Are you convinced of the power of God at work in you?

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Robin Sam

Robin SamBy Robin Sam

I greet you in the Name of our Triune God who made His servant write in Ezekiel 3:14 thus: “So the Spirit lifted me up and took me away, and I went in bitterness, in the heat of my spirit; but the hand of the Lord was strong upon me.”

God has graciously brought us to a new month. Some of those who began the 8th month along with us are not among us in the 9th month. But great is His mercy. He has kept us alive – me to write this and bring out another issue and you to read this magazine and be edified in faith. Lamentations 3:22 says: “Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail.” I give God the fullest praise.

Ezekiel received a special commission from God. According to that, he was to go to the house of Israel and speak God’s words to them. God told him the kind of people his audience was. The 7th verse in Ezekiel 3 says “for all the house of Israel are impudent and hard-hearted.”

The prophet needed special grace to go to such a people and deliver God’s message to them. God knew Ezekiel’s strength had to be more than a match for the strength of the people. So, God made Ezekiel’s face strong against the people’s faces and his forehead strong against their foreheads (verse 8). Indeed, God made Ezekiel’s forehead like adamant stone, harder than flint. God’s special tasks are never given to us without special strength and grace.

After all the strength he received from God, Ezekiel should have gone to the mission field without delay, but it was not so. God knew fear and confusion will reign supreme in the prophet’s heart. Hence, God told him ‘whether they hear or whether they refuse’ he was to share the message from God with the people.

God not only commissioned and strengthened him for the assignment but also made him hear ‘a great thunderous voice’ and ‘a great thunderous noise’ to prove that the commissioning came from God Almighty Himself, no less. Despite all the power and strength from above, Ezekiel was despondent.

The Holy Spirit lifted him up but his own spirit caused him bitterness. This happens even today in believers’ lives. No matter how anointed we are in the Spirit and how fluent our prayers and tongues be in the Sunday worship, we end up feeling like losers by the middle of the week. Our commitment to God and His cause tends to slacken a bit, and by the end of the week we feel bitter and down. When that happens, our question needs to be how can I get out of this rut and not why does this happen to me.

We do not know what happens to us in the spiritual realm but it is natural to doubt God’s calling and our own commitment when are emotionally low.  Let’s look at Ezekiel to see what he did to get out of his own sense of despondency. What did Ezekiel do? Ezekiel did nothing. Yes, he did nothing. “The hand of the Lord was strong upon me.” It was the hand of God that strengthened Ezekiel. We need to learn to stop striving and let God be.

The world will say that we need to be proactive and solve our own problems, but that’s not what the Bible teaches us. The spiritual world functions according to spiritual principles, not ours. When the world says arise and get out of the rut, the Word of God will say ‘Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). When the world says we need to overcome our weaknesses, God will say: “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). When it looks as if all doors in front of us are closed, the Spirit of God will remind us of what was said of our Lord Jesus Christ in Revelation 3: 7, “He who opens and no one shuts, and shuts and no one opens.”

When Ezekiel was convinced of the power of the Message Giver, he was able to deliver the Message. We need to be convinced of the power of God that is at work in us. Because, it is when we believe that signs and wonders happen in our life, work and ministry. Only believe! Amen.

The writer is the editor of The Christian Messenger magazines in English and Tamil. He can be reached at editor [at] christianmessenger [dot] in

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