CHRISTIAN
LIVING, POWER
THERE’S nothing worse than a man who becomes a millionaire who doesn’t understand the ramifications of his wealth, and who still lives like a pauper. And there’s nothing worse than Christians, who have been made spiritual millionaires, living like spiritual paupers.
You would think when you look at the way some Christians live, that God has made absolutely no deposit of power in their account at all.110
Eph. 1:3, 6–8
SOMETIMES Christians look at other Christians and say, “Boy, I wish I could be as spiritual as they are.” But don’t you understand? You have the same identity that they do. So if they are progressing and you are regressing, it is because they are living in light of who they are and you are not.
In my house, I have a toaster, a can opener, a microwave, and a refrigerator. They are all different appliances, but they all work from the same power source. When I plug them in, the refrigerator refrigerates. When I plug the microwave in, the microwave does the microwaving. When I plug the toaster in, the toaster does the toastering, and when I plug the can opener in, the can opener does its can opening. Each appliance, though different, lives up to its manufactured specifications because each appliance is receiving the same power source.
Even though I am different from you and you are different from me, all of us have the equal potential of living up to God’s manufacturer’s specifications. You can be what God saved you to be and I can be what God saved me to be because the same electrical current is available to all God’s kids. It’s available to all who belong to Christ. So there are no special kids in the kingdom. God has the design for you but you must know who you are in Him.111
[Christian Living, Identity in Christ; Calling; Spiritual Gifts, Use of]
1 Cor. 12
I WAS talking on my cordless phone the other day and it started to make this clicking noise. It continued for a little while and then I heard one final click and then my phone went dead. I had no power. Do you know why there was no power? The receiver had been off the charger too long. It had been hanging out in the room, far away from the base, and so the power was all gone. So do you know what I did? I walked my receiver over to the base because the base had the power. After the receiver had a chance to hang out with the base for a little while, I walked over and picked up the receiver to find that it had power once more. Why? Because I brought it to where the power was. When I connected my receiver to the power, all of a sudden I could hear again.
Some of us have lives that are clicking and nothing is happening because we have not connected ourselves with the base.112
[Intimacy, with God]
Phil. 3:8–11
THE DATE was August 14, 2003. Mrs. Evans and I were in New York on our way back to Dallas. We went to LaGuardia Airport to catch our flight. I went to curbside check-in to check in our bags. The line was not moving. I waited twenty minutes, and still there was no movement in the line. I got out of the line to find out what was going on. The baggage handler said the airport had no power.
It was then that we found out that we were caught in the blackout of 2003 where the whole East Coast went dark due to a power grid failure. No planes were coming in, no planes were going out. We couldn’t check in. The conveyor belts to deliver the baggage weren’t working because there was no power. So we waited. We waited three hours along with thousands of other people at the airport who were also stuck in this miserable situation. It was a steamy, hot August day, with no solution in sight. Finally, as darkness was coming over the city of New York and the airport, we were told the airport was shutting down. Without power or light, or anything else, the airport was shutting down. So thousands of people like ourselves were stuck. We’d already checked out of our hotel room and had no place to go.
I got on my telephone and called my sister to ask her to help me find a hotel room. Everybody at the airport was looking for a room and I needed all the help I could get. She called me back soon after and said she’d found one room at the Crown Plaza LaGuardia. She said it was the last one and that they would hold it for me for ten minutes. We ran out into the dark of night, hailed a cab, and got to the Crown Plaza LaGuardia just in the nick of time.
Due to the power outage, candles were now lighting the hotel. We registered by hand because the computers weren’t working. There was no TV, no air-conditioning, and no hot food because nothing was working. We pulled back the shades and opened the window to get some air in our room.
That’s when we saw it. Immediately across the street from us was a Marriott Hotel. It was all lit up. I mean this place was popping. We heard music playing through our open window. The other hotel was so close we could see people moving around and eating outside. It was clear to me that we were in the wrong place. I had one simple question: How could there be that much light in this much darkness? It was about 9:00 at night, but I had to get my inquisitive question answered, so I walked back down the steps and crossed over to the Marriott.
I walked into an air-conditioned Marriott Hotel. All the TVs were on and were tuned in to the newscast reporting on how dark New York City was. Folks were lined up at the restaurant to get hot food. There was all this light and joy and music and laughter and excitement in a dark situation. I went over to the assistant manager and I said, “Mister, I don’t understand. It’s dark everywhere. The airport is right over there and it’s dark. My hotel is right over yonder and it’s dark too. Everything is dark, and yet you are lit up like a Christmas tree. How can this be?”
He said, “It’s really fairly simple. When we built this hotel, we built it with a gas generator. We’ve got power on the inside that is not determined by circumstances on the outside. Even though there’s nothing happening out there, there’s plenty happening in here.”
When you accepted Jesus Christ, He came into the inside. So what’s happening on the outside shouldn’t determine whether or not you’ve got a lighthouse on the inside. What’s happening out there shouldn’t determine your joy. God has given us a generator of life and liberty in our souls through our relationship with Jesus Christ. We don’t have to live our lives determined by life’s circumstances.113
[Trials]
Phil. 4:4; 2 Cor. 12:9–10
I LIKE those truck commercials where they show the towing ability of a truck. They always show the truck pulling something, like a boat, up a hill. Do you know the thing that is being pulled is doing nothing but going for a ride? You never see a boat hitched onto a truck struggling to climb a hill. The power for the tow is located under the hood of the truck. The power is built into the vehicle. All the boat has to do is be hooked onto the truck.
The power for your Christian life is not in you. The power for your Christian life is Christ under the hood; it’s Christ in you, the hope of glory.114
[Power, Accessing]
Col. 1:27
WHEN I was a boy in Baltimore, the way we “swam” on Saturday was to run through the water from the fire hydrant. The fire marshal would come around and open the fire hydrant enough for it to spray water for us. The fire hydrant would shoot out water; we’d put on short pants and have the time of our lives.
As a young boy, I didn’t understand how all that water could come out of that little pipe for days. Water just kept gushing out of there. When I asked my dad about it, he explained that the pipe in the hydrant had no water. The water all came from underneath the ground. The pipe from the hydrant connected with another pipe that led to a reservoir and the reservoir had plenty of water. My Dad explained to me that as long as there was an underground connection, there would be plenty of water coming out of the pipe.
If there’s nothing coming out of the pipe, you don’t need a “pipe fixing,” you need an underground connection. You need something underneath that connects you with the power source so that water can flow from your life.115
[Power, Accessing]
John 4:14
WE ALL know what it’s like to have our car battery go dead. A powerless battery cannot take you anywhere. So you put up the hood of your car and pull out some jumper cables. You get another car whose battery is alive, and get the hood of that car close to yours. Then you take the cables and connect that battery’s positive with your positive and the negative with a metal part on your engine. And then there is a transfer of power and a transfer of life. The living battery sends its life and its power through the cables to your dead battery. Then you can turn on your ignition and know that there has been a transfer of power via the cable. All of a sudden your dead car comes alive. All of a sudden your dead motor turns over. All of a sudden your dead car can now move. Why? Because it has power on its own? No. Because it borrowed power from another. Because it took power from a living battery.116
[Weakness; Power, Accessing]