Daily Devotionals

Music For the Soul

Devotional: December 7th

STRENGTHENED WITH ALL MIGHT

Strengthened with all power, according to the might of His glory, unto all patience and long-suffering with joy, - Colossians 1:2

In no part of Paul’s letters does He rise to a higher level than in his prayers, and none of his prayers are fuller of fervour than this wonderful series of petitions. They open out one into the other like some majestic suite of apartments in a great palace-temple, each leading into a loftier and more spacious hall, each drawing nearer the presence-chamber, until at last we stand there. Take his prayer in Ephesians. Roughly speaking, that prayer is divided into four petitions, of which each is the cause of the following and the result of the preceding: - " That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man." That is the first. " In order that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith." Such is the second; the result of the first and the preparation for the third. "That ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints, . . . and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge." Such is the next; and all lead up at last to that wonderful desire beyond which nothing is possible - "that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God." Consider that great thought of the Divine strength-giving power which may be bestowed upon every Christian soul. God means and wishes that all Christians should be strong by the possession of the Spirit of might.

It will be a power for suffering. Ah! unless this Divine Spirit were a power for patience and endurance, it were no power suited to us poor men. So dark at times is every life; so full at times of discouragements, of dreariness, of sadness, of loneliness, of bitter memories, and of fading hopes does the human heart become, that if we are to be strong we must have a strength that will manifest itself most chiefly in this, that it teaches us how to bear, how to weep, how to submit.

And it will be a power for effort. We have all of us, in the discharge of duty and the resistance of temptation, to face such tremendous antagonisms that unless we have grace given to us which will enable us to resist, we shall be overcome and swept away. God’s grace from the Divine Spirit within us does not absolve us from the fight, but it fits us for the fight. It is not given in order that holiness may be won without a struggle, as some people seem to think, but it is given to us in order that in the struggle for holiness we may never lose "one jot of heart or hope," but may be "able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all to stand."

It is a power for service. " Tarry ye in Jerusalem till ye be endued with power from on high." There is no such force for the spreading of Christ’s Kingdom and the witness-bearing work of His Church as the possession of this Divine Spirit. Plunged into that fiery baptism, the selfishness and the sloth, which stand in the way of so many of us, are all consumed and annihilated, and we are set free for service because the bonds that bound us are burnt up in the merciful furnace of His fiery power. " Ye shall be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man." A power that will fill and flood all your nature if you will let it, and will make you strong to suffer, strong to combat, strong to serve and to witness for your Lord.