Matthew 6:13-14

FOURFOLD POWER

‘Thine is … the power.’

Matthew 6:13

As we travel back into the past with its temptations, its failures, and its scant victories, do we not feel the lack of power? There are four different kinds of this power: material, intellectual, moral, and spiritual.

I. Material power.—Even our bodily power is God’s gift. Then there is the power of money and the power of opportunity.

II. Intellectual power.—Intellectual power is made up of three things—common sense, knowledge, and capacity for concentration. It is no light thing to live in this twentieth century.

III. Moral power.—If we are possessed of great tenacity, of an inflexible will, or of great tenderness, then we have moral power for which we must give account. So strangely intertwined are all our lives that our moral force over others is immeasurable. When you think of power never forget your moral influence for good or for evil over children, over young people, over those who love you and watch you, and take your life as their guide.

IV. Spiritual power.—How much do we possess of spiritual power? We ought to have a great deal of it. It is according to the plan of God that we should have it. What know I of true spiritual power in my life, in moments of grave doubts, in moments of temptation, in moments when all one’s earthly props are snatched away and the grave yawns in front? Some men have a large share of this blessed spirituality. You do not know where they get it from. The spring from whence they draw it is invisible, but they have it. It is the Spirit of the invisible God behind the man, and you and I may have that Spirit. How? Whence comes this power? ‘Thine is the power.’ To God we must go if would we grow in this strength, material, intellectual, moral, spiritual. We may have this power. God wants to give it to us.

—The Rev. A. J. Poynder.