THE ABIDING PRESENCE: THE OMNIPOTENCE OF CHRIST

THE ABIDING PRESENCE: THE OMNIPOTENCE OF CHRIST

“All power is given unto Me in heaven and on earth” (Matt.28:18).

Before Christ gave His disciples their Great Commission to bring His Gospel to every creature, He first revealed Himself in His divine power as the Almighty One. It was the faith of this that enabled the disciples to undertake the work in all simplicity and boldness. They had begun to know Him in that mighty resurrection power which had conquered sin and death; there was nothing too great for Him to command or for them to undertake.

Every disciple of Jesus Christ who desires to take part in the ‘victory that overcometh the world’ (1 John 5:4) needs time, and faith, and the Holy Spirit, to come under the full conviction that it is as the servant of the Omnipotent Lord Jesus that he or she is to take their part in the work. They are to count literally upon the daily experience of being “strong in the Lord and in the power of His might” (Eph.6:10). The word of promise gives the courage to obey implicitly the word of command.

Just think of what the disciples had learnt to know of the power of Christ Jesus here on earth. And yet that was but a little thing as compared with the “greater works” (John 14:12), that He was now to do in and through them. He has the power to work even in the feeblest of His servants with the strength of the Almighty God. He has power even to use their apparent impotence to carry out His purposes. He has the power over every enemy and every human heart, over every difficulty and danger.

But let us remember that this power is never meant to be experienced as if it were our own. It is only as the Lord Jesus Christ as a Living Person dwells and works with His divine energy in our own heart and life that there can be power in our preaching and life as a personal testimony. It was when Christ had said to Paul: “My strength is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor.12:9), that he could say, what he had never learned to say before, “When I am weak, then am I strong” (v.10). It is the disciple of Christ who understands aright that all the power has been entrusted to the Lord Jesus Christ, to be received from Him day, by day, hour by hour, who will feel the need and experience the power of that precious word: “Lo, I am with you alway” (Matt.28:20), the Almighty One! Let our faith in Christ the Omnipotent One keep us in perfect peace, and in the sure experience of all the light and strength we need in His service.

“The Secret of the Abiding Presence” by Andrew Murray

Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Cor.12:8-10)