Abide
In Christ by Andrew Murray
Day
28
As
Your Strength
“All
power is given Unto Me in heaven and in earth.” (Matt. 28:18 KJV)
“Be
strong In The Lord, and in the power of His might.” (Eph. 6;10)
“My
power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Cor. 12:9 RV)
There
is no truth more generally admitted among earnest Christians than
that of their utter weakness. There is no truth more generally
misunderstood and abused. Here, as elsewhere, God's thoughts are
heaven-high above man's thoughts.
The
Christian often tries to forget his weakness. God wants us to
remember it...to feel it deeply. The Christian wants to conquer his
weakness and to be freed from it: God wants us to rest and even
rejoice in it. The Christian mourns over his weakness. Christ teaches
His servant to say, "I take pleasure in infirmities...most
gladly will I glory in my infirmities” (2 Cor. 12:9 KJV). The
Christian thinks his weakness is his greatest hindrance in the life
and service of God. God tells us that it is the secret of strength
and success. It is our weakness, when heartily accepted and
continually realized, that gives us our claim and access to the
strength of Him who has said, "My strength is made perfect in
weakness."
When
our Lord was about to take His seat upon the throne, one of His last
words was: "All power is given unto me in heaven and on earth."
Just as His taking His place at the right hand of the power of God
was something new and true — a real advance in the history of the
God-man — so was this clothing with all power. Omnipotence was now
entrusted to the man Christ Jesus, that from now on through the
channels of human nature it might put forth its mighty energies.
Hence, He connected with this revelation of what He was to receive
with the promise of the share that His disciples would have in it.
“When I am ascended, you will receive power” (Acts 1:8) “from
on high” (Luke 24:49). It is in the power of the omnipotent Savior
that the believer must find his strength for life and for work.
It
was also this way with the disciples. During ten days they worshiped
and waited at the footstool of His throne. They gave expression to
their faith in Him as their Savior, to their adoration of Him as
their Lord, to their love to Him as their Friend, to their devotion
and readiness to work for Him as their Master. Jesus Christ was the
one object of thought, of love, of delight. In such worship of faith
and devotion their souls grew up into intense communion with Him upon
the throne, and when they were prepared, the baptism of power came.
It was power within and power around.
The
power came to qualify for the work which they had yielded themselves
to...the work of testifying by life and word to their unseen Lord.
Some the chief testimony was to be that of a holy life, revealing the
heaven and the Christ from whom it came. The power came to set up the
kingdom within them, to give them the victory over sin and self, to
fit them by living experience to testify to the power of Jesus on the
throne, to make men live in the world as saints. Others were to give
themselves up entirely to speaking in the name of Jesus. But all
needed and all received the gift of power, to prove that now Jesus
had received the kingdom of the Father, all power in heaven and earth
was indeed given to Him, and by Him imparted to His people just as
they needed it, whether for a holy life or effective service. They
received the gift of power, to prove to the world that the kingdom of
God, to which they professed to belong, was not in word, but in
power. By having power within, they had power without and around. The
power of God was felt even by those who would not yield themselves to
it (see Acts 2:43; 4:13; 5:13).
And
what Jesus was to these first disciples, He is to us too. Our whole
life and calling as disciples find their origin and their guarantee
in the words: "All power is given to me in heaven and on earth."
What He does in and through us, He does with almighty power. What He
claims or demands, He works Himself by that same power. All He gives,
He gives with power. Every blessing He bestows, every promise He
fulfills, every grace He works — all, all is to be with power.
Everything that comes from this Jesus on the throne of power is to
bear the stamp of power. The weakest believer may be confident that
in asking to be kept from sin, to grow in holiness, to bring forth
much fruit, he may count upon these his petitions being fulfilled
with Divine power. The power is in Jesus. Jesus is ours with all His
fullness. It is in us His members that the power is to work and be
made manifest.
And
if we want to know how the power is bestowed, the answer is
simple...Christ gives His power in us by giving His life in us. He
does not, as so many believers imagine, take the feeble life He finds
in them, and imparts a little strength to aid them in their feeble
efforts. No...it is in giving His own life in us that He gives us His
power. The Holy Spirit came down to the disciples directly from the
heart of their exalted Lord, bringing down into them the glorious
life of heaven into which He had entered. And so His people are still
taught to be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. When
He strengthens them, it is not by taking away the sense of
feebleness, and giving in its place the feeling of strength. By no
means. But in a very wonderful way leaving and even increasing the
sense of utter impotence, He gives them along with it the
consciousness of strength in Him. "We have this treasure in
earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and
not of us” (2 Cor. 4:7). The weakness and the strength are side by
side. As the one grows, the other too, until they understand the
saying, "When I am weak, then am I strong; I glory in my
infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest on me."
The
believing disciple learns to look upon Christ on the throne, Christ
the Omnipotent, as his life. He studies that life in its infinite
perfection and purity, in its strength and glory. It is the eternal
life dwelling in a glorified man. And when he thinks of his own inner
life, and longs for holiness, to live well-pleasing unto God, or for
power to do the Father's work, he looks up, and, rejoicing that
Christ is his life, he confidently reckons that that life will work
mightily in him all that he needs. In things little and great things,
in being kept from sin from moment to moment for which he has learned
to look, or in the struggle with some special difficulty or
temptation, the power of Christ is the measure of his expectation. He
lives a most joyful and blessed life, not because he is no longer
feeble, but because, being utterly helpless, he consents and expects
to have the mighty Savior work in him.
The
lessons these thoughts teach us for practical life are simple, but
very precious. The first is, that all our strength is in Christ, laid
up and waiting for use. It is there as an Almighty life, which is in
Him for us, ready to flow in according to the measure in which it
finds the channels open. But whether its flow is strong or feeble,
whatever our experience is of it, there it is in Christ: All power in
heaven and earth. Let us take time to study this. Let us get our
minds filled with the thought: That Jesus may be to us a perfect
Savior...the Father gave Him all power. That is the qualification
that fits Him for our needs: All the power of heaven over all the
powers of earth, over every power of earth in our heart and life too.
The
second lesson is this...This power flows into us as we abide in close
union with Him. When the union is weak, little valued or little
cultivated, the inflow of strength will be weak. When the union with
Christ is rejoiced in as our highest good, and everything sacrificed
for the sake of maintaining it, the power will work... "His
strength will be made perfect in our weakness." Our one care
must therefore be to abide in Christ as our strength. Our one duty is
to be strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might. Let our
faith cultivate large and clear comprehension of the exceeding
greatness of God's power in those who believe, even that power of the
risen and exalted Christ by which He triumphed over every enemy (Eph.
1:19-21). Let our faith consent to God's wonderful and most blessed
arrangement...nothing but feebleness in us as our own, all the power
in Christ, and yet within our reach as surely as if it were in us.
Let our faith daily go out of self and its life into the life of
Christ, placing our whole being at His disposal for Him to work in
us. Let our faith, above all, confidently rejoice in the assurance
that He will in very deed, with His almighty power, perfect His work
in us. As we thus abide in Christ, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of His
power, will work mightily in us, and we too shall sing, "The
Lord is my strength and song” (Ex. 15:2). “In the Lord I have
righteousness and strength” (Isa. 45:24). "I can do all things
through Christ who strengthens me” (Phil. 4:13).
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