The Power of “My” God

Introduction

Appreciate the song selection. Appreciate everyone’s attendance. It was announced that I was doing this, and y’all still came back. So thank you for that. In case you miss the invitation song is 830 for Power in the Blood. Couple of opening notes. I’m not wearing a coat or a tie. That was not the plan. Turns out in December I went and put on a shirt. I was going to put on a tie and I couldn’t button the collar. Dry cleaners must have shrunk it, right? Put on the other one. I can’t button that collar either. I have one shirt I can wear a tie with. I did plan to wear a coat. It’s at home. So are my notes. So I’m not worried. The topic tonight, fairly passionate about.

I took pictures of my slides. I was able to review them. Think I’m ready. I am not Tony. Obviously. If you’re a visitor, I am not the normal guy. The normal guy is excellent. Hopefully you’ll think I’m excellent tonight, too. so why me? Why am I up here? So Tony was up in his office. I’m teaching a high school class right now. It’s a fantastic class. If you’re a teacher, please teach it. They’re great kids. they’re kids now that I’m old. Just old. Tony walks into his office and I’m talking to him. I say, hey, yeah, just next time you have an opening, I’ve got an idea, I’ve got, you know, got it written down, I’m ready. He goes, oh hey, how about April 16th?

No problem. Put it on the calendar. Two days later I get a text message. Hey, how about March 20th? Okay, you can do that. Five minutes later. Nope, April 16th. Next day, oh. So, here I am, March 20th. I had a week to prepare. I had it all in my head. I was really ready to do a Wednesday night, you know, five minute talk on this, all prepared, and y’all are gonna get a little more than five minutes. No more than 45. That’s about 25 minutes tonight. I want to take a minute and apologize to Dean. Because if y’all didn’t notice, that slide didn’t click on the invitation song this morning. That’s what happens when you turn the power off on the clicker. I got it there and I turned the power off.

I’m gonna blame Carmichael who is in my arms, but I think I did it. I know that can throw you off, and I appreciate all the song leaders and the people who are helping me. I’m not the only one with the clicker now. So tonight Scott did the clicking and he was flawless so far. No pressure. But I appreciate everyone who does that. One other thing about this group. I love this group. Y’all haven’t figured that out yet. I appreciate the affirmation that Tony gets when he’s up here. And he makes a powerful point. People don’t hesitate to say amen. I love that. Something that I should probably do a little more of. I’ve talked to Tony about it. He appreciates it because he knows you’re engaged, and he knows that you’re listening and that you appreciate the point and you agree with him.

So if you have that inclination tonight, go right ahead. Tonight we’re gonna talk about the power of God. And on this slide, you see this little bird up here. I took this picture in Florida in 2007. I’ve used it before. I have a picture of the same bird all the way under the water, and I use it in the baptism. We baptize the bird at the end of the lesson. But I always like to use a picture that I’ve taken as a background. I tried a couple others. This one’s one of my favorites. you want to know about him? My dad happens to be in the audience. He can tell you all about him. Little bitty guy flies really fast, hits the water at full speed.

Pelicans do the same thing. Pelicans are a really big bird, and they hit the water at full speed, and you wonder how do they not just come apart when they hit the water? If it was evolution and that pelican hit the water at full speed, or that little itty bitty three-ounce bird hit the water at full speed, he’d fall apart. He’d have done it once, just like the woodpecker. He’d have hit the tree once. But I believe that God made this earth and he made everything on it, and he made it to do its purpose. So that’s enough about the bird. We’re not just going to talk about the power of God tonight. We’re going to talk about the power of my God. All too often we try to take the personal relationship with God out of our picture.

There have been so many of different faiths and different denominations who take a more liberal view and they have their personal relationship with God and they take it a little too far, and so sometimes, as is our habit, the reaction is to overreact and to pull it back too far. If you don’t have a personal relationship with God, you need to. God wants it. God has power. My God has more power. When he’s my God.

1. Dad Power and God's Eternal Power

We have God. We have the God the Father where Jesus made the Holy Spirit. God is portrayed as a father figure. I want to take a minute here and draw some parallels between our earthly father, which mine happens to be in the audience. I’m very grateful. Our earthly father, and our godly father. So let’s talk about our earthly father real quick. Hopefully, you had a great dad like mine. I’m not just saying that because he’s here. He was a great dad. If you didn’t, I’m sorry. But they’re out there, and they’re great figures. Here’s some attributes of a good father. When you’re a kid, your dad has dad power. If you didn’t know it, every dad has extra power. My kids think I can do just about anything.

I’m invincible to mine. I want them to think that. I have the power in the house. They’re invincible. You can’t hurt them. They’re always there. When you cry in the middle of the night, who comes? If you’re your mom or if it’s in my house, it’s dad. They also sacrifice for your needs. Grew up in a house where my dad, when I was, especially when I was younger, I’m the youngest of all three. So I got the I got the better end of the deal. Let’s talk to my sister. When I was younger, my dad worked for the state. Worked a lot of hours for not a lot of money. But went through school, got his master’s degree, and started working for one of those power companies in Houston.

And still works there. Though it’s changed names several times. But he would mow empty lots on the weekends to help feed the family. He would always sacrifice his time to coach every little league baseball team that me or my brother or my sister was on was coached by my dad with the exception of a couple, and that’s because he was coaching my brothers, who was a better baseball player than me. I played soccer in high school for one year. I loved the game, had no idea I was going to love it. Playing a tournament in Lumberton. You know where Lumberton is, it’s north of Beaumont. Middle of nowhere. Two-day tournament, my dad showed up. He knows nothing about soccer. But he showed up to support me.

Same thing if you ask my brother or my sister. Your parent or your dad will sacrifice for your needs.

When you need something, who do you go to?

Press the right button. There’s that day that comes where you realize my parents really didn’t know what they were talking about. I’ve had this conversation with them already. I had that light bulb moment in college where it’s like, wow, I really should have listened. And if I have questions, who better to ask than people who’ve had that experience already and might be just a little smarter than me. Yeah, and has my best interest at heart every time. Now, let’s take that parallel. How does that relate to God as our father figure? He doesn’t just have dad power. He has eternal power. You believe in the Bible, you believe what it says, you believe he built this earth. He made it. And today he didn’t build it from parts.

He made it. He made everything in it. He made everything to work together to get us to where we are today. And he has the power to work within it. The Bible tells us that he listens to our prayers. Take a moment, think about that. The God who made the earth, created everything in it, knows your heart and wants to hear what you have to say. Wants to know that your heart is devoted to him and wants you to talk to him and make requests of him. Let that sink in. You can’t pick up the phone and call the president. He’s a pretty important guy, right? Whether you like him or not, the office is an important office. But God wants to hear you. God wants to know what’s on your heart.

Part of that power, he’s done undeniable miracles. We’re going to get into some of those a little later. And in the end, he made the ultimate sacrifice. I think it would be easier for me to sacrifice myself than it would either of my boys. Y’all know my boys, they’re, you know, crazy and crazier. But I can’t imagine life without them. I can’t imagine not having my family. So for God to take his only son, send him to earth and say, I need you to do this. I need you to live the perfect life. And in the end, if it’s not going to work out well, you’re going to have a pretty brutal death. But have faith. You’ll be raised. And you’ll come back home to heaven.

2. My God Did That

God had that power. To ask Jesus to do it, who was willing and made that sacrifice for us. Now, for just a minute, I want you to understand when I talk about my God. I have a relationship with God. My God is the same God that should be your God. When I talk about my God, I’m talking about the God of the Bible. I just want to make sure because I’m about to go through something where I’m going to talk about my God a lot, and I don’t want you to think that I’m monopolizing God. This is all of us here in this building. So we talk about that he has power and that he did undeniable miracles. We’re going to take a minute, we’re going to survey the Bible.

There are many more than this. This whole topic is a wide open topic. We’re taking a view from 30,000 feet. You know, you’re in the airplane, you look out. There’s Houston. It takes three hours to drive across. Boop, there it went. That’s what we’re doing tonight. I’m not going to touch every scripture. I’m only going to touch two in depth. Not even really in depth. We’re going to read two. We’re going to talk about a lot. This is a survey of what God has done. What did God do for Adam? Oh, he built him the perfect garden to live in. And he gave him Eve. By the way, he just created the world. We’re going to use Adam to put that little side note in there, too.

Oh, created the world. Everything in it and created Adam. Pretty awesome. My God did that. Noah. Anything spectacular happened with Noah? He lived an extremely long time. And for a hundred years, he told people there’s a flood coming. God’s going to judge the earth. Repent. Preach repentance over and over and over. And the only people that believed were the people that were in his house. Evidently he was a good father figure. And in the end, God washed the earth clean of all that sin and he saved Noah on a boat. Abraham. God spoke to Abraham. Pretty amazing. He made him three promises. You’re going to inherit this land through land, seed, yeah. Give him all three promises. By the way, that seed promise, he didn’t have any kids.

Almost a hundred years old. Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to work out so well. Tries to do it his own way. Instead of letting God’s plan work out, has some issues, but in the end, God blesses him with a son who Abraham willingly goes to sacrifice and God provides. Jacob and Esau. Their story’s an interesting one because they have the whole birthright at the beginning, and then later on, Jacob comes back into the land, and Esau’s there, and he is scared. He does not want his brother to kill him. He sends gifts out in front of him. And if you read that story, God makes it work out. It’s not the gifts. It’s not anything that Jacob did. God worked that family out. Moses had a couple of miraculous things happen in his life.

Just those ten plagues all spread out. You want to understand the power of God? Talk to Pharaoh. He knows God’s power. And then there’s this little Red Sea. No, it’s not little. You can’t see across it. And by God’s power, he parted the waters. They walked across on dry land. My God did that. He made it. Of course he can part the water. Aaron, they come into the land. Big walled city. What are we going to do here? Aaron obeys God. They walk march around Jericho, and the walls just crumble. Did Aaron do that? Did the children of Israel do that? Was the vibration from their footsteps and then the shouting and the blowing of the horns the perfect pitch to knock down the wall? No.

My God knocked the wall down. Elijah called down fire from heaven. It didn’t just burn the altar. It burned the water around it, the water he poured on it, and everyone else’s. And then he pursued those prophets of Baal and he killed them. My God sent that. When Naaman dipped into the in the waters of the Jordan, that dirty river he didn’t want to go into. Do you think there was magic bacteria that cleanse his leprosy in the Jordan? Evidently there’s plenty of bacteria in the Jordan. No. God cleansed him because he did what he told him to. We don’t think of Saul as one of those characters where you have a lot of miraculous things. He was conquering the land. He was in a foreign land, a land of giants, and he takes over these different nations.

It wasn’t by his power. My God did that. We have plenty of stories of David. Do you think when David went out and he had to pay the price for his wife from his from Saul? That was David’s doing? I don’t think so. Solomon, the wisest, richest man in history. Where does wisdom come from again? God offered it to him. He offered him his choice of things and he chose the wisdom. And he was blessed because of it. Solomon didn’t do that. God did that. Isaiah and his prophecies. Daniel and his prophecies. We’re studying Daniel upstairs. The kids think it’s hilarious. Daniel’s teaching Daniel. Yeah, it’s my book. Especially good when I start talking in first person. Yeah, when I was in front of the king.

When you look at Daniel, and we just did chapter 2 of the book of Daniel, chapter 3 in the lesson book. God showed him what was going to happen in the next 580 years. Here’s the next kingdoms coming up. High school class. Boys must play golf regularly. The kingdoms succumb. The Babylonians, the Medes, and Persians, the Greeks, and then the Romans. He showed him all that. And in the corner, the stone that was hewn from the mountain and came and destroyed the statue. God showed that to Daniel. God closed the mouths of the lions. Daniel didn’t do that. Had to throw in Mary. She really didn’t do that. Without God’s plan and God’s help, there is no Jesus. He does not come. Mary was chosen. And God blessed her and worked a miracle through her to have Jesus.

John the Baptist. Yep. The timing of his coming to prepare the way of the Lord was set up in God’s plan. He did that. I’m going to skip Jesus. Yeah, we’re coming back, don’t worry. Peter. Didn’t Peter raise someone from the dead? No, God raised someone from the dead. Through Peter. It was God’s power that he showed through Peter. Paul, through all his journeys, don’t you think that the beatings and the stonings and the shipwrecks, he really should have died, right? Yeah. Paul worked miracles also. Luke, in his travels with Paul and writing, his inspired writing of Luke and Acts. Without those, I won’t say we’d be lost, but we would be missing a picture of the Bible. And it’s through God’s power that we have that.

And then John, my last one in this list. I told you it’s not exhaustive, but it’s a long list. The apostle John was there on the day of Pentecost. He was blessed along with all of the other apostles and people in that room. And then he is the one that lived out. And history tells us lived out and died a natural death. But right before he died, he wrote this other book called The Revelation. And he got to see what was to come. My God did that. This comes from something we talked about in the David class. Tony was up here. We’re talking about all the things that God had done. And it strikes me, we talk about all the things that God has done, and we forget.

3. What He Can Still Do

It’s not just what he’s done, it’s what he can still do. God didn’t just do all these things and record them so that we might have faith. Now, granted, that’s a purpose. But God still works today.

What can he do? What can God do? Well, we just talked about, we just gave a list of 16 different people that he worked miracles through over history. With Jacob and Esau, he was instrumental in repairing that family. You know what you have a family problem? God through the Bible can help you work that out. Pray for wisdom. He can help with that. You’re sick? You have cancer? Dana’s not here. You know someone who does? Pray. There was one time in this building where there were at least four, I think five women who all had cancer at the same time. That’s back when the Wildman’s were here. And Linda was still alive. And it was a it was kind of a bad thing. You think, oh, obviously, right?

Four or five women with cancer all at the same time. Yeah, it’s a bad thing. Through their trials and through their faithful attendance and their attitudes, they helped uplift countless people in this building. They were a great influence on so many of us. And through prayer, I can only think that Linda lived as long as she did because she had so many prayers. She was not supposed to live as long as she did. God tells us that if you pray for strength, he’ll give it. If you pray for wisdom, he’ll give it. Knew that was coming up, so I said them together. God can help. If you don’t believe that God can help, then why do you pray? If you don’t have faith when you pray, then your prayers are useless.

God has left that as our communication tool. We’re going to get into it a little bit later, so I don’t want to step on my own toes. He says, if any man seeks wisdom, this is in James 1. And believe verse 5. Any man seeks wisdom, let him pray. And believing, he will receive it. He’ll give understanding. Knowledge, wisdom, understanding. All three different things. All three can be supplied by God. You need to know it, you need to understand it, need to be able to apply it. There’s all three of them in a nutshell. We’re told that He will lead us into all truth. Now, on the left side of the scale over here under the bird, we’ve got a lot of physical things. We’ve got a lot of relationship things.

On the right side, we’re going to get into more spiritual things. God has the power to remove sin. God has the power to save your soul. And God has the power to provide an entrance into heaven. Those three things, if you separate everything else off of this list and you just look at the last three things of removing sin, saving your soul, and providing an entrance into heaven, God has done plenty. If those are the only things God ever does for you, then that is fantastic. And I will see you in heaven.

4. Only You Can Separate Yourself

I think we all know the story of how he can do this. Already talked about Jesus and his willingness to be that sacrifice. Does God want people to go to heaven? I think we all know that answer is yes. We’re told Romans, He would that all men everywhere would repent. But why don’t they? Why not? This story is out there. The Bible’s been printed in millions and millions of copies. It’s on the internet. It’s in my phone, it’s on my iPad, it’s everywhere. So why is it that so many people don’t believe that He can remove sin, save your soul, and send you to heaven? Is it that they don’t believe it? Or is it that they don’t want to? What can separate us from the love of Christ?

That verse wasn’t supposed to come up just yet, but there it is. Romans 8 38. I’m sure that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor present, nor things to come, nor power, height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen. What can separate us? That’s a pretty conclusive list. Only you can separate yourself from the love of Christ. Only you can limit access to the power he offers. That verse tells us that nothing else is going to. It’s only through your choices and through your actions and through your faith or lack thereof that you can limit access to Jesus and His power. Let’s talk about faith. We could go through Hebrews 11.

5. Faith, Prayer and Study

We kind of just did with that whole list of people and the miracles and the and what God did. God did that through those people because of their faith. That’s how he used them. If Abraham, when he took Isaac up onto the mountain, didn’t believe that God would provide. Would God have provided? I can’t definitively say no. But we’re told in Hebrews 11 it is by faith that Abraham did these things. If you lack faith, you miss the point. If you pray without believing that God can will, you’re missing the point. If you don’t pray, you just missed it altogether. Prayer is our hotline to God. David says that he knows the words that are in our mouths before they come out. He knows your heart.

He wants to hear it. Prayer is your access. It is the vehicle by which we can summon God’s power. Now we’re not going to get Elijah, we’re not going to get the lightning bolt from heaven that consumes the altar. That’s not how God works right now. Pray. Pray for wisdom. Pray for help. And God will answer your prayers. Study. This kind of ties into prayer. Because if you’re not praying, you’re probably not studying. I’ll tell you right now, I was going to say how busy my week was, and then Mike told us how busy his was. Got to feel bad. I had one of the busiest weeks of my life, and Mike blew it way out of the water. But between preparing for the for the high school class on Wednesday and this morning, Jesse’s not here, he’s my co-teacher.

And then it was spring break, and we had the busiest week we’ve ever had at work. And, you know, one of our drivers hurt his leg and we’re short of driver. All these things happen. But I was still able to get this done. I had to sacrifice a little time with my family to do it. Thankfully, they went to my parents yesterday.

But no matter how busy the week, we still must make time for God. Whether it’s for study or for prayer or for both. And if you take your time and you go ahead, you plan it, you put it in your calendar, set a reminder in your phone. Everyone’s walking around with one of these. It’ll buzz at you, beep at you, stun you, whatever you want it to remind you. And eventually you won’t need reminding. I told the high school class what I’ve been doing when I prepare for this class, I have to have background noise, whether it’s music, the TV, whatever. And we have a TV, but we don’t have cable or anything like that. We just have Netflix. And so I put on the boys’ Star Wars episodes.

6. Submission: God Wants Your Life

And that’s, I study the Star Wars. But it works for me. If you don’t study, how are you going to receive God’s wisdom? You can pray for wisdom all day long, and you can believe that God’s going to grant it to you. But if you don’t go and seek it, you’re never going to find it. They’re empty words and they’re empty actions. In the end, that’s our goal. Should have made that font a little bigger. If you can’t read it from the back, it says submission. What does God want? If you want to be able to realize God’s power and you want to be able to realize answered prayers and look back on your life and see God working in your life, God wants your life.

He wants your heart. We’re to walk in love. We’re to do it in His way, and He will bless us. But, you know, Daniel, the Bible, it’s a great book. I like a lot of what it says. But I don’t really want to do that. That one part. You know what Ephesians, when there’s that list of the sins of there in Ephesians chapter 5? Can we just take one of those out? I really like parties. They’re so much fun. God won’t mind. That’s just not submitting your life to God. That’s doing what you want over what God wants you to do, and that would be called sin. And that is how you separate yourself from God. If you’re not willing to submit to God, then He is not going to be willing to bless your life.

This is the other verse. If you want to turn there, it’s all on the board. It’s a little small. It’s Ephesians chapter 3 and verse 14. And this is my last slide. Told you be 25 minutes, I’m at 23. Doing perfect. Scott, get the clicker ready.

We’re going to read Ephesians 3 and chapter 3 and verse 14. For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. That you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and the length and the height and the depth. And to know the love of Christ surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think, according to the power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church of Christ Jesus through all generations, forever and ever.

Amen. That passage sums up what I’ve talked about.

I underlined through faith. That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. That’s why Hebrews chapter 11 is there. You want to know what God wants? These people got. And here’s how they did it. They believed in God enough to do the things that they probably didn’t think they needed to do, but God said do it, so they did it.

Your need for Jesus should guide your decisions. That you may be rooted and grounded in love. You may have strength to comprehend the height and the breadth and the length and the depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, you may be filled with the fullness of God. So he talks about the breadth and the length and the height and the depth, he’s got it all. That you may know the love of God, that you may be able to see it by your faith. In the last part of this verse, we want to talk about submission to God. Well, you know, there’s just those things that I just really.

To him who is able to do far more abundantly than that we ask or think. Alright, stop right there. So he can do far more abundantly than even what I’m going to imagine. God, I need help with this. I need the wisdom to know how to handle and fill in the blank. The situation with my family, the situation with my kids, situation at work. The elders, I’m sure they have this prayer, the situation at church, the situation with, you know, fill in the blank member. How can I help with this? Without that faith, you lose that access. So I have faith in my God. I hope you have faith in your God, and you have that access to the one who is able to do more abundantly than you can even think, according to the power that he holds in heaven.

Conclusion

No, that’s not what it says. According to the power that is at work within us. So, how is he going to accomplish these things? You’ve got the power. God has given you that power. My God gave it to me. Your God gave it to you. If you can’t find it, maybe you need to be looking. Maybe that’s where your prayer should start. To him be the glory in the church and in Jesus Christ through all generations, forever and ever. We have an opportunity now to submit ourselves to God. Many in this audience have already made the commitment. What’s magic about the water back here? Nothing. There’s no power in that water, I promise you. Ted filled it up. He put the chlorine in, so nothing’s growing in it.

There’s no power, just chlorine and water. Through God’s power, through the blood of Jesus Christ, that water can make you sinless. Not the water. It’s your heart. It’s submission of your heart to God and doing what he wants you to do. God’s Jesus’ blood holds that power. You believe that tonight? You believe that Jesus’ blood holds the power to forgive sins and to provide that entrance into heaven? I hope you do.

Maybe you’re not taking advantage of what God has for you in your life. And you don’t believe in the power that my God has that I believe in. If we can help you in any way, whether it’s to strengthen your faith, to pray for you specifically, that you can be stronger in a certain way, or that you need strength, or you need help in overcoming a sin, or maybe now is the time that you’re committed. You understand that sin is a separation from God. And I don’t want to be separated from God. I want to know God. If you want to know God, we’ve got water. We can baptize you, we can wash those sins away. If you need anything from the church tonight, please come forward as we stand and sing.