of our hearts to be enlightened so that

we can know the incomparably great ability of God, the Messiah, His almighty energy that is

meant to be received by His people, belong to us, and be used by us in a specific way. There

are some specific steps to take in order to appropriate this power, but we will look at those as

we close. God wanted me to understand that even though this power is for me, it is not my

power - it is His power in me. I pray for Him to fill me and use me and work powerfully through

me, but He is trying to teach me how to REALLY assess His Holy Spirit's power so He can use

me powerfully for His glory.

All of this revelation began coming together as we read about Jesus' resurrection in the gospels.

Matthew says in 28:6, "He isn't here! He is risen from the dead, just as He said would happen."

Mark 16:6 and Luke 24:6 read the same, "He isn't here! He is risen from the dead!" Mary

declares in John 20:18, "I have seen the Lord!" I believe Acts 2:24 expresses it more power-

fully, "But God raised Him from the dead freeing Him from the agony of death because it was

impossible for death to keep its hold on Him." Those days of our reading were a powerful

reminder that God's great ability to raise Jesus from the dead is meant to belong to me to be

used in God's specific ways.

God brought this journey to a humbling climax during our last Sunday School lesson on

Kingdom Authority by Adrian Rogers. The last session was on accessing the power of the Holy

Spirit. We studied Acts 2:1-4 where the Holy Spirit came upon Jesus' followers with tremen-

dous power. Verse 8 tells us that the purpose of supplying such power is so all believers would

be transformed to be witnesses of the living Lord. Salvation is the "greater works" Jesus told

His disciples they would do after He was gone. (John 14:12)

We know from Acts 2:41 that about 3000 people were saved on that powerful day. Adrian

Rogers explains it this way: "Indeed, the disciples did greater works than Jesus. So can we.

Consider their formula for success: They prayed for ten days, preached for ten minutes, and

3000 souls were saved. I'm afraid that for a typical worship service we pray ten minutes,

preach ten hours, and hope that somebody is saved." He suggests that if we desire the power

of the Holy Spirit to be evident in our lives we must let Him consume our sin, illumine our souls,

transform our lives, and make Himself attractive to others through us. We must ask ourselves

some very hard questions before this is possible:

1) How often do I submit myself to the consuming fire of the Holy Spirit by confessing my

very specific sins?

2) How often do I read and study the Word of God and ask for the fire that will illuminate

His message?

3) Do I seek to be Christlike and ask for the transforming power of the Holy Spirit to perform

that work in me?

4) Do I live in such a way that the fire and the power of the Holy Spirit are evident in my life

so others are drawn to Christ?

Like all of life, this is a process and my prayer for myself, each of you, and for all of God's

people is that we would take these questions to the Lord daily and honestly ask Him to

empower our lives. My desire is to live in the fullness and the victory of the Holy Spirit.

I'm choosing to pray more, speak less, and watch the Spirit of God change lives!