Word on the Web

17 Aug 2009: Overwhelmed?

Do you sometimes feel overwhelmed by the struggle to live the Christian life? Do you feel it’s impossible to overcome the pull of one sin or another, or to live with integrity in a home or a job where everyone else is going in the opposite direction to you? Do you feel the issues you are coping with in terms of your service for God, or your relationships, or your future, seem to be way beyond your control? For the pressures we are facing – distracted by trials and disturbed by Satan – we urgently need to depend on God’s mighty power. Paul’s emphasis in Ephesians 6:10 is important for us every day: ‘Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power.’ Perhaps it would be better to say, not ‘be strong’ but ‘be strengthened’, receive his strength, and then you will be strong. In verse 10 he uses three different words: power, might, strength. And he uses the same trio of words in Ephesians 1 when he describes Jesus’ resurrection: ‘this power is like the working of his mighty strength which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead’. God’s power which overcomes death, which elevated Jesus far above all rule and authority, is the same power which is at work in us. It is the resource we need and for which we must pray.

 

Jonathan Lamb – 1 Thessalonians 3
(2008 Yearbook page 167)