Devotional Mar. 2, 2020
Everything We Need
Monday, March 2nd – Ephesians 3:20-21 (ASV)
“Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus unto all generations for ever and ever. Amen.”
I love this verse. I have heard it for years and many people hang onto it for hope. Here it says that God will give us even MORE than we can ever imagine. We read that and we get super excited and then we jump right to ‘unto Him be the glory!’ Of course after reading all that He can do for us we are going to celebrate, we are going to sing His praises… forever and ever! But there is one word in these verses that we seem to quickly pass over: “according”. Ugh, we were doing so well and then Paul threw in a contingency. “According”. So we have to slow our jets and go back and read it again. God is able to do abundantly above all that we ask or think, ACCORDING to the power that works within us. So what is this power that works within us? Of course the first thing that I think of is the Holy Spirit and that is the right answer, for He is always at work within us, but if we read the verse again there are a few clues to something more. He said that God is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think.
God is a creative God and when He made us in His image He made us creative beings. How do we create? We create with our words and our thoughts. (As a man thinks in his heart so is he. Life and death are in the power of the tongue.) God used words when He spoke the world into creation.
One day I felt the Holy Spirit ask me, “What are words?” I felt like he was giving me a trick question so I was baffled and asked him what he meant. He said, “Are they verbs, nouns, adjectives?” I, in my brilliant mind, told him that words were nouns. So then he said, “well nouns are people, places and things. If words are things then what happens after they leave your mouth?” Then he proceeded to show me that when our words leave our mouths they go into the spirit realm and there they are planted and grow and produce after their kind. You see God created us after Himself, to be creative. The tricky thing about this is that we can’t quit creating. Creating for us is like breathing. We create with our thoughts and our words. We are always thinking and if you are like me then we are always talking. With every word, with every thought we are creating things that are creating… good or bad. The enemy of our souls has no power over us except the power that we give him. How does he get that power from us? From our words and our thoughts. We can speak and think thoughts that are negative which are contrary to God or we can come into agreement with God in our words. Philippians 4:8 says: “Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, think on these things.”
So let’s take these thoughts back to the scripture… “Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus unto all generations for ever and ever. Amen.” If we really want God to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think then we need to create an atmosphere for Him to do that. God never forces anything on us against our will and that
includes His blessings.
As we look towards this Capital Campaign let’s bring our words and our thoughts in accordance with Philippians 4:8 and create and environment for blessings to grow exceedingly abundantly.
Dear Father, Your Word says whatever is lovely, pure, and of good report, to think on these things. Help me to guard my words and my thoughts. Help me to guard the gates of my soul, my eye and my ears so that I focus on what is of you and your kingdom. I desire to meditate on your Word day and night. Help me to keep your thoughts, your Word, in my mind. When my mind feels like a jungle gym full of monkey thoughts, please ground my mind with your Word, your peace. Thank you for loving me more than I love myself and for giving me the ability and choice to mediate on You.
AMEN
– Kathleen Beck