Receive God's Enabling: God Still Clothes the Lilies, Lesson 7- Shades of Grace | Natalie Nichols
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Apr 3rd 14 Posted by Natalie Nichols in Overcoming Adversity

Receive God’s Enabling: God Still Clothes the Lilies, Lesson 7

Receive God's Enabling

Are you facing something in life that is more than you can handle? Are you finding it hard to endure—to survive, much less thrive—as you wait on God?

Lesson #7: Receive God’s Powerful Enabling

While waiting on God to act, we need His enabling. That’s part of the purpose in the delay—to teach us to live in His sufficiency. It’s in these overwhelming seasons that we learn to live by His power, not our own. If all we had in life were only things we could handle on our own, we would never know God’s incomparably great power!

Ephesians 1:18-20 says:

I pray that the perception of your mind may be enlightened so you may know … what is the immeasurable greatness of His power to us who believe, according to the working of His vast strength. He demonstrated this power in the Messiah by raising Him from the dead and seating Him at His right hand in the heavens…. (Ephesians 1:18-20, ESV, emphasis added)

The NIV says: “that you may know … his incomparably great power for us who believe.”

The horrible situation you’re dealing with is actually an opportunity. As you cease trying to live in your own strength and abilities, you get to experience the privilege of having the Creator of the universe—your Savior and Redeemer, the One who raised the dead and walked on the water—living not just in you, but for you!

You can experience the very same power that raised Jesus from the dead! Sadly, your natural man resists this incredible privilege every chance it gets, firmly convinced it can and should handle everything that comes your way.

But when a situation is more than we can handle, we’re forced to admit that our natural man is completely incapable of handling anything on its own. Finally we’re ready to receive what was best all along—God’s supernatural enabling, His power that is immeasurably and incomparably great.

For Your Challenges

What is your greatest challenge right now? Is it your children? Are you struggling as a parent? Do you need wisdom on your job? Are you trying to manage a health challenge while also trying to balance work and family? Are you facing a financial crisis?

Jesus offers you His power to overcome this challenge. If you let Him, He will infuse you with His ability and do it through you. 

Whether it’s:

  • parenting through you, or
  • equipping you for your job, or
  • infusing you with the wisdom and ability to balance your overwhelming list of responsibilities, or
  • walking you through and out of your financial crisis, or
  • imparting His supernatural strength into your frail body,

… the life of Jesus in you will be everything you need … if you let Him.

He will be your:

  • endurance
  • strength
  • joy
  • peace
  • wisdom
  • provision
  • patience
  • rest
  • mental strength
  • physical strength
  • spiritual strength
  • burden bearer
  • need meeter
  • miracle worker

This list could continue indefinitely. Whatever you need right now for your impossible situation, He is.

His Grace is Sufficient

No doubt, the apostle Paul knew God’s enabling. From living with his “thorn in the flesh,” to enduring beatings, imprisonment and persecutions, to being God’s mouthpiece in frail flesh—he knew what it was to be filled with God’s immeasurably great power. He knew how unparalleled it was to know Jesus in this way.

That’s why Paul could boast about his weaknesses and situations that were more than he could handle on his own:

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Corinthians 12:9-10, NIV)

Paul gladly “boasted” about his weaknesses and celebrated them. Why? Because of the opportunity they gave him to know Jesus and His power!

His Power is Made Perfect

“Made perfect” in the original language means “completed, accomplished, fulfilled.”

Christ’s power is completed, accomplished, and fulfilled in your weakness—in your overwhelming season of uncertainty or suffering.

Therefore, you can rejoice right there in the midst of your hardship.

Therefore, You Can Delight

In Weakness

“Weaknesses” in the original language means:

  • without strength. weakness, sickness, infirmity of the body
  • its native weakness and frailty
  • feebleness of health or sickness of the soul
  • economic weakness or literal poverty [i]

Are you without strength—strength to endure, or strength to fulfill your role as parent, spouse, caregiver, employee, or business owner? Are you suffering from chronic illness? Are you frail and feeble in your attempts to live the Christian life?

Receive God’s incomparably great power!

In Insults

The word for “insults” in the original language is transliterated hubris. Recognize it?

It means:

  • a wrong springing from insolence, an injury, affront, insult
  • mental injury and wantonness of its infliction being prominent
  • injury inflicted by the violence of a tempest [ii]

Have you been wronged? Have you been unjustly treated in a situation? Do you need God’s enabling to forgive?

Receive God’s incomparably great power!

In Hardships

“Hardships” means:

  • to constrict, bind hard, compress
  • necessity, compelling force, as opposed to willingness
  • distress
  • affliction [iii]
  • calamity, distress, straits [iv]

Are you in a constricting circumstance that has you hard-pressed on every side? Are you being compelled to endure something you’d rather not? Are you distressed, in dire straights?

Receive God’s incomparably great power and sufficiency!

In Persecutions

No big Greek meaning here. Persecutions means persecutions, plain and simple.

Are you being harassed or made to suffer on your job or elsewhere because of your Christian convictions?

Receive God’s enabling.

In Difficulties

“Difficulties” means:

  • narrowness of place, a narrow place … dire calamity, extreme affliction [v]

Are you in extreme affliction?

Does it feel like the walls are closing in on you? Maybe you have demands from all sides—family, job, health, finances—and it feels like they’re crushing you. You’re in a narrow, tight place.

Receive God’s enabling—His incomparably great and sufficient power!

Christ’s Power Rests on You

You can delight in your need because of how it invites Christ’s power to rest on you and work through you.

In the original language the word for “power” is dunamis. All the words derived from the root duna have the basic meaning of “being able, capable.” [vi]

Whatever you need, the power of God is capable of doing!!! 

Dunamis, or “power,” also means:

  • strength … ability
  • inherent power…
  • power for performing miracles
  • moral power and excellence of soul
  • the power and influence which belong to riches and wealth
  • power and resources arising from numbers
  • power consisting in or resting upon armies, forces, hosts [vii]

Do you need a miracle? Do you need moral or spiritual equipping? Are you outnumbered and facing overwhelming odds?

Receive God’s capable, incomparable, immeasurably GREAT power!! 

In Your Weakness and Inability, You’re Strong in Christ

Paul could delight in his troubles because he knew that when he was weak and incapable in the flesh, he was strong in Christ.

That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Corinthians 12:9-10, NIV)

“Strong” means:

  • able, powerful, mighty, strong
  • mighty in wealth and influence
  • strong in soul to bear calamities and trials with fortitude and patience
  • strong in Christian virtue
  • to be able (to do something)
  • mighty, excelling in something
  • having power for something [viii]

That sums it up!

Do you need moral strength, emotional strength, spiritual strength, physical strength, financial strength—or rather:

  • a moral miracle,
  • an emotional miracle,
  • a spiritual miracle,
  • a physical miracle,
  • a financial miracle,
  • an intellectual miracle and equipping for a task,
  • a miracle in a relationship?

Whatever you need, Christ’s power is capable! God is able and willing to infuse you with his strength and enabling!

Receive God’s capable, incomparable, immeasurably GREAT power!!

–

TweetablesTweetables

  • If all we had in life were only things we could handle on our own, we would never know God’s incomparably great power! Click to tweet Tweet
  • You can experience the very same power that raised Jesus from the dead! #miracle #privilege Click to tweet Tweet
  • What is your greatest challenge right now? Jesus offers you His power and ability. Click to tweet Tweet
  • The life of Jesus in you will be everything you need … if you let Him. Click to tweet Tweet
  • Whatever you need right now for your impossible situation, Jesus is. Click to tweet Tweet
  • Paul boasted in and celebrated his weaknesses. Why? Because of the opportunity they gave him to know Jesus and His power! Click to tweet Tweet
  • What suffering are you enduring? What ways do you feel inadequate and weak? Christ’s power can be completed, accomplished, and fulfilled in your weakness and difficulty today. Click to tweet Tweet
  • You can rejoice in the midst of your hardship! Why? Because it’s giving you this amazing privilege: http://bit.ly/1mLh6OY Click to tweet Tweet
  • You can delight in your need because of how it invites Christ’s power to rest on you and work through you. Click to tweet Tweet
  • “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” — 2 Corinthians 12:9 Click to tweet Tweet
  • “I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.”– 2 Corinthians 12:9 Click to tweet Tweet
  • “I … pray that you will understand the incredible greatness of God’s power for us who believe him.” — Ephesians 1:18-19 Click to tweet Tweet
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Questions:

  • Are you facing something in life that’s more than you can handle on your own?
  • What is your greatest challenge right now? What are you having the hardest time doing?
  • What difficulty is squeezing you into a “narrow place” or creating “extreme affliction”?
  • Are you weak in your body or dealing with an illness? (I can speak from experience, there’s nothing like the resurrection power of Christ strengthening a weak body!)
  • Let Jesus infuse you with His power and enabling!

 

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[i] http://www.biblestudytools.com/interlinear-bible/strongs.ashx?ll=g&t=kjv&sn=769
[ii] http://www.biblestudytools.com/lexicons/greek/kjv/hubris.html
[iii] The Hebrew-Greek Key Study Bible, ed. Spiros Zodhiates (Chattanooga, TN: AMG Publishers, 1984), 1663
[iv] http://www.biblestudytools.com/lexicons/greek/kjv/anagke.html
[v] http://www.biblestudytools.com/lexicons/greek/kjv/stenochoria.html
[vi] The Hebrew-Greek Key Study Bible, ed. Spiros Zodhiates (Chattanooga, TN: AMG Publishers, 1984), 1684
[vii] http://www.biblestudytools.com/lexicons/greek/kjv/dunamis.html
[viii] http://www.biblestudytools.com/lexicons/greek/kjv/dunatos.html


 

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