ONLY FOR HIS GLORY! ONLY BY HIS POWER!

What an amazing God we serve! He can do wonders with average people. He can perform miracles using folks like you and me. He can change the unchangeable, save the unworthy, deliver the bound and make everything new. He is astonishing in His mercy, boundless in His kindness, all-consuming in His holiness, and unexplainable in His grace.

And — most amazing perhaps of all His attributes — He yearns with unbridled passion to be known and loved by you! Doesn’t it move you to wonder and worship that He Whom the universe cannot contain loves to reside in your heart?! Glory!

Yet how we limit the display of His glory by our habitual returning to our own resources, recalling past failures and rehearsing future fears! No sooner does He kindle in us a desire to experience His great promises than we recoil from the prospect of stepping beyond our comfort, and turn from His glory to our folly by reminding ourselves how small and weak we are, how poor and inexperienced, how frail and untrained.

Brothers and sisters, God never offers you anything you can receive without His grace. He never asks you to do anything you can do without utterly depending on His presence and power. “Faithful is He Who calls, and HE will also do it” (1 Thessalonians 5:24). Note that He will do it, when we venture out upon His faithfulness. But if we rely only on our own resources, we will never experience the miracle of His faithfulness.

In so many areas of our lives, we quench His move by fixing our eyes on ourselves rather than on Jesus. For example, God may call us to do something that, humanly speaking, is completely beyond our abilities, something like adding onto our church building. In the face of such an undertaking, we know enough to ask God, “Lord, show us whether we should do this or not.” But then, having prayed, where does human nature often look for the answer? Do we look to ourselves? Let’s hope not! Do we check our bank account, or our previous experience? Do we look to the economy, or to others in the church, to find clues about the will of God? Sadly, in all of these sources there is only more of ourselves. How vain it is to ask God for guidance, then look to ourselves to find it!

If in anything we are to find the guidance of God, we must take up His Word, discover the principles by which He rules His kingdom, and then apply them rigorously to our situation. What does God’s Word say about the needs of the lost in our community; and how are we to reach them? What principles are in His Word about making disciples and bringing the little children to Him? What does He say about ownership and stewardship, and matters of tithe and time and talents?

It is these Kingdom principles from His Word that should guide our decisions, as determined by Who HE is and what HE can do, not by who we are and what we can do. Then as HE directs, faith says, “I delight to do Your will, my God” (Psalm 40:8); and “not as I will, but as You will” (Matthew 26:39).

Let us never be found guilty of doing for God’s glory only that which we can do in our own power. May He give us grace to lean entirely upon His provision for the fulfillment of His promises! He is truly a mighty God! Let us do only for His glory what can be done only in His power!