Like A Glove

 “I can do everything through him who gives me strength.”

Philippians 4:13

 

So how much can you do in your own strength?

Some might take a shot at that question and answer by saying:

“I can do some things in my own strength.”

But I would suggest that anything of eternal value is only accomplished in my life or your life as we do it through Jesus Christ.

It is His Spirit that empowers us to be able to do all things.

Listen to these words of Paul as he spoke to the Athenians:

“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands.

And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything.

Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else.

From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth;

and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.

God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him,

though he is not far from any one of us.

‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’

Acts 17:24-28a

Did you catch that last phrase?

In Him, i.e., Christ, we live and move and have our being!

How much work can a glove get done?

The answer is none!

But put that glove on your hand and it will accomplish as much as you set your hands too.

Like the glove, you and I need the empowering presence of God in our lives to accomplish anything for the Kingdom of God.

He is our strength.

The word ‘empower’ is a politically correct term.

I usually avoid politically correct terms because they are often overused and, in turn, diluted.

But in the case of our scripture today it is very true indeed.

God empowers you and me through Christ in us to do His work.

As Paul declared it to the Athenians nearly 2 centuries ago it still applies today:

In Him you and I live and move and have our being!