Strength!

It always took great inner strength and resolve for me to put on my secular job game face and head off to work on Mondays.  Let me explain… As I have mentioned before, I have been blessed to serve as a Youth Minister and Assistant Pastor in five different churches over the last 35 plus years.  Due to the small size of all the churches except for the very first one, my position was always part-time.  This meant that I had to work a secular job as well.  Once we started our family we felt the leading for my wife to stay at home so that she could fulfill her God given desire to Home School our four kids.  Therefore there were many times over the years where I held down three jobs at once.

Since my heart and soul and greatest energy output was always in the ministry, our weekends were almost always jam-packed with activities.  Often these activities culminated in special children’s or youth services, large drama or musical productions or all church events that occurred on Sunday’s. 

So not only would I find myself physically spent come Monday mornings, it would also be an emotional and mental shock to switch gears from dwelling on the spiritual aspects of people’s lives and the interactions of the church family to the seemingly less important world of production schedules and financial goals.

I thought about all this as I read about the strength that it takes for us to walk in the love of Christ on a daily basis, 24/7.  In Ephesians 3:16-18 Paul prays that God would grant us “to be strengthened with might by his Spirit” so that we “may be able to comprehend” (KJV) what the Message Bible refers to as “the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love.” 

It is interesting to me that the word translated “comprehend” might make the reader think that Paul was praying for our understanding of God’s love for us.  But a deeper look at the original Greek goes beyond that idea.  That word actually means “to take eagerly, to take possession of” or “to lay hold of as make one’s own.” (Thayer’s Greek Definitions)  Paul is telling us that it is not easy to take possession of the love God has for each of us personally and to live within its structure of grace all the time.

He is declaring that it takes a level of strength that only the Holy Spirit can give for us to not yield to what people, experiences and life in general may say about us, even when our own thoughts are in agreement with them!  God simply loves us with a love that goes “far beyond any (natural) knowledge” (Ephesians 3:19 God’s Word ©)  Christ’s love is “supereminant over” (Strong’s) what anyone or anything outside of God and His Word say about us!

Wow!  Think on that before you head off to work each day this week!  Not only will that truth put a skip in your step, but it will put a confidence in every decision and action that you are involved with!  Just remember to move in His strength and not your own, for His is without end.  Have a terrific week.  Stay in tune to His Word, and keep asking yourself… “What am I expecting today?”