The Strength We Need Today

The strength you want most may not be the strength you need most, because the weakness you feel may not be the real source of your weakness.

When we begin to feel weak or exhausted, it may be that we’re physically worn out – from work, from relationships, from parenting, from life. We all have days we could go to sleep early, and still sleep until noon – at least if it weren’t for, well life.

Diet, exercise, and sleep all factor into our strength for any given day, but only incrementally compared to Spiritual resources we need. The strength we really need most from God today isn’t weighed in calories or defined by REM cycles, because the most important things He has called us to do today run deeper and higher that what we typically see and feel.

What Kind Of Strength?

Seven words leapt off the page at me, when I was reading the account of Saul’s conversion the other day, in Act 9 – probably because I have felt especially weak in the stress of things in my life. In Acts 9:22 Saul increased all the more in strength.

Christ had blinded Saul after confronting Him on the road to Damascus.

Saul was so disoriented and awestruck that he had refused to eat or drink for three days. He was physically depleted. Then Ananias came along and laid hands on Saul to heal and anoint him, Luke says “Immediately something like scales fell from his eyes, and he regain his sight. I think most of us need to in a sense has the scales that are on our eyes.

Acts 9:18-19 tells us the Saul rose and was baptized. and taking the food, he was strengthened. Food helped. He began to regain physical strength he lost without food or water.

But the word Luke uses for strength three versus later is different: “Saul increase all the more in strength, And compound the used Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus was the Christ” (Acts 9:22). Luke uses the Greek root of this strength, and various forms, 86 times in his Gospel and the book of Acts – and none of them were talking about food or sleep. We’re talking about power and ability, and very often the power and ability to the supernatural – understand and explain the word of God in Acts 18:24 to heal, Luke 9:1 to do good, Acts 10:38, or perform miracles, Acts 8:13, or to witness to Jesus Acts 1:8.

In fact, many other texts refer, directly or indirectly, to what God Himself can do for instance in Luke 1:37 ; 5:17, 21 ; Acts 2:24, even though He Chooses to do it through people like Saul. When you saw increased all the more and strength, God wasn’t refreshing his body to survive another day; He Was filling him with power to do the impossible. That is the strength you and I need most today

Stronger In God

So how do you live in Florida and work in that kind of strength? Saul, Who we also know as the apostle Paul, went on to write 13 letters to churches, and use the same verb seven times and his writing. Each one uncovers the aspect of the real, genuine strength we need to do the spiritually impossible.

Strengthen In Faith

No I’m good he made him waiver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised (Romans 4:20-21).

Strength we need mouth doesn’t begin in our arms or legs or back, but somewhere deep in your soul. The fatigue we feel physically should remind us how quickly our hearts are prone to wander and fail. Wisdom will ask God for strength and faith for more often than it will ask Him to strengthen the body.

Strengthened By Grace

We can become strengthened by the grace that is in Christ (2 Timothy 2:1).

The strength we need most is not earned, achieved, or micromanaged. It is given as a gift, to the undeserving. If you think you can schedule, diet, or even sleep your way to real strength, you will always laugh with resources you need to glorify God. The strength we need most is not earned, achieved, or micromanaged. It is given as a gift, to the undeserving. If you think you can schedule, diet, or even sleep your way to real strength, you will always laugh with resources you need to glorify God. Real strength knows that apart from Him we can do nothing.

Strengthened With God’s Strength

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might (Ephesians 6:10).

When you experience real strength, It will not only because you finally tap into your strength, But because you finally gave up relying on your own strength. Society may want you to believe you are filled with the unbound potential to accomplish the impossible, but the key to achieving anything truly meaningful or lasting is realizing we will not achieve anything truly meaningful or lasting on our own. If you feel weak, you do not need more of you; you need more of God.

Strength Against Evil

Ephesians 6:11-13 says Put on the whole armor of God, that you may able to stand against schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but… against the spiritual forces of evil and heavenly places.

God fills us with his strength and issues of His armor for more than that I can see. He is not simply preparing us to survive another day at work, or marriage, or family, or even ministry. He’s preparing us to defeat the devil, to stand in His strength against evil – The evil deceiving us from within the evil attacking us from within. If you try to battle Satan and his demons on your own, burn out will be the we least of your problems.

Negatively, God strengthens us against evil. Pit positively, God strengthens us to serve. That’s right we need milk today it’s not meant for you to keep for yourself, but to extend for the good of others. When God showers us with his grace and synthesis strength, He Means for it to be spent in love on our needs and interests of the people in our lives. When we use the strength we receive from God to serve others and not ourselves, He gets the glory (Matthew 5:16). We serve “ by the strength that God supplies – an order that everything God may be glorified through Christ Jesus” (1 Peter 4:11).

Strengthened To Speak

The Lord stood by me and strengthened me, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it (2 Timothy 4:17).

We don’t only serve In God’s strength. He also strengthens us to say something. He also strengthens us to say something about Him. We don’t need strength mentally to do the right thing – at home, at work, in our neighborhood – but to speak up about the courage and boldness about Jesus. When you ask God for strength to do what He has called you to do toda, remember your first and greatest calling is to spread the Good new of your God and Savior.

Strengthened For Every Circumstance

I have learned that whatever situation I am in to be content. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether we’ll few or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all these things through Him who gives me strength.

Life And Death – The Power Of The Tongue

Our words are containers of power that create action. They build up or the tear down. Words have the power to bring life or death physically, emotionally, and spiritually. This isn’t magical. It’s a matter of cause and effect.

Proverbs 18:21 says that life and death are in the power of the ton. What does it mean by “in the power of the tongue?”

The Scripture isn’t the only place we see life and death in the power of the tongue. In fact, it’s connection to the issue of life and death is found throughout Scripture. This means it would be wise to understand the power of the tongue.

We hear all the time young people committing suicide in our culture because of something someone bullied or told them. This is a clear example of life and death in the power of the tongue in society today.

Untangling The Tongue

The book of James tells us that “the tongue is a small part of the body” (James 3:5). But it goes on to talk about the tongue as if it has a personality, not like a physical part of the body. The key takeaway about the tongue is the words it produces. Let’s take a look at Proverbs 18;21 like that.

Life and death are in the power of that tongue produces

There are two things are going on there. There are words, and there is a production of them.

We know what words are but how are they produced? Those words come from the heart before they land on a person’s tongue. So, now let’s look at the verse that way

Life and death are in the power of the spoken words that come out of the heart.

James goes on to say how this looks.

With the tongue, we praise our Lord and Father, and with it, we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness (James 3:9).

When the Bible is talking about the power in the tongue, it’s talking about the words we say.

Revealing The Power

Words are containers of power that create action. They build up or tear down. Words have the power to bring life or death physically, emotionally, and spiritually. It’s a matter of cause and effect.

1. Physical. Words can bring life through encouragement, or a kind and proper warning. For example, a person gives hope to a suicidal person, a doctor advises lifesaving surgery, or a severe weather warning advising what precautions to take.

The words of a judge or jury have the power to give or take away life. These words have more power than if the person is in fact guilty or not guilty.

Physical death can be a result of hateful words or spoken in rage or anger.

2. Emotional. What we say has a profound impact on other people’s hearts.

A soothing tongue is a tree of life, But a pervasive tongue crushes the spirit (Proverbs 15:4).

Some wound as they speak, like swords; but the tongues of the wise heal (Proverbs 12:18).

A crushed spirit is a wounded soul within their emotions. A traumatized soul shuts down their emotions, in essence killing them. Words that carry life can bring dead emotions back to life through healing.

3. Spiritual, Jesus came to give us life – abundant and eternal life.

The thief comes only that he might steal, kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly (John 10:10).

Now this is eternal life; that they know who the only true God, and Jesus, who you have sent (John 17:3).

Here are words that lead to spiritual life or death:

If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by openly declaring your faith that you are saved (Romans 10:9-10).

You Have A Choice

The issue of life and death has always been a choice. From the beginning, God has always given humanity a choice between life and death,

In the Garden of Eden, He set the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the center for a choice between life and death.

Before Moses let the children of Israel into the Promised Land, they were offered the choice between life and death.

See, I set before you today life and prosperity m death and destruction (Deuteronomy 30:15).

When Israel was under siege by the Babylonians Jeremy was sent to offer the choice between life and death.

Tell all the people, ‘This is what the Lord says: Take your choice of life or death!” (Jeremy 21:8).

The power in your tongue is ruled by your choice. Humans are the only creation of God that have the ability choose their words.

However, that can be difficult to master.

But no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison (James 3:8).

If this is true where did the choice go! It’s still there. God has given us the way to choose life and tame our tongues.

How To Choose Life

The way to choose life and tame our tongues is deeply rooted in Jesus He is the way the truth, and the life, as well as the word made flesh.

He taught us that what we need to do to tame our tongues is pay attention to what is in our hearts. Although He is rebuking the religious leaders in Matthew, the truth is seen again in Luke.

“Make a tree good and its fruit will be good or make a tree bad for a tree is recognized by its fruit. You brood of snakes! How could evil mean like you speak what is good and right? For whatever is in your heart determines what you say.” (Matthew 13:33). Do you see, the power in the tongue being used in society today?

A good person produces good thinfstfrim the treasury of a good heart, and an evil person produces evil things from the treasury of an evil heart. What you say flows from what is in your heart (Like 6:25).

Being filled with Him fills our hearts with life. Also, James and Pauk tell us how to put the right things in our hearts,

Let The Word Of Christ Dwell In You Richly

In all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.

Take note that every one she quick to listen, slow to sprain and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires. We must get rid of the moral garbage and the evil that is so prevalent within us and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can give you life and save you from death, (James 1:19-21).

We need to start building each other up, instead of tearing each other down in the world today. Or it means death to our world.

Life And Death Are In The Power Of The Tongue And We Can Choose To Speak Life,

An Invitation To Freedom

When we think of ourselves as believers in Christ, yeah often struggling with habitual sin and temptation, we can fall into feeling ourselves to be total failures. Apostle Paul emphatically reminds us that Jesus denied to release us from bondage to the very chains we are choosing.

I’m not so different from those early Christians struggle to understand your newfound liberty. Just as a concept of freedom felt unnatural to the New Testament believers, it can sometimes feel foreign to us in the 21st-century as well.

For years, we can allow bondage to fear, except us to stress to overwrite our identity, muting the melody God orchestrated for our lives. The inability to understand our freedom doesn’t make it less true, But it did strife the song God put put on our hearts to sing. We are at free birds nut caged birds.

If you’re anything like me, we have to huge freedom daily. It’s so easy to default to human understanding is genocide freedom for falsehood returning proverbial slaves to the cares, creeds and checklists the world world have us follow.

But we’re here for a purpose, and Jesus paid for our freedom to run in that purpose. He paid with His own precious life. The power of the Spirit flows from the cross, frees us from the chains of sin and death, and unlocks our prison door. The power of the Spirit is unleashed with astonishing force through the apparent folly of the cross.

Which falsehoods have to mistakenly become enslaved to, falsehood that keep your influence for God silenced? Ate there times when you, too, need a reminder to confidently embrace your freedom with graceful abandon? This world need the ministry of our songs, and anthems of purpose, written before time, uniquely for us. So, release those shake first notes, and be the you God created for such a time as this. When you do you freedom rises and releases light into a world that’s the darkest it’s even been.

Things You Need To Know About God’s Wrath

As peace is a truth widely loved, wrath is a truth widely loathed. Many in the church have been embarrassed by God’s wrath and have revised this biblical truth.

The theme of the wrath of God toward sin and sinners is clearly and widely taught in the Bible. This truth is so interwoven with the hope of our peace with one another and with God that if we lose our grasp on one we lose hope of the other.

In scripture God always warn us of His wrath and then leads us towards salvation.

The wrath of God is, “His steady, unrelenting, unremitting, uncompromising antagonism to evil in all its forms and manifestations.”

The Anger Of God Is Not Like Our Anger

When we speak about the wrath of God, remember that it is the wrath of God. So, everything we know about God is just love, and He is good – needs to be poured into our understanding of His wrath.

The words “anger” and “wrath” make us think about our experience. You may have suffer because of someone who is habitually angry loses his temper, or flies into a rage. Our anger can often be unpredictable, petty, and disproportionate.

Although these things are often true of human anger, none of them are true of the anger of God. God’s wrath is the just and measured response of His Holiness toward evil.

God’s Wrath Is Provoked

The anger of God is not something that resides in Him by nature; it’s a response to evil. It is provoked.

The Bible says, “God is love.” That is His nature. God’s love is not provoked. He does not love us because He sees some wisdom, beauty, or goodness in us. He loves us because He loves us, and we can never get beyond that (Deuteronomy 7:7).

But God’s wrath is different, His Holy response to the intrusion of evil into His world. If there was no sin in the world there would be no wrath of God. So, the Bible’s teaching about the wrath of God is different rom ancient mythologies, gods who run around frustrated and fuming. God’s anger is His settled resolve that evil will not stand,

God Is Slow To Anger

Why does God allow evil to continue in the world? Why does He not wipe it out?

God holds out the offer of grace and forgiveness in Jesus Christ (2 Peter 3:9). People are coming to Him in faith and repentance every day, and God patiently holds open the door of grace. The day of God’s wrath will come, but then the door of grace will be closed.

God’s Wrath Is Revealed Now.

How does God reveal His wrath when sinners suppress the truth about Him, exchange the truth for a lie, and worship created things rather than the creator? God gives them up (Romans 1):

  • Therefore, God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts and impurity (1:24).
  • For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions (1:26).
  • God gave them up to a debased mind (1:28).

“Paul is not teaching that one day God will punish Roman civilization for its vice and decadence are themselves God’s punishment… Their punishment was their greed, envy, strife, deceit, violence, and faithfulness.” When we see the moral fabric of our culture being torn, then ad Christian believer we should cry to God for mercy,

God’s Wrath Is Stored Up

The Who,e Bible account leads to a day when God will deal with all evil fully, finally, and forever. This will be the day of Wrath, when God will recompense every evil and bring to judgement every sin.

God will do this in perfect justice. The punishment for every sin will match the crime. When the judgement is done, every mouth will be stopped because everyone will know God judged in righteousness and justice. Then God will usher in a new heaven and a new earth which will be the home of the righteous.

God’s Wrath On Sinners

In John 3;36, He does not say, “The wrath of God will come on the disobedient,” He says, “ Whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on Him.” By nature we are children of wrath (Ephesians 2:4). It is the state in which we are born.

What, at the end of the day, is the great human problem? it is not that we are lost and need to find our way on a spiritual journey. It is not that we are wounded and need to be healed. At the core of the human problem is that we are sinners under the judgement of God, and the divine wrath hangs over us until it is taken away.

How God’s Wrath Is Removed

The Bible speaks about God’s wrath being poured out at the cross: “I will soon pour my wrath upon you, and spend my anger against you” (Ezekiel 7:8). This takes us to the heart of what happened there: The divine wrath toward sin was poured out on Jesus. He became the “propitiation” for our sins (Romans 3:25), which means that payment for our sins was poured out on Jesus at Calvary Hill.

Don’t ever get the idea that God lives you because Jesus died for you. No, it’s the other way around. Jesus died for you because God loved you! He love you even when you were the object of His wrath! God so loved the objects of His wrath that He spent the wrath on Himself at the cross.

The outpouring of God’s wrath was the greatest act of live this world had even seen.

The hope for sinners is that between us and the wrath of God stands the cross of Jesus. Sin was laid on Jesus and the Divine wrath toward it was poured out, spent, and exhausted in the darkness of Calvary. And when it was done, Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “it is finished!”

Why did we pick up that sin again? It was taken away. We are sinners by nature,

The wrath of God that will one day be poured out on all sin was spent at the cross will regard to all who are with Him.

Then Jesus rose from the dead, and He stands before us today, a living Savior! He offers to you the priceless gift of peace with God, He is ready to forgive your sins and fill you with His Spirit. He can save you from the wrath and reconcile you to the Father. He has opened the door of heaven, and He is able to bring you in.

One day God will take His mighty hand off of the nation. Because God cannot be where sin prevails. Only evil will be present. And the wrath of God will begin.