Be Strengthened!
Sermon • Submitted
0 ratings
· 654 viewsNotes
Transcript
Sermon Tone Analysis
A
D
F
J
S
Emotion
A
C
T
Language
O
C
E
A
E
Social
Be Strengthened!
Be Strengthened!
phil
13 I can do all things through him who strengthens me.
29 He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength.
is 40 29
28 My soul melts away for sorrow; strengthen me according to your word!
10 Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might.
31 but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.
There can be no doubt that God wants to supply all your needs and that strength is one of the most important!
God wants to be your strength and he wants to supply you with strength.
And it si with all this in mind that the Apostle Paul bows his kees to God and asked the Heavenly father to strengthen all the saints.
14 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father,
15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named,
16 that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being,
17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love,
18 may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth,
19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
The presence of the Holy Spirit in the life is evidence of salvation; but the power of the Spirit is enablement for Christian living, and it is this power that Paul desires for his readers.
eph 3 14-19
8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
The presence of the Holy Spirit in the life is evidence of salvation (); but the power of the Spirit is enablement for Christian living, and it is this power that Paul desires for his readers.
Jesus performed His ministry on earth in the power of the Spirit.
“Ye shall receive power, when the Holy Spirit is come upon you” (, literal translation).
For christians to live in victory they must be strengthen by the power of the Spirit.
Jesus performed His ministry on earth in the power of the Spirit (, ; ), and this is the only resource we have for Christian living today.
Someone has said, “If God took the Holy Spirit out of this world, most of what we Christians are doing would go right on—and nobody would know the difference!”
As you read the Book of Acts, you see the importance of the Holy Spirit in the life of the church, for there are some fifty-nine references to the Spirit in the book, or one fourth of the total references found in the New Testament.
That is a good question to ask ourselves, just how much of a difference would the absence of the holy spirit make for you, because that will tell you just how much or how little we are rely on the Holy Spirit.
Someone has said, “If God took the Holy Spirit out of this world, most of what we Christians are doing would go right on—and nobody would know the difference!” Sad, but true.
16 that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being,
The power of the Spirit is given to us “according to the riches of His glory”.
The power of the Spirit is given to us “according to the riches of His glory” ().
Christ returned to glory and sent the Spirit from heaven to indwell and empower His people.
The power has to be sent down.
How marvellous that God does not give the Spirit’s power to us “out of His riches” but “according to”—which is a far greater thing.
The power has to be sent down. How marvelous that God does not give the Spirit’s power to us “out of His riches” but “according to”—which is a far greater thing.
If I am a billionaire and I give you ten dollars, I have given you out of my riches; but if I give you a million dollars, I have given to you according to my riches.
The first is a portion; the second is a proportion. God has not given us a portion of strength, but in proportion of his unlimited strength.
The Inner Man
The Inner Man
This power is available for “the inner man.”
This means the spiritual part of man where God dwells and works.
The inner man can see (), hear (), taste (), and feel (); and he must be “exercised” ().
The inner man can see (), hear (), taste (), and feel (); and he must be “exercised” ().
He also must be cleansed () and fed ().
We must never be confused between the inner and the outer man.
The outer man is just you, and your faculties. - and it is with the outer man that all the world and unfortinuatly many christians attempt to live their lives.
They rely on the strength of the outer man.
But there is a problem with the outerman: First he is very little sttrnegth to begin with.
And...
16 So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.
16 So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.
17 For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison,
18 as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.
The outer man is perishing, but the inner man can be renewed spiritually in spite of outward physical decay.
Every single day your outerman gets weaker and weaker, his strength gets less and less.
But every, single day the inner man, if he is fed and looked after, gets stronger and stronger according to the power of the Holy Spirit.
It is this inner power that makes him succeed.
What does it mean to have the Holy Spirit empower the inner man?
It means that our spiritual faculties are controlled by God, and we are exercising them and growing in the Word
12 For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food,
13 for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child.
14 But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.
It is only when we yield to the Spirit and let Him control the inner man that we succeed in living to the glory of God.
This means feeding the inner man the Word of God, praying and worshiping, keeping clean, and exercising the senses by loving obedience.
Become an Immovable Object in Christ
Become an Immovable Object in Christ
Storms reveal the depth...
Paul uses three pictures here to convey this idea of spiritual depth, and the three pictures are hidden in the three verbs: “dwell,” “rooted,” and “grounded.”
1) The verb dwell is from the relationship world. It literally means “to settle down and feel at home.”
What Paul is praying for is a deeper experience between Christ and His people.
What Paul is praying for is a deeper experience between Christ and His people.
He yearns for Christ to settle down and feel at home in their hearts—not a surface relationship, but an ever-deepening fellowship.
2) The verb rooted moves us into the plant world.
The tree must get its roots deep into the soil if it is to have both nourishment and stability; and the Christian must have his spiritual roots deep into the love of God.
One of the most important questions a Christian can ask himself is, “From what do I draw my nourishment and my stability?”
One of the most important questions a Christian can ask himself is, “From what do I draw my nourishment and my stability?”
If there is to be power in the Christian life, then there must be depth. The roots must go deeper and deeper into the love of Christ.
3: Grounded is an architectural term; it refers to the foundations on which we build.
If you don’t go deep, you can’t go high, and if you dont go deep you easily be blown over.
