Empowered to Use your Gifts

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Goal:
To address the question “How do I have power to produce fruit in my life as I use the gifts God has given me?”

The “spiritual disciplines” approach
- Praying long enough or hard enough
- Fasting
- Reading the Bible enough
- Worshipping/soaking
The “just stop trying” approach
- Give up trying. Let go and let God
Crisis Experience
- You need a God-encounter (Spirit-filling, repentance, second-blessing)

Missing the key “teaching”
- Some new “teaching” has just be revealed to a man of God
- Come to this conference and your life will be changed
- read this book / pray this prayer
- say these words / have these words said over you
Christian Service
- As you serve God your problems will go away
Get used to a fallen world
- Failure here is to make us long for heaven

It looks like he has read this passage and not been helped.
What could the problem be?
One of the difficulties of this subject is that we can have a “one size fits all answer”
Hudson Taylor did find an answer, and people tried to turn it into a formula
It ended up being distorted and very unhelpful to a lot of people
Let’s look at who he was
- Already very highly motivated to commit his life to Christ
- Very hard working, energetic, driving force
- Passionately devoted to Jesus and willing to do anything for him
A friend of his, John McCarthy, was going through the same struggles
- Many others in his inner circle were as well
McCarthy discovered an answer and wrote to him
Summultaneously, the light suddenly dawned and very quickly Taylor felt like a new man
We will ready what he actually said, and then relate it back to John 15

It is clear that we need to do something to abide, it is not automatic (in our sleep)
We can accomplish nothing
- Jesus uses the same language for his realtionship with his father
Abiding in Jesus has something to do with abiding in his love
This is done by keeping his commandments
And this is the commandment.

Is this circular reasoning?
- It is the gift of the Spirit
- It all happens together
- but there is one more factor...
I need to believe that what he says he has done for me is true
- He says that I am joined to him
- He says he has won the victory
- He says he will never leave me nor forsake me
The truth that transformed HT was that he didn’t need to get something out of Jesus—Jesus himself was with him all the time.
- He was irrevocably joined to Jesus
- Abiding in him was through believing the truth of this
The truth that transformed HT was that we simply need to believe this is true
This is one of the most important teachings in the N.T. and we find it in many places. e.g.:

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us,
even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—
and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,

What we have to do is to ask the Spirit to reveal this truth to us
- But it is in the context of stepping out in love
- As we love, God empowers us
HT’s Example of a bank account
- All that is ours is his, and all that is his is ours.
- e.g. King Edward IV in 1464 ““With this ring I thee wed” “with all my worldly goods I thee endow”
- Give our struggles over to him
- A peace came over his life. From restlessness he came into rest.
  - All of Jesus’ power was his
  - It transformed his missionary movement
This belief is not passive, it steps out in faith
- but we have to believe his love
Most of all, to believe that we are connected to Jesus
- The Spirit spoke this into his inner being
- He was transformed! There was a “before” and “after” in his life
I have not had the kind of intense experience he is talking about
- But I do no something of this, and it really is the ultimate source of strength
Let’s pray for the Spirit to show us what this means for us.