Point of No Return - Colossians - Weekend Edition

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All right, thank you very much, and hello again, radio friends.

How in the world are you?

You're doing all right?

Well, I'm fine, thank you, and I'm very grateful for the privilege of spending

a few moments with you once again.

Invest, I guess, is a better word than spend.

We invest them together in matters that will still be important a million years from now.

I'm grateful to have this fellowship with you week by week.

Thanks for being there.

We're looking at Colossians, you and I, chapter one.

We just finished, verse 10, where the last phrase was increasing in the knowledge of God.

To increase in the knowledge of God, you give Him extra time.

Remember the value of the extra five minutes in prayer.

You put the word of God in your computer so that God can speak to you through the computer

of your mind, through the Holy Spirit.

You make obedience a way of life.

Can two walk together, except they'd be agreed.

If you're going to fight God, you won't get to know Him very well.

You make soul winning the ministry of every moment.

No matter what your duties may be, your objective is to win other people for the Lord Jesus.

Always remember, God did not call you to win arguments, but to win souls.

There's a great deal of difference.

And then make God's will priority knowledge.

That is to be acted on now.

You'll find that you get to know your Lord better if you'll do these things.

Now in verse 11 of Colossians 1, this is part of Paul's prayer, remember.

We pray for you, desire you might be filled with the knowledge of his will, and all wisdom

and spiritual understanding.

That's his first petition.

Second, that you might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every

good work, increasing in the knowledge of God.

Now he goes on.

He's still praying for them.

He wants them to be strengthened with all might.

According to his glorious power, unto all patience and long suffering with joyfulness.

Now you have, of course, in the New Testament 3 words that are translated by the English

word power or might.

One is doing a mis from which we get our word dynamite and other is crottos, which means

the perfect power of God.

The power that never quits and keeps on like the shining of the sun, feeding on itself,

increasing in itself, and then exocia, which is our word authority.

All of them are translated by the English word power or might.

And so here you have two words used, strengthened.

With all might is one root word, the noun and the verb form, from dunamis, dynamite.

The power of God into salvation, Rome is one sixteen, same word.

According to the power that work within us, Ephesians 3.20, same word.

The tremendous explosive, driving, compelling power of God that makes a life different,

strengthened with all might.

Then he said, according to his glorious power, and then he uses a different word for God's

glorious power, he uses the word crottos.

And this, I'm told, as I look into Thayer's lexicon, comes from an ancient Greek root

word, meaning perfect or complete.

And that, of course, fits in exactly with what Paul would have in mind here.

According to God's perfect, complete power, the kind of power that feeds on itself that

just doesn't, that just doesn't quit, that nothing, before which nothing can stand,

is glorious power.

And then he says, the result will be some other things.

Now, Paul is praying for these people to be strengthened with might.

We go over into Ephesians and he talks about being strengthened in the inner man, 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 Christ, who made dwell in your hearts by faith, that

she'd be rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints the

bread's length, depth, and height, and to know, personally, the love of Christ.

Now he said, he's able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according

to the power that work within us.

So, he comes full circle.

He'd grant you to be strengthened with might, and he's able to do exceedingly above all

that we ask or think, according to the power that work within us.

This is a favorite theme of Paul, and it comes back to the truth that the secret of success

is inside, not outside.

You cannot really imprison the human spirit, brainwashing, for the most part, has turned

out to be a failure, because the minute the pressure, the three-fold pressure of hunger

fatigue and loneliness, that's the secret of brainwashing.

Your fatigue and loneliness, isolation.

The minute that that three-fold pressure is released, the individual tends to go back

to the same mindset that he had before.

And under extreme exhaustion and the emotional pressure, you may be able to make a man or

woman sign a document that can be used for political clout at the time.

Yet when the pressure is off and the circumstances are different, the person returns to the

kind of personality that he was before.

For the most part, I say this is true, isn't it?

And so brainwashing, while it may have some political advantage for our adversaries,

in their eyes, at least, is a failure in terms of really changing a person.

You don't change a person by outside pressures.

The only way truly to change a person is from the inside out, and that's what Paul is

talking about here, you see.

Now, how does this come about?

How does God begin to strengthen you with His dynamite power?

Well, I think the secret, of course, is found in the Holy Spirit and in the Word of God.

The Holy Spirit, concerning whom the Lord Jesus said, ye shall receive power.

After that, the Holy Ghost has come upon you, and ye shall be witness as unto me, both

in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and in the Holy Spirit, and in the Word of God.

And in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.

Ye shall receive power, said he, after the Holy Ghost has come upon you.

Now, they weren't a very powerful bunch, as he stood there, talking with them.

But when the Spirit of God was given to the baby church, that 120 people, then that was

the dynamite of God.

He used the Sarlor Jesus, used the same word, dunamis.

He said, you're going to get the dynamite of God when the Holy Spirit is bestowed upon

the church.

And so today, when you trust the Lord Jesus Christ as your Lord, and as your Savior,

the Holy Spirit comes to dwell in your life.

Paul says in Romans 8.9, if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.

And he reminds the Corinthians, who certainly were in a deplorable condition as a local

church and had all sorts of things that needed changing and fixing up and cleansing.

He said, no, you're not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, which you have

of God.

And you're not your own for you bought with a price, therefore glorify God in your body

and in your Spirit which belonged to God.

And so today, you and I, as we trust our blessed Lord, have the Holy Spirit of God dwelling

in our lives.

And so it's a command, not an option, to let the Spirit of God control your every thought

and word indeed.

And you do this by yielding consciously to him in order that he might fill all the rooms

as Dr. O.J. Smith often has said in my hearing, he might fill all the rooms in your hearthouse.

You by faith, open the rooms in your life to the blessed Spirit of God, and he fills them

with himself.

And then you begin to sense power.

Now, that's what Mrs. Vossarsug said to me, Frau Dr. Vossarsug and I were talking in

Switzerland years ago, and I asked her concerning her own life in the evident, effective

of her witness for Christ and the ministry that she had there in Switzerland and not over

into Germany and Italy and France, other parts of Europe, great servant of God she was

and is.

I think she's still living.

And she told me concerning the fact that for some time she was a very busy lady for

our Lord, preaching every night and giving out thousands upon thousands of gospel tracks

and gospel portions, but not seeing very much fruit and feeling somewhat frustrated as

a result.

And then Mrs. Ruth Paxen came through that area and taught Mrs. Vossarsug the truth of

opening the rooms in your life by faith to the Holy Spirit.

And Frau Dr. Vossarsug, as she talked with me, pointed up above us to a huge rock outcropping,

some hundreds of feet above us on the mountain.

And she said, I sat on that rock outcropping there and looked across Lake Tune at the

Jungfrau and the Matterhorn and the other great mountain peaks of the Alps.

And as I sat there and prayed, I opened my entire life to the Holy Spirit.

And then I said, Lord, I thank thee that thou hast filled me with thy Holy Spirit.

And she said, Mr. Cook, I didn't feel any different, but the next time I gave up the gospel,

I saw people coming to Jesus.

The power was there.

Now you're strengthened with might, strengthened with God's dynamite power, not through some

nerve-shattering emotional experience necessarily.

Oh, your emotions may be stirred.

Charles G. Finney said that when God filled him with the Spirit of God, he prayed, and

through the hours and the fire went out in the hearth there in his law office.

And he said he felt as though wave after wave of liquid love was flowing over his soul.

And he was never quite the same after that experience with God.

D.L. Moody has said to have been walking along a street when the Spirit of God came

mightily upon him, and he had to stop and say, Lord, I don't think I can stand anymore.

Well, and a regardless of the emotional component of these experiences, I think it is a mistake,

my dear friend, to seek the emotion.

I think, rather, you need to seek the fullness of the person.

He comes to dwell in your hearthouse when you're saved.

If you know Jesus as your Lord and as your Savior, then you can know that the Spirit of

God is within you this very minute.

That divine, that ineffable, wonderful, divine Spirit of wisdom and might and power dwells

within you, he's living there right in your life today.

But you now have not the option but the command to obey, to open every part of your life

to him so that you can be filled with his Holy Spirit, and you do this by faith, taking

each area of your life and submitting it by faith to the Spirit of God just as you

trusted Jesus Christ to save you in the first place, so you trust the Holy Spirit of God

to fill you.

Yes, there may be some emotional reaction, depending on what the Spirit of God wants

to do in your life, or you may not feel anything at the time, but you will most certainly see

the results of his infilling.

Does that make sense to you?

Now that's part of where the power comes.

The second part of this is the word of God.

There's power in the word of God.

It's not my word like a fire and like a hammer that break at the rock in pieces, said

the prophet, speaking for God.

And Paul speaks about the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

The word of God is alive and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even

to the dividing of the sun, of the soul and spirit and of the joints and marrow, and is

a disirner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

The psalmist said, wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way by taking heed there

to, according to thy word.

You're kept by the word of God thy word of I hid in my heart that I might not sin against

thee.

You're delighted and sustained by the word of God, Jeremiah said thy words were found

and I did eat them, and thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of my heart.

Jesus said, these things have I spoken unto you that my joy might remain in you and that

your joy might be full.

The Apostle spoke of the washing of water by the word.

And the overcoming of Satan in the song of the redeemed as recorded in the book of the

revelation says they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony.

So my friend, you have in the word of God the source of your power.

Thus, Seth the Lord was the trademark of the ancient prophets in their influence over

other people.

They didn't say, I think this or that.

They said, God told me this, thus Seth the Lord.

And if you have a message from God as found in his blessed word, the Bible, then you

have power.

So it's the Holy Spirit of God filling every part of your life and it's the word of God

filling every department of your thought that makes for real power.

Now, I think it's one of the things that we have to think about and that is this matter

of personal commitment.

There is a point at which you find your power is exactly proportional to your willingness

to obey your Lord.

Miracles, as we read about them in the New Testament, very frequently had a condition attached

to them.

The blind man, this man who had been born blind, never had seen the light of day, Lord

Jesus said to him, go wash in the pool of Siloam.

He had put some homemade clay upon those blind eyelids.

And now he said, you go wash that off in the pool of Siloam, he went there for and washed

and came back seeing, he says.

He had to do something.

Now Jesus could have healed him with a thought, let alone a word.

All that God has to do is think in your direction and something happens, isn't that true?

So our Lord Jesus could have healed him with a thought or with a word or with a touch,

but he said, you go wash.

He said to the man who had been paralyzed for 38 years, pick up your bed.

The man had to act in order to do that sort of thing.

He did, and he found that his decayed muscles and nerves suddenly were receiving the divine

strength of God.

Always there is a sense in which God's outflow of power depends upon your willingness

to face the matter of complete commitment.

The point of no return when you're flying an aircraft,

to reach a point of no return which is you don't have enough fuel left to go back to

your original starting point, you have to keep on.

And so many times in dealing with God's will, we'll come to a place where you may well

call it the point of no return.

And we'll say, am I willing now to risk not being able to go back and retrace my steps,

not being able to go back to some comfortable hideaway and their vegetate in anonymous failure.

Am I willing to risk complete commitment to the will of God now?

And when you say yes to that, my friend, he ties his all-mightiness to you.

Go ye into all the world, said he, and preach the gospel, and low, I am with you.

All power is given unto me in heaven and on earth, go ye therefore, and make disciples

of all nations, baptizing the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, teaching

them to observe all things what serve I have commanded you, and low, I, and who's this

talking, the one who said all power, all, that is all power, is given unto me.

That's the one who's talking.

He said, low, I, the one with all the power is with you, even all the way, even unto

the end of the age, obedience opens the door to power, commitment opens the door to power.

The Holy Spirit of God filling your life opens the door to power, filling your mind, the

computer of your mind, with the Word of God opens the door to power.

This is something of what it means to be strengthened.

There's one other point I'd like to raise, and that is spending time with God renews your strength.

They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength we read in God's Word.

They shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run, and not be weary, and they shall walk and not faint.

Do you have you learned the secret of just waiting on God?

Stella Meyer was a dear friend of ours.

She was a music teacher at the Moody Bible Institute for many years, and before that she taught private lessons

during good many years when she was the sole care of her aging and bedridden father.

She's now with the Lord, a precious, precious saint.

I look forward to seeing her in the glory, and thanking her for the blessings that she brought to our lives.

She taught our two older children, Piano, and brightened our home on many an occasion.

I got well enough acquainted with her to talk with her on a sort of a one-to-one basis about the things that really mattered.

We began talking about this matter one day of renewed strength, and she told me the following story.

She said that during those years when she was the sole care of her aging and bedridden father,

together with having about forty private lessons, piano lessons in her home each week,

a staggering load of responsibility you will agree.

She said she got so tired sometimes that she just didn't think that she could go any farther.

She just couldn't live through it.

On one such occasion she said she called a neighbor, and said to her neighbor lady,

would you please sit with my father for a little while, I have something that I must do.

And so the neighbor lady obligingly came over and sat with her father so that Stella might withdraw for a little while.

And Miss Mayer said that she went into her own bedroom and closed the door and turned the key in the lock.

She got down on her knees and opened her Bible to that passage in Isaiah that says they that wait upon the Lord so renew their strength.

They shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run, and not be weary and they shall walk and not faint.

And she said, Lord, I can't go on any farther. I haven't got any more strength left.

I don't think I can live through this, and you're going to have to help me.

She said she waited there on her knees and cried out to God.

And then sweetly there came to her the sense of a divine touch upon her body,

and she felt the inflow of God-given strength.

And as it came she thanked her Lord for this.

Got up from her knees, dried her eyes, and opened the door and went out into the other room,

said to the neighbor lady, thank you so much for coming and staying with my father.

I'm able to take over it again now.

And so the hours of the afternoon went by and it got to be supper time.

And there at the door were other members of the family in laws,

brother or brother-in-law or whatever it was, and a whole family trooping in to have supper that night.

That's about all she would have needed, you know, a heavy day of responsibility, a weary body,

and frazzled and at the end of her strength, and then to have company and have to feed a large group.

But once she came to the door now and greeted them,

do you know what they said as they looked at her?

They said, why still are? You look wonderful.

You look as though you've had two weeks vacation. What happened to you?

She said something happened to me, and she told them how the Lord had touched her.

Oh, my friend, you want to be strengthened with might.

God's power in your life. Yes, the Holy Spirit. Yes, the Word of God.

Yes, obedience. Yes, commitment. Yes, all of these things.

But never forget to spend time in waiting on him.

Wait on the Lord's Psalm 27-14. Wait on the Lord. Be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart.

Wait, I say, on the Lord.

Colossians 111, strengthen with all might.

God's dynamite power, if I were to transliterate this using the verb form that's there,

dynamited with his dynamite. In all things, the dynamite of God, dynamited in you.

Oh, how he pours out his power at point.

Did you know that there is no limit to what God will do?

I got a book from Pastor Wiersby a few months ago. He was here ministering to us.

And after he went away, he sent me a volume of the sayings of McDonald as compiled by C.S. Eliot.

And one of them stuck in my mind just the other evening. I just picked that book up and read it sometimes before I fall asleep.

And he said this, if God can have his way with a man, that man can do what he will with the world.

Oh, that's tremendous, isn't it? If God can have his way with a man, that man can do what he will with the world.

What did he mean?

Ephesians 3.20, God is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us,

to him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus' world without end.

There is no limit to what God can do with a yielded vessel.

Because he's God, the limitation, the only limitation is found at the point of our faith and commitment.

Many years ago in Cleveland, Ohio, when I was a small boy, people chuckled at a story that appeared in the local press.

It seems as though there was a certain house that couldn't get any water pressure, just couldn't get any water pressure.

And no matter what they did, they couldn't get any water.

Well, the city authority said there's plenty of water out there.

There's so-and-so many pounds of pressure right at the street. They tested it.

Lots of water pressure right at the street where your water main hooks in to the main pipe.

But they couldn't get so they had to start digging and they dug and they removed the pipe.

Just as they got to the foundation level of the house, after removing these lengths of pipe, they found of all things a large frog stuck in the neck of the pipe.

Somehow he had managed who knows how.

It couldn't happen today, let us say, but this was back in 19, let us say 18 or 19.

Things may have been different than who knows.

But somehow he had managed to make his way into the water main.

Assuming happily along, he decided to investigate this smaller opening that was just big enough for him to get into, but not to get out of.

And the father he went, the smaller it got until finally he was completely stuck.

There wasn't a thing he could do. He couldn't back out. He couldn't go ahead.

And the water pressure stopped.

My dear friend, God's power is unlimited.

Absolutely unlimited. He's able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think.

The only thing that can hinder God is our own unbelief.

It was said of our Lord Jesus Christ as he went into a certain town.

He marveled at their unbelief.

And the word is could. It said he couldn't do anything.

He could there do no mighty work among them, save that he laid his hand on a few sick folk and heal them.

And he marveled because of their unbelief.

Unbelief put handcuffs upon the wrists of deity that day.

Our Lord Jesus Christ, the one who flung the stars out in space in what the astronomers call the big bang.

Well, our Lord Jesus, if it was a big bang, he caused it.

He made all things the Bible says without him was not anything made that was made.

And the writer adds in a divine aside, he made the stars also.

Just like that. God measured the heavens it said with a span.

You know what a span is?

It's the length between the distance between the end of your little finger and the end of your thumb when they're stretched out at the farthest distance from each other.

That's a span.

And it is as though Almighty God just took his divine hand and measured out the interstellar spaces when he built this universe.

And it's only one universe.

There's universes of universes they tell us.

God is over it all.

Well, our Lord Jesus Christ is the one who made it all and it says by him all things hold together.

The secret of the atom is Jesus.

The secret of the atom is Jesus.

He holds the universe together.

And you stop to think that that's the person whose blessed spirit is dwelling within you.

There isn't any limit to what he can do.

Now that's what Paul is talking about when he says, according to his glorious power.

The power of the shining stars, the power of the galaxies, the power of the atom, the power of the gravitational forces that keep this entire system running on split second time.

We set our watches and our atomic clocks.

We have to reset them and reset them and reset them and God's clock keeps on ticking away flawlessly.

The power of God is yours and mine for the receiving.

Oh, hallelujah.

Why should you be limping along when you could fly?

Why should you be alibiying your way through life when you could succeed?

You have to work, my good friend Harry Burkeham often said this to me.

You have to work just as hard to lose a dollar as to make one.

Why not succeed with God?

Well, let's do it.

Amen? Strengthened with might, according to his glorious power.

The Holy Spirit and the Word and the obedience and commitment and Jesus as the center of your life.

Well, let's pray, Lord, Christ, we worship thee and we adore thee.

And we ask that thy presence and thy power may be real in our lives today.

Amen and amen.

Well, my dear friend, God bless you every step of the way.

Wonderful to be with you.

Until I meet you once again by way of radio.

Walk with the King today and be a blessing.