"Power" (Matthew 28:20b)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 11/13/2024 7:08 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                                                                  Focus:  “Power”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Matthew 28:20b

 

            Message of the verse:  “and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

 

            Today is the last SD that I will do on the book of Matthew, at least for a long while.  I began this work back on the 19^th of November, 1999, so it took me one week less than five years to get through this study, a study that has certainly meant a lot to me, and it is my prayer that the Holy Spirit of God will have caused it to mean much to those who have read it through the years.

 

            I spent a lot of time looking at the first four elements for effective fulfillment of the church’s mission, however they would be useless without the last, namely, the power that the Lord Jesus Christ offers through His continuing presence with those who belong to Him.  MacArthur writes that “Neither the attitudes of availability, worship, and submission, nor faithful obedience to God’s Word would be possible apart from Christ’s own power working in and through us.

 

            “Idou (lo) is an interjection frequently used in the New Testament to call attention to something of special importance.  Ego eimi (I am) is an emphatic form that might be rendered, ‘I Myself am,’ calling special attention to the fact of Christ’s own presence.  Jesus was saying, in effect, most important of all.  I Myself, your divine, resurrected, living, eternal Lord, am with you always, even to the end of the age.’

 

            “A helpful way to keep one’s spiritual life and work in the right perspective and to continually rely on the Lord’s power rather than one’s own is to pray in ways such as these: ‘Lord, You care more about this matter I am facing than I do, so do what You know is best.  Lord, You love this person more than I do and only You can reach into his heart and save him, so help me to witness only as You lead and empower.  Lord, You are more concerned about the truth and integrity of Your holy Word than I am, so please energize my heart and mind to be true to the text I am teaching.’”  I have to say that that was very important for me to read, especially the highlighted part.

 

            “Always literally means ‘all the days.’  For the individual believer that means all the days of his life.  But in its fullest meaning for the church at large, it means even to the end of the age, that is, until the Lord returns bodily to judge the world and to rule His earthly kingdom.  (See Matt. 13:37-50, where Christ uses the phrase ‘end of the age’ three times to designate His second coming.)

 

            “Jesus will not visibly return to earth and display Himself before the whole world in His majestic glory and power until the end of the age.  But until that time, throughout this present age, He will always be with those who belong to Him, leading them and empowering them to fulfill His Great commission.”

 

            MacArthur now concludes this section and this book of Matthew with a story.  “Some years ago, a missionary with to a primitive, pagan society.  She became especially burdened for a young wife and eventually as sued to win the woman to Christ. Almost as soon as she was saved the woman told the missionary with great sorrow, ‘I wish you could have come sooner, so my little boy could have been saved.’  When the missionary asked why it was too late, the mother replied, ‘Because just a few weeks before you came to us, I offered him as a sacrifice to the gods of our tribe.”

 

Spiritual meaning for my life today:  I have spent a lot of time looking at these five elements for effective fulfillment of the church’s mission, and it is my desire to do the things that I have been studying so that my ministry will be effective to the church by continually asking the Holy Spirit to use my Spiritual Diaries to bring glory to the Lord as He sends them around the world each and every day.

 

My Steps of Faith for Today:  I trust that the Lord will speak to my heart as I begin the study of 2^nd Timothy tomorrow, so that I can learn what He desires me to learn and be able to spread it around the world through the Spiritual Diaries that go onto my blogs.

 

11/13/2024 7:54 AM