A week into 2020 Michelle opens up this new season of podcasting with a new series called Faith & Power: Understanding the Power of Who Christ Is In You. She begins the series reading Ephesians 1:17-23 from The Passion Translation.

Show Transcript:

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Introduction

Good Morning! This is Michelle Bentham, host of Blooming Inspired Podcast. We are a week deep into 2020 - Can You Believe It? A Brand New Decade! I’ve been sitting with the Lord the last few months, resting and listening. Quieting my heart to hear His truth and His word as I walk out God’s plan and purpose in my life for 2020. I’ll share a bit about this in a future episode, but the short version is God gave me several passages of Scripture from Habakkuk 2:1-3 (NLT), Amos 9:13-15 (MSG), and Isaiah 14:24, 7-8, 4 (tpt). Through these passages He revealed to me that most of my year is beyond “The Finish Line” and that as I walk with the Father - my vision will increase, as I walk with the Son - my victory will increase, and as I walk with the Holy Spirit that velocity will be added to my life.

I’m in an entirely new season, seeking intimacy with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit like never before and seeking to run the uncharted path of my race with vision, velocity and victory as I move out of the old season and into the new. How about you? What is your word for 2020?

Leave it in the comments or email or send it by direct message to me: for email send to [email protected] or on Facebook DM @BloomingInspired. Everyone who sends in their word will get a photo print of my Word of the Year as a free gift for engaging with the podcast.

This week we are beginning a new series called “Faith & Power: Discovering the Power of Who Christ is in You!” Our reading today will be from the book of Ephesians 1 in The Passion Translation. Grab your Bible, your favorite winter beverage and get comfy as we dig into this new study for our new year.

This Week’s Reading

Let’s Pray, Father God, I ask that you would give each person within the sound of my voice an encounter with You, Your Son and the Holy Spirit this morning as we read Your words of life together. Impart the truth of who You are to our hearts, minds, souls and bodies today - we ask for Holy Spirit revelation to open our eyes to the way You see, open our ears to hear Your majestic voice, and open our hearts to know Your heart in intimacy and truth. I thank you that when we believe in Christ, we are hidden in Him and His blessings, and that same power that raised Him from the dead now lives bodily in us and we have access to it by Faith. Remind us of these truths as we read today and make them real for us! I ask these things in Jesus’ Holy Name, AMEN.

The title for this episode is “The Same Power.” We’re looking for what it means that the same power that raised Jesus from the Dead now lives bodily in us. So let’s begin:

Verse 17: I pray that the Father of glory, the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, would impart to you the riches of the Spirit of wisdom and the Spirit of revelation to know him through your deepening intimacy with him.

Paul has just commended the believers at Ephesus for their love and devotion as well as their strong faith in God. Then He prays for them - as we reread those words, what do you hear God saying to you?

I pray that the Father… would impart to you the RICHES of the SPIRIT OF WISDOM and the SPIRIT OF REVELATION to KNOW HIM through your DEEPENING INTIMACY WITH HIM. Last night I was painting bookmarks I will send off to Edna,TX this weekend for the gift bags that will be given to women attending a conference where I’ll be speaking on February 22nd. I am a bit overwhelmed painting bookmarks for 100 women, but I’m also deeply grateful for the opportunity to serve in this way. I love creating gifts for people that spark a desire in their heart to know God more.

I went to bed very late and as I laid my head on the pillow I had these sentences running through my mind: “Ministry happens in the culture of relationship. Impartation happens in the culture of intimacy.”

My question becomes if Wisdom and Revelation is imparted by Spirit that comes from knowing Him in intimacy - what cultivates intimacy in your life?

For me, it’s worship… Hands down. Not just singing songs to God, but focusing my heart on His presence and His goodness. Engaging my heart with what I see the Father doing and hear Him saying. Prayer and Intercession birthed out of the deep ache of my soul drives my heart in longing toward God in intimacy. I want to lean back against His chest and feel His heart beating - then I want my heart to find that rhythm in my own life. I want to be attentive to what He is doing every moment of every day not just in the ministry moments.

What I’m realizing is I can know God in a relationship with Jesus Christ and never fully engage or incline my heart toward Him. I can do ministry for God, serve the people of God and never fully know the heart of God because I do not engage His heart in intimacy.

Intimacy is a key to experiencing the Wisdom and Revelation that comes only by the Holy Spirit. For many years I read the Bible seeking to understand the words of Scripture with little to know understanding, but then as I learned to listen and hear from God as I read. The more I inclined my heart to deeply know Him, the more He revealed Himself to me through both Scripture and Experience. Encountering the Presence of God - Holy Spirit - will change my heart, my mind and my life.

So let me ask you… How engaged is your heart with the presence of God?

Moses, David and the disciples and apostles knew God in this way. What would happen if we inclined our heart to know God deeply through intimacy and presence? Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Verse 18: I pray that the light of God will illuminate the eyes of your imagination, flooding you with light, until you experience the full revelation of the hope of his calling—that is, the wealth of God’s glorious inheritances that he finds in us, his holy ones!

Paul prayed that the imagination of the believers at Ephesus would have the eyes of their imagination illuminated. Come on… If you love to dream, explore and create then this should get your heart pounding! God wants to light up your imagination and use it for His glory!

Isn’t that exciting?

I remember being a young girl in third grade and we had to write a story and draw a picture to match it. My momma and daddy loved the oldies music from the 50s and 60s and so we had tons of little 45 records with various songs on them. The Purple People Eater was one of my favorite songs. I wrote my story about this one-eyed, one-horned, flying Purple People Eater and drew a picture of it. My teacher told my parents at the open house that I had a “Very Vivid Imagination.”

And I do… When I read fiction I picture myself as one of the characters in the story so I can understand what is happening. The same thing with Scripture - I’ve begun to read Scripture as if I were living it rather than just reading about it. My redeemed imagination has the power to tap into the Holy Spirit’s revelation and wisdom in a way my natural mind and reasoning cannot. Now, I’m not saying we throw logic and reasoning out the window - I’m just saying to truly know God in intimacy we need an integrated approach where our intuition and imagination plays an equal role as we Engage His presence, Read His Word and Encounter His Love.

Faith brings us into this relationship with God, but it is all the fascinating ways He created us, and the fact that when we believe in Him by faith all of who He is comes to live inside of us.

Paul also writes in this passage that when He floods us with His Light, and we experience that flooding until we are full of revelation of the Hope of His Calling… That somehow, and this is atrue mystery and a wonder, that this revelation of Hope and His calling makes us a full expression of the wealth of God’s glorious inheritance that He finds in us… We are called Saints - His Holy Ones!

Christ in You - that is the key. Discovering who Christ is unlocks revelation and wisdom insight into who we are… Then, we need only find the way He wants to express Himself through us to fully realize His purpose in our life. And this comes through intimacy.

Verse 19-20: I pray that you will continually experience the immeasurable greatness of God’s power made available to you through faith. Then your lives will be an advertisement of this immense power as it works through you! This is the mighty power that was released when God raised Christ from the dead and exalted him to the place of highest honor and supreme authority in the heavenly realm!

C’mon! Not only does Jesus by Holy Spirit come to live inside of us, but the same power that RAISED HIM FROM THE DEAD, Paul writes in Romans 6 & 8 that this same power lives in us and if it raised Jesus from the dead it will give life - more than eternal life, but abundant life here on earth as well.

Matthew 10 indicates Jesus commissions His disciples to carry the same power that He carries to heal the sick, raise the dead, cast out demons and cleanse lepers. The SAME POWER - He even says that the signs of healing, casting out demons, and handling deadly poison and snakes should not harm the disciples (poison and snakes both bring death) and in John 14 He says that those who believe in Him and did not see Him will do all the works He has done, He being Jesus, and even greater works because of their Faith in Him.

At the end of Matthew, what most believers in the Western Church call “The Great Commission” tells the Apostles and Disciples of Jesus to go into all the world preaching the Gospel, baptizing believers into the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and to teach them all the things He had imparted through commandment to His disciples. He imparted to His disciples authority and power by the measure of their faith over every evil thing the enemy is empowered to do in this earth. And yet, we live fearing the devil and cowering at death’s door.

Faith in what you have not yet seen, but believe in empowers us to do the greater works! Works greater than the signs, wonders and miracles we see Jesus performing in the Gospels. He even told His disciples not to rejoice in the power they had to work miracles, signs and wonders among the people, but rather to rejoice that these things were evidence that their names were written in the Lamb’s book of life. Faith should bring us into revelation, wisdom, and power. Do You Understand?

Verse 21: And now he is exalted as first above every ruler, authority, government, and realm of power in existence! He is gloriously enthroned over every name that is ever praised,not only in this age, but in the age that is coming!

Do we really live like we believe Jesus has been exalted as first above every ruler, authority, government, and realm of power in existence? DO WE? He is now and forevermore gloriously enthroned over every name that is ever praised! And yet professing believers in the body of Christ believe to live is a Struggle and to Die is to Gain Everything God Promised. But, that is not what Paul said.

Paul wrote so eloquently that he would count his suffering with joy, just as Christ endured the cross for the Joy Set Before Him. And Jesus counted it joy, that He would gain us, when we endure suffering and overcome by the power of the Holy Spirit - knowing that as Paul wrote, “To Live is Christ and to Die is Gain…” What if we believed it is true that to live is Christ and die is gain?

What would we do with the power and authority that comes to us by faith?

What kind of victory could we realize if we only believe Faith and Power belong to us in Christ?

They are both brought to us by the Holy Spirit (see Acts 1 and 1 Corinthians 12) and because Jesus, by the Sealing Work of the Holy Spirit, now lives inside of us - so do this faith and power, the authority to act as He acted when He lived upon the earth. He is our archetype and model. Not, the traditions of men we are often taught by well meaning leaders in our church houses today.

Verse 22: And he alone is the leader and source of everything needed in the church. God has put everything beneath the authority of Jesus Christ and has given him the highest rank above all others.

How would we live differently if we truly believed that Jesus is who Paul prophesses him to be, who the disciples and apostles knew Him to be? How would we live differently if we believed that in Christ we find the lone leader and source of everything we need as His body?

Jesus outranks everyone. EVERY. ONE. He alone is sufficient to meet our every need. He alone is the provision and the protection we are looking for - and He alone paid the price that we should live free, empowered and faithful to all He calls us to - especially the work of His Holy Spirit within us.

Verse 23: And here’s where we’re going to wrap it up. And now we, his church, are his body on the earth and that which fills him who is being filled by it!

I don’t know about you, but the way the Passion Translation transcribes this verse is a bit confusing to me, but I can read it in the NKJV and see how it says, that we as Christ’s body are continually being filled by Him, who fulfills Himself in us. IN OTHER WORDS, as Brian Simmons included in his footnote for this verse in the Passion Translation: “That is, we are those who are filled (completed) by Christ, we also complete (fill) Him. What a wonderful and humbling mystery is revealed by this verse.”

What if we REALLY believed this is true!? That our identity is so wrapped up in Christ and who He is that when we fully realize who He is… We fully become who we are supposed to be. That in Him we find ourselves, and our purpose and our destiny… As we allow Him to be fully expressed through us - finite as we are - somehow we complete Him as His body reaching a lost and dying world. What a glorious thing to consider.

As I close out today’s show I want to say something a bit strong - to challenge you a bit - and, I hope that is okay! I want to challenge everyone within the sound of my voice to consider this one thing…

When you are singing, Waymaker at church on Sunday or are contemplating that prayer request where the outlook is not so lively, and here is what I want you to consider:

Either we believe this is true or we don’t.

Are we living our lives full of faith and power, believing God for the impossible and the greater works, or are we dumbing down the testimony of Scripture about faith, power and impossibilities to fit our experience and expectations or traditions from a religious perspective?

Do we live like Pharisees?

Questioning every sign and wonder, warning people off of the devil while dismissing the power of God and holding onto our set of rules, taboos, doctrines and superstitions about God.

Do we leave no room for revelation, power or even repentance to have a perfect work at any moment of our lives? Have we studied the Scriptures searching for Him, but miss Him when He shows up in power and moves among us.

Where is the bold faith that steps out and risks everything for God, seeking to see His Kingdom come and Will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven?

When was the last time you stopped, listened and prayed to know what the Father was saying or doing so you could partner with Him rather than try to talk Him into doing what you thought He should do?

And finally…

Do we live like the Apostles?

Stepping out in risky, unfavorable and downright dangerous circumstances BY FAITH - seeing the impossible not only become possible, but probable as the miraculous becomes mainstream.

Do we live by supernatural power imparted by the Holy Spirit or by the whims of our Human Heart? Are we satisfied with our normal religious preferences and failing to step out to take up a cross and follow Jesus with Bold Faith to see His Kingdom become our reality even now?

Lord God, I pray that as these words go out penetrating the airwaves through the internet that your will would be accomplished. That they would be guided to the hearts of those who listen and bring with them the HOPE of Your Faith and Power that is waiting for us to step up, step out and step into the Kingdom of God. Saying, “Your Kingdom come Your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.” Is not a passive wish we speak out, but a promise from Heaven, that when we ask, seek and knock that you will respond and answer, reveal and unlock what we are seeking you for… So Lord we are asking, seeking, and knocking - meet us where we are with your faith and your power and give us the Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation as your light illuminates our imaginations with Your Impossible Possibilities! In Jesus’ Name I pray, Amen.

Closing Remarks

That's all the time that I have today! Thank you for tuning in with us. I want to ask you if this podcast has been a blessing to you: would you consider subscribing to it and share it with your friends and family? We’d love to partner with you in sharing messages that encourage and inspire.

If you’d like to be a guest on this show or get more information about hosting your own podcast on the Blooming Inspired Podcast Network - please reach out to [email protected]. I’d love the opportunity to connect with you and figure out how we can share your voice with the world around us.

BIBLE STUDY SEASON IS UPON US! We began our The Gospels: Verse-By-Verse Bible Study in October. We will be reading in person (Granbury, TX) and on Facebook Live at 10 am (Central Time). That’s right - This season our study is found in the book of Luke. We will be reading Luke 8 this week and digging into the life of Christ Verse-By-Verse considering what we would believe if reading the Scriptures was the primary way we inform our faith! You can learn more and catch up on last week’s study by visiting facebook.com/bloominginspired.

As I mentioned earlier, I will be speaking at a women’s conference (R.E.A.L. Women Conference) at (The Ranch Cowboy Country Church South) in Edna, TX. Registration is available for $40 through January 10th, and will be $45 after the 10th through the day before the conference. Tickets at the door will be $60. This one day conference is February 22 this year and includes a continental style breakfast, full lunch and dinner provided. I’d love to see some familiar faces attending. If you’d like to register please email or DM at the email listed above or through our FB page for details or visit theranchsouth.org for more information!

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