Rabbi Schneider - Walking in Power That Creates Change
I want you to visit with me now in the tenth verse of Colossians where I left off last time. Paul's in the midst of the prayer here. You need to get the entire series because there's a lot of depth and revelation here. But in verse 10 picking up from the last episode we read this. Paul prays that we would "walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God".
Father God we ask you to release revelation and strength into our lives.
I want to focus now once again on this concept of bearing fruit in every good work. Here's where I wanna go. Often times, we're just looking to God for what He's gonna do. We're waiting for miracles to happen. And sometimes we don't grasp the power that we have to influence the atmosphere and to bear good works. In other words, we're waiting for God to do something, but we sometimes don't realize that God has given us the power to do something by His Spirit to effect change and to make things happen. Let me give you an example of this. What about when we come to worship together? Did you ever notice when you come to a congregation where there's a lot of people that love the Lord as the worship service starts as people begin to lift their voice, maybe raise their hands, as they begin to sing to the Lord from their heart all of a sudden the atmosphere in the congregation changes. What made the change happen? What made the change happened beloved was that the people that were there exercised their spirit, and when they exercised their spirit, the anointing showed up. We have the power to influence earth's atmosphere.
Once again Paul says "I'm praying that you would have wisdom and understanding". He's gonna tell us in a second that he's praying for us to be strengthened that we'd be able to please the Lord and to bear good fruit. We are the ones that please the Lord. We are the ones that bear good fruit. Listen to me; you're alive. You're a spiritual being. You're a spiritual man, you're a spiritual woman, you're alive and you have the power to influence the spiritual atmosphere wherever you go and bear good works. Listen, good works are not just doing tangible things. They're not just feeding the poor, they're not just doing a favor for a neighbor. Spiritual works also involve influencing the world around you with your spirit, creating love, joy, peace, bringing the spirit of counsel where you go. You're alive. We're spiritual beloved, we're spiritual men and women spiritual children with a fleshly body. These bodies are gonna one day pass away. But our spiritual man will live on.
So when we think about bearing good works as Paul is praying here I want you to think about the fact that good works come from the Spirit, they're produced by the Spirit, and you have God's Spirit. You've got the power to say yes, you've got the power to say no, you've got the power to act, you've got the power to influence the spirit world wherever you go. You can part the darkness. You can release a blessing. You can release healing. You can release strength. You can release joy. Or somebody conversely can release accusation. They can release hatred. They can speak words of destruction. We have a lot of power. God has given humankind power to influence the Earth. When God created man He told Adam to take authority and to have dominion over the earth.
Well beloved, we are here today born again from the second Adam and we have the authority to dominate the earth and we can do it either for good, or for bad. You have power and you have to make a choice. A lot of you don't realize the power that you have. You've got the power to influence the attitude of your child. You've got the power to influence the attitude of your friends. Your presence produces fruit, either good fruit or bad fruit. Jesus said you'll know them by their fruit. So let's look again. Paul says he's praying that we would walk, in verse 10, in a manner worthy of the Lord, so we're always focused on it's not just about us, is the way I'm acting, is the way I'm thinking, are the words I'm saying, is the attitude I have, is it worthy of the Lord? And let me say this when we think about walking worthy to the Lord, once again in verse number 10, Paul is praying that you would walk in a manner worthy of the Lord.
One of the ways beloved that we walk in a manner worthy of the Lord is by having a thankful, a grateful, and a rejoicing spirit. God wants us to walk through life thankful, happy, and rejoicing. If you ask me how I'm doing today I'm gonna tell you I'm happy, healthy, and holy. That's my confession I'm happy, healthy, and holy. If we're gonna walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, as Paul is praying for us here, in verse number 10, then we're gonna have to walk in a manner that we're rejoicing and we're happy in the Lord. Now I know that we go through battles, I know we go through tough times. But we have a choice. When tough things happe, when we're in tough situations, by faith, by faith, we can still give God thanks, say:
Father thank you I believe that you're with me, I believe that You're doing something good with this. It might be a challenge but Father I choose to love You, and I choose to be grateful, and I choose to believe that You're doing something good in my life right now. Father I'm happy in you, even though this is hard, I'm happy in You. In Yeshua's name.
This is so important. Do you know God oftentimes we see gets upset with people when He blesses them and they don't respond to Him by being thankful. So just a little application there. In the Torah we see that the Lord was upset with Israel because they did not rejoice for all the good things He had done for them. We don't want the Lord to stop doing good things for us because we don't rejoice when He does. So let's be conscious of this. Let's walk in awareness and let's count our blessings daily and thank God for not taking them for granted. You know? Let's be mindful. When you're eating for example. You're eating food. And I know that some of us, the food's on the table, we just gulp it down while we ate, you know, it's done. But other people are able to just be at peace when they're eating. They're relaxed, they take their time. And every bite they taste - and I want you to be conscious of, we're talking about walking in a manner worthy of the Lord. It's the Lord that gave you and I beloved one the capacity to experience pleasure when we're eating food.
So I want to encourage you, slow down when you're eating. And just take your time, be aware of God's presence, be aware of yourself. And when you taste the great food, whatever it is that you're eating that you enjoy eating, recognize that the fact that you're tasting, this is God's gift to you. This is God's divine intelligence building your body. It's a spiritual gift to you to be able to have joy, to take pleasure from what you're eating. So once again let's be mindful and take count of our blessings. Let's slow down. Let's be aware. And let's walk in an attitude of thanksgiving.
So continuing again Paul says "that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, and he says this, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God". We're gonna move on today. Verse 11. "Strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience; joyously". So I want you to consider this. We've talked before as we've gone through other apostolic prayers, about being strengthened with His glorious power. We want to be strengthened with the same spirit by the same might, that raised King Jesus from the dead. Jesus was lifted up out of the grave, ascended to Heaven, conquered every power of darkness in the spiritual stratosphere, He sits now at the right hand of God, reigning over everything, and Paul is now praying that we would be strengthened by that same power.
You see there's nothing that you can't conquer. There's nothing that you can't get through. There's nothing that you won't overcome because you're being strengthened by the Spirit that unlimited, eternal life. The spirit that you and I have, beloved, is unconquerable. The spirit that we have is unending, unlimited, all powerful, created life that keeps on going. That's the gift that God's given us. There should be nothing that conquers us. We might have challenges, we might come against a wall. But eventually we're gonna get through, we're gonna get over, and we're gonna keep on keeping because we're born of God. We're born from above. We have unconquerable light within us. And so Paul prays that we'd be strengthened by this Spirit, this Spirit that makes us complete. In Jesus you've been made complete.
Now what's the fruit, Paul says here, of being strengthened by the Spirit? Look what he says, I like this. He says "that you would be strengthened with all power according to His glorious might, for the attaining," listen now, "for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience". I want you to get this. Because a lot of times when we think about power you know we're just thinking of these big, you know, explosive types of demonstrations of power, we're looking for the spectacular. But notice here, Paul also includes in the realm of being strengthened with power, that the fruit in our life will become steadfastness and patience. In other words, when you're girded with divine might, when you and I have been strengthened sufficiently, with God's power, the fruit of that is that we will be steadfast and have patience. That's power. To stay on course, to have a sound mind cause remember Paul began to pray in this prayer, back in the ninth verse, that we'd have wisdom and understanding in the knowledge of God. These are characteristics in the mind.
And that this revelation that has brought us maturity in the mind through the strengthening of the Spirit, will produce within us, listen now, steadfastness and patience. We're not gonna be pushed off course by every trial that we face. We're not gonna be taken over by every sudden new obstacle that presents itself to us. We're gonna have a steadfastness. Church, we're gonna be grounded. The roots of our faith are gonna be anchored in the soil of King Yeshua. And we're gonna walk in a power that parts the sea. Paul prays that you'd be streanghted with all steadfastness and patience. It's interesting the way that we're all wired so differently. I personally believe that some of those that go through the biggest challenges controlling their tempers, controlling their feelings, it's because God has such a great call on your life. In other words, the more you have to overcome, when you overcome it, the sweeter and the greater your victory is.
For example myself I have tremendous struggle in my life, for years. For years since I've been eighteen years old. Things I have to deal with. In the spirit world, controlling my energy. Controlling my feelings. All the things that I have to overcome. And I think that God has me in such an intense crucible of having to overcome all the powers of the air because of the fact that He needs me to be strong for you, the church, and the way He makes me strong is by having me overcome tremendous mountains. And so if you're someone that's listening right now and you've got a lot of battles in your life. You've got just you're controlling your feelings, you're controlling your temper, you're just navigating all types of challenged, that this can be God's gift for you because as you overcome these things, you're gonna be made strong because remember, Paul said, God's power is produced in weakness. Paul said"I would have you know, brethren, that I'm burdened excessively beyond strength, so I despair even of life, but this happens to me that I would learn to trust in God that raises the dead".
And he also said that when a messenger of Satan came to beset him when he prayed to the Lord to take it away, God said no Paul I'm not gonna take it away, because my power is gonna be made perfect in your weakness. So I'm challenging you today, cling to God. Be steadfast. Have patience. Continue to put one foot in front of the other. Some of you right now, the Lord just showed me, you're struggling because your children are just really frustrating you. I see a mother here with young kids, maybe more than one, maybe a couple young ones in the home and just keeping track of them, the 2-year-old that's getting into everything, running all over the home. Maybe you're a grandmother, and then you've got another child that maybe is challenging you in a different way, and you feel like pulling your hair out.
As you cling to God, as you cling to God, as you fight to be steadfast, as you fight to overcome your emotions of frustration by being patient I'm telling you what, the fruit of the Holy Spirit is being produced in your heart, and there's gonna be a harvest that's gonna be so beautiful and so rich and so much more than it would have been if your life would have just been easy. So beloved let's believe God today. Let's choose to give God thanks at every time and in every place, regardless of what we're going through, knowing that He causes all things to work for good to those that love Him and are called according to His purpose. I want you to know today beloved, God's got a purpose for your life that's greater than you could have ever imagines. Just keep on keeping on. I love you today.