You Can't Do Godly Things with Human Strength

 August 6, 2024

Tuesday

Let's admit it. Trying to do spiritual things using our own flesh is boring, tiring and wearisome. Let's take a few examples of this.

We can't understand the scripture apart from the Spirit revealing it to us. We get frustrated and often come up with wrong applications of the scripture because we are allowing the flesh to guide us. It just seems foolish. And it is.

1 Corinthians 2:14 (NASB 2020) ¹⁴ But a natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.

We are trying to use the natural part of us or the flesh to accept the things of God and they won't jive with what the world says.

Worship is boring when we are trying to worship with our flesh rather than with our spirits. Jesus said that those who worship God must do so with spirit and truth. Well we just dealt with the truth. Now, the spirit is necessary for worship.

John 4:23 (NASB 2020) ²³ But a time is coming, and even now has arrived, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers.

We cannot worship God without the spirit doing so. Thus, people are always looking for entertainment without needing to have the Spirit enable our spirits to worship. Yes, this is the best way to make the sermon and even the music boring. Maybe that is why those who try to entertain rather that worship have unchanged congregants.

We can't do the work of God without the Lord either. Jesus said that we could do nothing if we tried to do spiritual things without Him.

John 15:5 (NASB 2020) ⁵ I am the vine, you are the branches; the one who remains in Me, and I in him bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.

Just think of trying to do something that the Lord wants you to do without His strength. How could we ever suppose we can do godly things in human strength.

But an impotent church is normal today. It is because we are trying to do things for the Lord rather than with the Lord. We are trying to do things in our strength. We are trying to make sense of what we do with our human minds. No, that won't work either.

1 Corinthians 2:16 (NASB 2020) ¹⁶ For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he will instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.

Yep, you got it. We need the mind of Christ.

Do all that you do today in His strength and see how it turns out.