Jesus. What a name! If you haven't had a chance to read the verses yet, click here and you'll see what I mean. Here He's only mentioned as the Son. This is the greatness of our Savior, the amazing truth of the awesomeness of God. Jesus embodied God's fullness within Himself. But to capture His greatness hidden in the flesh of a man, we get an amazing picture of His power. Everything was created through Him and for Him, He preceded it all and holds it all together. He started it all and holds it all and it all belongs to Him.
To get a little better of an idea of "in him all things hold together," I'd like share with you something I heard while in college during one of the senior sermons. It's stuck with me for awhile. If you went to college with me you might remember it. Scientists have long since discovered that everything is made of atoms. But what they couldn't figure out was what is holding all the atoms together. The name they came up with was gluon (glue on). But I guess if they would have looked in the Bible (heaven forbid), they'd see what the real name is: Jesus. Mull that over for awhile and tell me what you think. It makes sense if through Jesus everything was created.
This is the cool part. All this fullness of the Creator of the universe and all that is in it, it's all crammed into this man, Jesus! The image of the invisible God! And not only is it all in Him, but God was pleased to do it!
We measure our greatness to the next guy and compare ourselves with them. We say we're good enough, or have good morals, or that we're not Hitler. But compared to the perfection of Christ...nope. No comparison. And that's why God sent Him. A perfect price had to be paid for redemption and it was only found in God Himself. I want you to check out this video. It does a better job capturing the idea of this reconciliation through Christ's death, the cross, and His blood. And thanks, Ryan Green, for sharing this on your blog!
Christ has reconciled us to God and He has removed His wrath because of the cross! We have been made holy because of Him! There's only one thing we have to do now: continue in faith.
We're going through a new series here at Meridian Point Church called Hour of Prayer. This past weekend our Lead Pastor talked about the power of prayer and challenged us to use the Model Prayer from Jesus in Matthew 6 when we pray throughout the week. Makes total sense to do. Please take this next section as a humbling lesson from me because that's how I feel about it. All the glory goes to God and nowhere else because He alone is the One who works within us to perfect our salvation. God had a lesson for me in my lack of faith.
Before services our Worship Department goes around and prays in the worship center, sitting in chairs and praying for those specific people who will sit down right there. Well, God was at work. We prayed and got up to rehearse and worship with the church. After the message was over, a man got up and had something to share with us. At first, when things like that happen, there's hesitancy about the whole situation because you don't know what they're going to say. But the first words out of his mouth was, "Someone prayed in my seat. They had to have. I've never felt God's presence like this before in my life. He's doing something in me and let me tell you about it."
At that moment I was taken aback because that was the very seat I prayed in! I had to repent! What began as a good thing to do before the service, I didn't really believe in or that God would do anything. The hand of God is more powerful than we can give Him credit for. My faith has been rocked as I've seen the power of God work in prayer. The question comes gently from Him, "Where is your faith?" and from Paul's pleading as well, "continue in your faith, established and firm, and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel."
Then another person got and shared with the congregation the power of prayer, the influence God has given her in a community of people who need physical help, and proof of God's working today to the rest of us, the unbelieving believers.
Tears well up in my eyes even now as I confess with certainty that I have sinned and repent. But joy wells up in my heart and mind as I confess to you something even greater! Jesus saved me so that God's fullness would fill me as He has come to make His throne in my heart! His Spirit teaches me and guides to me to know His wisdom and understand His will to please Him in every way. I confess to you that I've seen the power of God at work. I've experienced the humbling reality that God can even use faithless people to restore and encourage others to know what faith really looks like. I confess that I believe and know that He is God.
The greatness and awesome power of God, the Creator, dwelled within His Son, Jesus, to lead Him to the cross so that those who believe and have faith may experience for themselves the overflowing fullness of God.
He is near. Do you really believe?
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