SUNDAY 26TH APRIL, 2020

MEMORY VERSE: - “And, what is the exceeding greatness of His power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of His Mighty Power” (Ephesians 1:19).

INTRODUCTION: - Our attitude will influence our aim. People live according to their standing. The high born child of nobility carries in his bearing and his mien the consciousness of his noble descent, and so those who have a consciousness of their high and heavenly rank, walk as children of the kingdom.

1) Practical Power

* Christ resurrection has also a mighty power to energize our faith and encourage us to claim God’s answers to our prayers, and ask difficult things from God. What can be too difficult or impossible after the open grave and the stone rolled away? God is trying to teach us the exceeding greatness of His power to us ward (Eph.1:19-20). Christ’s resurrection is a pledge of all we can ask for, and if we fully believe in the power of that resurrection we would take more than we have done.

  The resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ is the power for the true service. The testimony of His resurrection is always peculiarly used by the Holy Spirit as the power of God unto the Salvation of men. It was the chief theme of the ministry of the early apostles. They were always preaching of Jesus and the resurrection. It gives a peculiar brightness and attractiveness to Christian life and Christian work.

The message of the resurrection is the message that a sad and sinful world needs today. The more of the indwelling Christ and the resurrection life in Christian work the more will be its living power to attract, sanctify and save the world.

The resurrection of Christ will enable us to meet the hardest places in life and endure its bitterest trials. We read in Philippians that the power of His resurrection is to bring us into the fellowship of His sufferings, and to make us conformable unto His death. We go into the resurrection life that we may be strong enough to suffer with Him and for Him.

His sufferings are on behalf of others and the power of His resurrection will bring us to share His high and holy sorrows of His suffering Church and a dying world. It is a fact that the harder our place and the lower our sphere of toil and suffering the more do we need the elevation of His grace and glory to meet it. From the heights we must reach the depths. And, therefore, we find these epistle, which lift us into heavenly places, bring us back in every instance to the most common place duties, the most ordinary relationships and the most severe trials.

The Epistle to the Ephesians and the Colossians, which speak about the highest attitudes of faith and power, speak also more than any others of the temptations common to man, and the new of truthfulness, sobriety, honesty and righteousness, and all the most unromantic, practical experiences of human life.

The power of Christ’s resurrection is designed to prepare, enable us and help us to rise into all the heights of His glorious life, that like Him we may go forth to reflect it in blessing upon the lives of others, and find even sweeter joy in the ministrations of holy love than we have in the ecstasies of Divine communion.

The risen life of Christ Jesus is the nourishment and strengthening and blessing of life of a Christian.