Someone has said, “The thing about life is that it’s so daily.” There are times when we are just drained, when it’s hard to put one foot in front of the other, when we look down and wonder what’s making our shoes so heavy. Day to day, week to week, month to month, life has a way of wearing you down.
It can be worries about something that happened in the past, or something we should have done but didn’t, or maybe a worry about what’s going to happen tomorrow or next week.
For some of us, it’s people, somebody in our lives who’s wearing us out by what they do or what they won’t do. There are people that fill us up when we are around them, but there are others who drain every ounce of energy, tolerance, and compassion we have until we’re just finally bone dry. “You’re on my last nerve.”
For others of us, it’s the calendar and the to-do list. It just never ends. Every one of your teachers seems to think the only class you have is theirs and they keep piling on the homework and the projects. You don’t have any nights at home as it is and they want me to do one more thing. Not only do we get physically tired, but also mentally tired and emotionally tired.
I have a battery charger. I got tired of buying batteries for my digital camera which is really hard on batteries. We were in Washington, D. C. a couple of years ago and even though I had put in new batteries before we left that morning, right in the Smithsonian, probably taking a picture of Archie Bunker’s chair or Elvis’s guitar or something, my camera died. So that was that, and we were scurrying around the shops in Union Station looking for batteries, which, when we did find some, cost a fortune; I got the tourist rate! I thought, there’s got to be a better way.
So I got this battery charger which allows me to use the same batteries over and over and I always have a fresh set ready to go. Now if I can just figure out where my brain goes or my heart goes or my aching back goes, we’ll be just fine.
I think Paul has some things to say to those who need their batteries recharged. READ Ephesians 3.14-21.
1) When your batteries need recharging, recognize God’s unlimited resources.
Look at verse 16, “I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being…” When your get up and go has got up and went, when you are on your last legs, when you’re ready to fall in a heap, Paul directs us back to the source of your life.
I’ve been reading through the Book of Exodus in my devotions and just the other day I was reading about God calling Moses to go to Egypt and lead God’s people out of slavery. You may know the story and how Moses tries to get out of the assignment and tries to convince God that he’s got the wrong man, that the Egyptian Pharaoh won’t listen to little old him, that he’ll be laughed out of the Egyptian court, and that even the Israelites would just look at him and say, “Who do you think you are?”
In a way, Moses was right. Who was he after all to confront Pharaoh on his home court? Who are you and I? We don’t have all the smarts, all the talents, all the beauty, all the things, all the money, all the opportunities, all the right connections, or all the right friends. In the world’s eyes, in your own eyes, you might not be enough.
But God wasn’t just thinking about what Moses could do, but God was thinking about what he could do through Moses. It may be that you and I aren’t enough for a lot of things and in a lot of situations. But God doesn’t see it that way. From God’s point of view, you and God are always enough. Someone said, “Nothing is going to happen today that God and I can’t handle together.”
We look at a situation and say “I can’t.” “We could never do that. This is as good as it’s going to get.” “I’ve reached the limit. I can’t do anymore. I can’t go any further.”
But our God is not a small, tentative God tiptoeing around timidly, intimidated by the impossible. Our God is the God of the possible. Jesus said, “With men it is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” When we are tired and beaten down and drained is when we have to get our eyes off what we can do and dwell on what God can do.
When we think the hurting will never stop, our God is a God of tender mercies and comfort. Psalm 56.8: You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book.
When we think we can’t endure the grief, God will hold us in his loving embrace and never leave our side until we can raise our eyes and see the light of eternity and lay hold of that hope that is eternal and undying.
When we think we can’t pay the bills and we’re about to go under, God reminds us that “he will meet all our needs according to his riches in glory,” and that “the righteous have never been forsaken and begging bread” and that “when we seek first his kingdom…all these things will be added to you.”
When we think we can’t serve in a ministry of the church, when the nominating committee calls, when a teacher is needed for Sunday School, when we’re called on to speak up, God equips us with his gifts and opens doors of opportunity and covers us with his wisdom and a strength that enables us to do things for his kingdom and his church we would have never imagined.
“I pray that out of his glorious riches, he will strengthen you…”
What is your source? Who are you depending on?
• Don’t depend on more money to fill you up; it can be here one minute and gone the next, and in the end, none of us will take any of it with us.
• Don’t depend on more things; things wear out, break down, go out of style, and anyway, there’s always somebody who will have more than you.
• Don’t depend on smarts and education; it’s a great thing, but none of us knows everything and our minds don’t always work as well as they should.
• Don’t depend on other people; even the best among us are imperfect and limited in one way or another, and even those we love most may and will leave us at some point in life.
• Don’t depend on the government; I don’t need to comment there, but really the limitations of the government to solve all our problems come from the fact that the government is us, people like us, people we elect and then dis-elect when they don’t make everybody perfectly happy at the same time, so the problem is really ourselves.
• Don’t depend on the preacher; no preacher is perfect or all-powerful or pleasing to all people at all times, and besides, no one can have faith for you.
I don’t know who you’re depending on, but I’ll take my chances with the God of unlimited resources, the Lord of heaven and earth, the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the one who sent his Son to this earth, who revealed God to mankind, who proclaimed the kingdom of God, who loved, who taught, who healed the sick; the one who died, and was buried, and rose again, conquering hell and sin and death forever.
I got my driver’s license early in 1974, and some of you remember that was right around the time of the first Arab oil embargo. That wasn’t the best time for a young guy to start driving, because after all, the price of gas shot up to 50 or 60 cents a gallon, and that’s when the speed limit was lowered to save gas. That’s not a good combination for a teenager with little money who likes to go fast. Saving gas became a big issue because of the volatile politics of the Middle East and OPEC cutting off oil imports. But there were also people, experts of some kind, saying that we had to conserve because the world oil supply was dwindling, and that within a few years, all the oil and fossil fuels would be used up.
But you know what? We’re still going, still pumping, and still driving. Now, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t conserve, and it’s never good to be wasteful and careless, and we ought to be developing alternatives that don’t depend on volatile politics and that don’t pollute so much. But despite all the dire predictions, we didn’t exhaust the oil supply in the 80’s as they predicted, and we didn’t use it up in the 90’s, and new sources are still being discovered.
In the same way, when we think we can’t go on, when our physical and emotional and spiritual well is running dry, we need to stop and recognize God’s unlimited resources. We need to be like the little boy who fell in a barrel of molasses, and after he fell in the barrel of molasses, he was heard to say, “Lord, make my capacity equal to this opportunity.”
“I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you…”
2) Then, when your batteries need recharging, root your heart God’s unlimited love.
In a 2000 interview, Jim Carrey, the comedian and actor, was asked the question: “What do you still desire?” to which he responded, “Love.” He makes over $10 million per movie, and is one of the most popular actors in Hollywood, but Jim Carrey can testify that money and fame can’t buy happiness. Just past 40, he has already had two failed marriages, and what he really wants, is love.
He says, “I pray that you may grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.” We can go through a lot of things and get through a lot of long, hard days if we know somebody loves us. But if we aren’t sure if anybody cares about us, if we feel we don’t matter to somebody, we will give up a whole lot sooner. Remember that you are loved by the Lord of the universe.
We light up and come to life when we grasp “how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.” The love of Jesus is wide enough for everybody. When he stretched out his arms on the cross it was to include everyone in his wide embrace. No one is excluded. No one has to wait their turn. No one is loved any more or any less regardless of where you came from, how much you have, what you look like, or what you have done.
The love of Jesus is long enough to last an entire lifetime and even for eternity. God promised us, “I have loved you with an everlasting love.” It is a love that will not change, grow weak, get tired, or give up. God’s love for you will never change.
The love of Jesus is so high it exceeds and outshines and surpasses any love known to man, and it is a love high enough to take us all the way to heaven. His love is infinite and boundless.
The love of Jesus is deep enough to find us wherever we are, and in the incarnate Christ to come down right where we are and right where we live,
a love that tasted our fallen humanity and bore the weight of our sin,a love that can reach the deepest depths of failure, brokenness and despair, a love so deep that when we hit bottom, we will find Jesus beneath to catch us and lift us up. If we ever wonder whether anybody loves us, just look at the cross.
1 John 4:10 “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”
If you ever feel unloved, neglected, lonely, forgotten—go to the cross. If you ever wonder whether anybody loves or knows or cares—go to the cross.
If life is so hard and full of trouble that you wonder if God has forgotten you—go to the cross. Because there, the love of God is on full display in Christ.
3) And when your batteries need recharging, reconnect with God’s unlimited power.
I went to Haiti a couple of years ago with one of our missionaries. I had never done anything like that, but I thought traveling with Tom, an old hand, would be a good way to give it a try. As you may know, Haiti is probably the poorest, most economically deprived country in the Western Hemisphere, and the state of the public services bears that out.
It was hot when we were there, but at night it wasn’t too bad because you could open the windows and the house we stayed in had a ceiling fan so we could sleep fairly comfortably. But about a half-hour after we went to bed, the fan stopped and the outside lights went out and every other light in the house went out. The electricity was off, but that happens here, too, and besides, everything was back on and humming the next morning. The next night, the same thing happened, because they shut off the electricity every night, and sometimes it would go off during the day because with the state of their economy and their meager resources, they can’t afford to have power around the clock.
But they had a generator at the compound where we were staying, and whenever the power would go off, the generator would automatically fire up and provide power to the house and to the other buildings.
That’s a little bit like what God wants to do for you and me when it feels like somebody shut off the power. Look at how Paul closes this glorious prayer, “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us…”
According to what do you pray? How about “now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we can ask or imagine?” Think about how much that is. I mean, we can imagine quite a lot, can’t we? Think about all your children can ask or imagine.
Katie Couric is the new anchor for the evening news on CBS, and there’s been a lot of discussion about how she should sign off at the end of the newscast. Walter Cronkite always said, “And that’s the way it is,” and everybody since has been trying to come up with something memorable.
Well, how about using verse 20? “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we can ask or imagine…” Let’s talk and live and make decisions according to him. Let’s take our problems to him. Let’s take our weaknesses and our bad days and our tough choices and our failures and our hopelessness and our confusion and our fatigue and our weariness and our frustration to “him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we can ask or imagine…”
Isaiah 40.28-31: Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. 29 He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. 30 Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.
When we’re sagging, when we’re dragging, when our batteries need recharged, perhaps we should pray as Paul does here in the last half of Ephesians 3 and recognize God’s resources which are unlimited, and root our hearts in God’s love which is beyond measure, and reconnect with God’s power which he can always supply.
