Friday, August 16, 2013
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My wife and I will take turns at the wheel on a long trip, and we have two different approaches to observing the speed limit. In her case, she likes to set it on cruise control, and that's a great invention. You can set your speed, and stay at that speed indefinitely. Not so much me. You see, I'd rather be able to really accelerate for a hill and keep up with the traffic sometimes as they say; to vary my speed. I know I can just break and reset the cruise control, but I'd rather not bother with it. In a sense, not so much about driving, but I just want to discourage you from setting your own cruise control.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Turn Off Your Cruise Control."
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Ephesians chapter 3, and let me begin reading at verse 16. This is really a magnificent passage that almost exhausts all of Paul's great vocabulary. "I pray that out of His glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge-that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. 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, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations."
What a passage! He's saying here there's strength you haven't touched yet, there's love you haven't felt yet, there's power you haven't released yet, and there are riches you haven't appropriated yet. And he sums them all up in these words "immeasurably more." See, a healthy Christian is one who's restless for that more. The problem is, too many of us are on spiritual cruise control. I'm at kind of at a nice speed right now, and I think I'll just kind of stay there till I get to heaven.
Don is a fellow who's been around the church a long time, much of it in leadership roles. He told me after I spoke at his church, "Ron, I was on cruise control; just feeling like, 'Man, I've been president of this and chairman of that, until I heard messages on revival and repentance.' And I wanted that more. I knew there was more." He came forward and he said, "You know, we don't do that a lot in my church as Christians."
Then he was having lunch with Marty. He regularly had lunch with Marty. They had worked together in business and Marty said to Don, "Hey, Don, there's something different about you, man. You usually come in and talk about business. All you've talked about today is the Lord." Marty said though he was raised as a Christian he hadn't had a Bible of his own for twenty years. Don gave him one, and now they're involved in an early morning prayer meeting together. And Marty, because he's been renewed, drove to his daughter's college campus and apologized to her for not raising her in a more spiritual atmosphere. Do you know what that's a taste of? That's contagious revival. It started with one spiritual veteran who said, "There must be more."
Don't you feel that holy restlessness? Don't you want the immeasurably more? Maybe your life, your conversation has gradually filled up with some other things – with earth stuff. How about being so full of your Lord that your Christian friends are going to say, "There's something different about you, man; you're all about the Lord all of a sudden"?
Jesus has so much more. But you'll never experience it if you've set your spiritual speed and just plan to keep rolling on at that same speed. It's time to get your life with Christ out of cruise control and into high gear.