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Today's Scripture
Make every effort to give yourself to God as the kind of person he will approve. Be a worker who is not ashamed and who uses the true teaching in the right way.
*II Timothy 2.15, NCV
Wisdom Story
A business consultant decided to landscape his grounds. He hired a woman with a doctorate in horticulture and very knowledgeable.
The consultant was very busy and traveled much. So he kept stressing to the woman that he wanted a garden requiring little or no maintenance from him. He insisted on automatic sprinklers and other labor-saving devices.
Finally the woman stopped the man. She said, "There's one thing you need to deal with before we go any further. If there's no gardener, there's no garden!"
*A. Roger Merrill. First Things First. In Edward K. Rowell. Fresh Illustrations for Preaching and Teaching.
Comments
St. Paul urges Timothy diligently to apply himself to proving his vocation, first however to God. Timothy is to "make every effort" in this direction of proving his practical worth.
St. Paul had set an example for Timothy in this diligence. For example St. Paul writes to the Colossian Christians:
28 So we continue to preach Christ to each person, using all wisdom to warn and to teach everyone, in order to bring each one into God's presence as a mature person in Christ. 29 To do this, I work and struggle, using Christ's great strength that works so powerfully in me. (Colossians 1.28-29, NCV)
St. Paul was by nature a zealous person. Still his conversion led him to have a Christ-centered focus. His work was centered in Christ. Paul is one to "work and struggle." "Work" is the Greek kopiao, "to toil," used of wearying effort. The Greek agonizomai translates "struggle" and refers to striving in gymnastic games or fighting adversaries and thus refers to any strenuous facing of difficulty. St. Paul is clear that Christ gives the energy: "using Christ's great strength to work so powerfully in me." St. Paul uses the same root twice. First he employs for "strength" the Greek energeia, a noun for either godly or demonic power. Then he uses the verb energeo. For the powerful working in St. Paul, he uses another word for strength, dunamis. In this context the word refers to God's inherent power.
Stephen, the first Christian martyr, was chosen as a deacon in the early Church. He is described in the Acts of the Apostles as follows, along with opposition to him being noted:
8 Stephen was richly blessed by God who gave him the power [dunamis]to do great miracles and signs among the people.9 But some people were against him. They belonged to the synagogue of Free Men (as it was called), which included people from Cyrene, Alexandria, Cilicia, and Asia. They all came and argued with Stephen.
*Acts 6.8-9, NCV
What however is the response of Stephen to this opposition? Where does the response arise from? We read: "But the Spirit was helping him to speak with wisdom, and his words were so strong that they could not argue with him [lit., were not strong enough to oppose]." (Acts 6.10, NCV)
We see with Stephen, as with St. Paul, that giving a best effort in worthiness of one's calling arises from within.
Jesus founds his followers ministry on divine and powerful authority. We read in St. Mark 6.7: "Then he called together his twelve apostles and sent them out two by two with power over evil spirits." (NCV) "Power" translates exousia, and refers to the power of government and judicial decisions. The better translation in this context is "authority."
So the Christian power-authority, the energy of Christic action, including authority over harmful spiritual forces, arises from within us. ~ There is no reason to assume there are not malevolent spiritual forces that reside in more subtle dimensions than our own. What to call or how to describe such "forces" is another matter.
For us to demonstrate this authoritative power and live from its vitality-flow means tending the inner garden. We must be the gardener. By diligent, daily discipline, the intentionality of Christian acesis, Energy of the Divine Presence flows through us from within. This is power-authority of compassion, being opposite brute force that typifies power cut off from the Christ Spirit, the Holy Spirit. Christic power is more powerful by being the Energy of enlightened compassion.
Reflection
How do you tend the inner garden?
What happens when you get lax in tending the inner garden?
What happens when you are dilgent in tending the inner garden?
*Treatment of Greek words based on Strong's Concordance.
For Brian's on-line audio sermons, go to www.wherethelightshines.org and select Pastor's Corner; on the following page is his weekly sermons given at Christ United Methodist Church, Punta Gorda, FL.
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