Too many Christians, in fact, way too many Christians, are living lives that fall so far short of the life that Jesus promised. When Jesus promised power, they instead end up living a powerless life. I wonder if you know anyone like that.

I wonder if this scenario sounds at all familiar to you. At some stage, way back when, you decided to believe in Jesus. Perhaps you, like me, can remember the day that you took that step. Or maybe like many people I know, you can’t remember a time when you didn’t believe in Jesus.

So you’ve believed … and believed … and believed … and somehow life doesn’t seem to get any better. You seem to have the same challenges, successes, failures … whatever, as all the other people you know who don’t believe in Jesus. In fact, often times, they seem to be living a better life than you are and on top of that, they’re not wracked by guilt the way you are, because by not believing in Jesus, they don’t have to worry about the idea of temptation, or falling short of God’s ideals, or any of that stuff.

Does that sounded all familiar? Sadly, it’s de rigour for many a Christian. Most Christians in fact. The Christian life doesn’t seem all it’s cracked up to be.

Wasn’t it Jesus who said:

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. (John 10:10)

So where is that abundant life (the original Greek word used there actually means super-abundant!) Where is this super-abundant life that Jesus promised us? Why is everything so difficult? Why is it that I’m not filled with the joy and the excitement that I first felt when I gave my life to Jesus?

Can I tell you, I speak to a lot of people, all around the world, who come to me with basically that scenario; basically that same story. Here it is in a nutshell:

I know that my life isn’t what it’s meant to be in Christ. I know that. But I don’t know why. I don’t know what to do about it.

And that’s why today we’re kicking off a brand new series of messages called ‘Power Unlimited’. Because the thing that’s lacking in the lives of these people – perhaps in your life too – is the power to live the life that Jesus promised us. The devil comes along and whispers in our ear You’re not good enough for God. And actually He’s right.

That’s exactly what the Apostle Paul says of himself (and remember God called him to write almost half of the books of the New Testament).

For we know that the law is spiritual; but I am of the flesh, sold into slavery under sin. I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. (Romans 7:14-21)

So Paul, as it turns out, has exactly the same problem that you and I have. But happily, he doesn’t give up, because the old Paul, God bless him, also has the answer. The only answer that has the power to make a difference:

Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 7:24)

You see I have some very good news for you today. Listen carefully so you don’t miss it: God has already placed within you all the power that you need, to live the super-abundant life that Jesus died and rose again to give you.

God has already made the resurrection power, the very same power that raised Jesus from the dead, available to you, here and now, to live the super-abundant life that Jesus came to give you. I know, I know … you don’t believe me. Good, you shouldn’t believe me, it’s not within my purview to grant you that power. But will you believe what God says in the Bible:

I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power. God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. (Ephesians 1:17-22)

Do you see? Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians is that they would discover the immeasurable greatness of God’s power for us who believe … the very same power that raised Christ from the dead. Each year we celebrate Easter, the death on the Cross (which receives most of the focus) and the resurrection (which frankly, we don’t focus on as much).

But this resurrection is the evidence of the immeasurably great power that is available to you and me, so that we can live a new life. The life that Jesus promised. As Bible teacher Casey Treat once said … we need to stop praying for power, and start praying with power, the power that we already have.

One of my Bible college lecturers from years ago, Dr Barry Chant, once said that if he were to transliterate the original Greek words used there for immeasurably great power, it would sound something like this: hyperballistic, megathonic, dynamic power!

Do you get it? Do you realise the immeasurable greatness of God’s power that He has placed at your disposal to live your life for Christ? Hello, wake-up!

And the purpose of this power, the whole point of this power, is to enable us to live the new life, the born–again life, the resurrection life, the super-abundant life, that Jesus came to give us. Yet so many Christians, most Christians, fail to live that life for one reason and one reason alone. Because they don’t lay hold of that power. We live on a spiritual battlefield. The Apostle Paul puts it this way:

… our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armour of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness. As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace. With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. (Ephesians 6:12-17)

No I’m an old soldier from way back. And I can tell you that as I look at each of the elements of that spiritual armour that Paul lists there, the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shoes, the shield the helmet, each of them those is a defensive piece of armour. Defence is important to protect yourself, but you don’t win a war by defending. To win, you have to attack. And the only offensive weapon in that list is … what? The sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God!

That’s the only attack weapon in the spiritual armoury that God has given you. And the truth is that most Christians leave it in its scabbard. They leave the sword of the Spirit at home, and then they wonder why the devil keeps on winning!

And that … that’s something we’re going to talk a lot more about over the coming days.

The Bible tells us (Ephesians Chapter 1) that God has already made His incredibly great power, His resurrection power, available to each and every person who believes in Jesus. So today, were going to take a look at what happens, when we lay hold of that power.

Yesterday on the program we talked about the incredibly great power, the resurrection power, that God has already made available to each and every person who believes in Jesus. Today, were going to take a look at what happens, when we lay hold of that power.

As you can imagine, I speak with a lot of people. People who respond to this radio program, people I meet in my travels, people who’ve hear me speak and want to know how to apply it to their lives. And most people, come to me with a problem. This is working in my life … and I just don’t know why. That isn’t working in my life … and I don’t know what to do about it. I want to follow Jesus … but Satan keeps on winning as he tempts me with this sin or that sin.

Over and over again, I hear the same thing, the same question, the same problem, the same frustration in people’s voices.

Why isn’t my life all that Jesus promised it would be?!

It’s a question that plagues many a Christ follower. It causes many to fall by the wayside. It causes many people to live a life that falls so far short of all that it could be in Christ. To my way of thinking, this is one of the greatest tragedies playing itself out in the Kingdom of God today. And just like many of the lifestyle and diet related illnesses that are killing people across the globe, this is a sickness that is completely avoidable.

Here is what I see happening in God’s Kingdom, amongst God’s people. The societies in which we live are moving further and further away from God. Look at the United States. A country of religious freedom, founded by the pilgrims, who came to the land to have the freedom to worship God. A nation who, on its dollar bill, has the words “In God we trust”. And now, a country, where it’s illegal to pray at school, illegal for an officer in the military to share his faith or a Bible with a soldier, a country where four in ten unborn children are ‘terminated’ – that’s a genocide of around 1.2 million children each year.

I’m not just picking on the US of A … it’s happening right around the globe. Societies founded on Christian love, as they become more secular, are shifting further and further away from God. And they’re behaving as though this is progress. It’s progress to allow one man to marry another man, or a woman to marry another woman. It’s progress to allow a woman to choose whether or not to kill her unborn child. It’s progress for women not to respect their husbands and men not to cherish their wives. And anybody who stands in the way of this so-called ‘progress’ is a narrow-minded, conservative bigot.

And these sweeping changes are sweeping many a Christian along them. Christians en masse are forsaking a life based on God’s Word, for a life based on the world’s ways. And not just individual Christians, but preachers, Bible teachers, churches and denominations. And then we wonder why things aren’t going so well for us in our lives.

Really?!

Back to the Bible International based in Lincoln Nebraska, is a ministry that I have been closely involved with now for a good many years. They in fact founded the ministry of Christianityworks that I now lead here in Australia, way back in 1957. Part of Back to the Bible is the Centre for Bible Engagement, which has conducted extensive research around the world on the impact in the lives of men and woman, who are engaged with God’s Word on a regular basis.

Remember, the Bible itself says that there is incredible power to defeat Satan, in God’s Word:

… our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armour of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness. As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace. With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. (Ephesians 6:12-17)

The only offensive weapon in our spiritual armour given to us by God is the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. All the other parts of the armour are defensive, which is good, but you don’t win a battle by going on the defence. You have to go on the offence, you have to attack the enemy to defeat him. And the one tool, the one weapon that God has given us to do that, is the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God.

So the Centre for Bible Engagement researched the spiritual lives of more than 100,000 people 21 countries, ranging from ages of eight to 80 years. They began with this question: What is it, of all the things that Christians do, that is the most powerful predictor of spiritual growth? When you think about it, Christians do a lot of things to express their faith. They go to church, they pray, the listen to sermons, they attend home groups, they give, they serve … and many more things.

The Centre of Bible Engagement’s research project wanted to find out which ones of those had the most impact in the life of a Christian. That’s not a bad question to ask through a large, scientifically constituted, statistically valid, international research project. That’s not a bad question to ask, for anyone who wants to lay hold the super-abundant life that Jesus promised (John 10:10) to give us.

The conclusions of this research was as follows (and I quote from their report):

The findings consistently show that engaging in the Bible four or more days a week is the single most powerful predictor of spiritual growth – and they defined spiritual growth as becoming less of the person I was before I committed my life to Jesus and more like Christ in my thoughts, words and deeds.

In fact, I know Arnie Cole, the President of Back to the Bible pretty well. His background is as a professional researcher and statistician. And he said to me that statistically speaking, the correlation between engaging with God’s Word, the Bible four times a week or more and spiritual growth, is stronger than the correlation between smoking and lung cancer.

Just think about that. What powerful evidence of the importance of receiving, reflecting on and responding to God’s Word having a powerful impact in changing our lives. Making the changes that we ourselves have been powerless to change.

Let me come back to the Apostle Paul’s reflection on this whole question of the power to change:

Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 7:24)

The answer is that only God can give us the power to change, the resurrection power to be able to live the born-again, new, super-abundant life that Jesus came to give us.

What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore, we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. (Romans 6:1-4)

Do you see? God’s plan is for you to walk in the newness of life, the resurrection life made available to you through the Cross and the Empty tomb. And the power to live that life is something that you will find in the Word of God, as the Spirit of God breathes His Word into your heart:

All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work. (1 Tim 3:16-17)

That’s where you’ll find the power to change – power unlimited. In God’s Word. So … you have to ask yourself, why do so many Christians ignore their Bibles?!

God is so profoundly different to anyone or anything that this world has to offer. His ways are so different to our ways, and unless and until we have a personal encounter with the risen Christ, unless and until we encounter Jesus in our own, personal experience, our lives simply cannot be transformed.

That simple little three letter word, ‘God’, is used in so many different ways. I mean, when you use the word ‘God’, different people have different views of who that is.

Is He some angry despot? Is He a judgemental old man? Is He kind? Who or what is God? Well you go out and ask different people and what you discover is that they have a picture of God in their heads that doesn’t always have a whole bunch to do with who God actually is.

It’s almost like we reconstruct Him in our own image, to suit ourselves, to suit our own agendas, but let me ask you something, if God is God wouldn’t it be worthwhile kind of figuring out exactly who He is? IF God has the power, is the power, to transform our lives, shouldn’t we get to know Him?

I mean, who is He really and how do you and I relate to Him? What if God is awesome and powerful and loving and kind and we spend the rest of our lives missing out on all that because we never really went after Him to discover who He really is? So how do we discover who God really is?

This week on the program we’re setting about laying hold of God’s power to completely and utterly transform our lives. And the place that we discover that power, the place that God the Holy Spirit has made available for us to lay hold of that power – is His Word, the Bible.

I mean reading the Bible was something I would never have done in a million years. What do you think I am, some wacky fundamentalist? But you know something, reading the Bible for myself has completely and utterly transformed my life. It didn’t stunt me, it opened me up. It didn’t narrow my mind; it opened me up to the wonder and the possibilities of life with God, to the power that God wants to unleash in my life.

Over the last twenty or so years I guess I’ve spent a lot of time in that Book, in fact its 66 different books. I’ve had the chance to study and to learn and to think and to mull it all over and truly, in those twenty odd years I’ve really only scratched the surface. But the more I think about it, the Bible is basically about four things:

1. 1. Who God is, what He’s like and how He reacts to things.
   2. What God’s will and purposes are, what His plan is.
   3. Where my life is headed. It’s about who I am, made in His image but how does He see me? Who did He make me to be?
   4. And … how I can respond to God.

Some people think this last one, number four, is all that the Bible has to offer; just rules and regulations … but you know, as you read it for yourself, how to respond to God is quite simply not the main thing, it just kind of drops out at the end, it’s the natural consequence of the first three.

Those four things again are: who God is, what His will and purposes are, who you and I are in His eyes and how we can respond. That’s what the Bible contains, it’s real and it’s practical, it’s about life, it’s awesome and it’s exciting and it contains power … power unlimited to transform you, to transform your life, to heal you, to bless you, to empower you.

Today I just want to look at the first one of those; who God is. I mean if God is God, shouldn’t we figure out who He is? Who He says He is? Where better to do that, to search Him out, than that great love letter that He’s written to you and to me, the Bible. It makes sense, doesn’t it?

When I first laid eyes on my wife Jacqui, when I first saw her from a distance, I was speaking at a Church and she was sitting in that congregation. As far as I was concerned, she was just another face in the crowd and had I never sought her out, I would never have come to know her and to have a relationship with her. So, I did seek her out and she responded to that.

In a sense, picking up the Bible is seeking God out, it’s the same thing, He responds. It’s not a dead book written by men thousands of years ago. It’s the living, active word of God and His promise is that when we pick it up, the Holy Spirit, God Himself, will bring it to life in our hearts. God promised that He would pour His Spirit out on all flesh and that He would write His words onto our heart.

By far, the greatest reason for reading the Bible, is to encounter God Himself, to discover who He is, and how He sees things; what He’s like and what He’s up to. You see, it’s easy to read this story or that in the Bible and say, “Well that was a story about King David” or “That one over there, that’s the story about Moses or Peter or Paul”. But so often in the pages of this great and mighty book, the great unseen player is God Himself and as I read every story, every verse, I keep asking myself, “What does this tell me about God Himself? What’s He up to in this story?”

Let’s take just one example, it’s a short story. God makes a promise to this man called Abram who is childless. You know, Abram’s an old man, his wife Sarai is an old woman, they’re childless and yet God has called them to go from their home on this huge journey. God’s promised them children, a multitude of children, but it’s never happened. It’s gone on for years and years and years. Abraham’s out of his comfort zone, he’s on this long, uncomfortable journey and he’s frustrated and this is what happens.

After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, “Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.” But Abram said, “O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” And Abram said, “You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir.” But the word of the Lord came to him, “This man shall not be your heir; no one but your very own issue shall be your heir.” He brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your descendants be.” And he believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness. (Genesis 15:1-6)

It’s really easy to read this story and imagine that it’s a story all about Abram. But the real question that we should be asking is What does this short little story, tell us about God?

Here’s Abram. He’s frustrated, he’s waiting for a breakthrough that’s not coming. He’s trying to believe in God, but it’s hard. I wonder if that sounds at all familiar to you? And it’s going on for years and years and years and he and his wife are old and it’s just absolutely impossible. But along comes God and He does this kind of gentle and kind and wondrous and patient thing with Abraham, He takes him outside to gaze up into this beautiful masterpiece called the Milky Way.

Have you ever looked up at the stars away from the smog and the lights of a big city at night? It’s incredible how many stars are up there and in the middle of Abram’s frustration, God says ‘Abram, look … look at this! This is how many descendants you’re going to have. My promise will actually happen”. And if you read the rest of this story, Abraham ultimately has a son, with his wife Sarah, called Isaac. He never saw all these offspring happen, he never saw the rest of the promise fulfilled in his life time, but here is this good and gracious and powerful God who takes a man in the middle of his frustration and just speaks lovingly to him.

It’s a story about God do you get it? It’s a story about how God treats those who He loves when they’re at the end of their tether. the Bible is full of those stories. You pick it up and you read them and wow, you discover who God really is. Do you see the power in that? Do you see how know God, and how in our small, limited way, coming to understand Him can make such a powerful difference to us, when we’re lost and frustrated and clinging onto a promise … but only just?

People often say to me, “Berni, you seem to be so enthusiastic about God.” Can I tell you why? Because over the last couple of decades I’ve discovered Him in the pages of the Bible and discovered what He says about Himself there and those things have ended up being etched onto my heart, so that I can experience Him in my life. I can’t help but be enthusiastic and you know, I can’t help but wonder, where would my life be? Where would I be, if I hadn’t laid hold of this power … power unlimited in the living Word of God?

Many people, many Christians even let me say, live directionless, rudderless lives. Their lives don’t seem to be heading anywhere in particular. And at some point, as we realise that life is slipping by ever so quickly, that shocks us into realising that before long, this life will be over … and for what?

One of the most perplexing questions that each of us faces in life at some point, is: Who am I? What was I made to do? All too often we go looking for the answers in all the wrong places, and the image that we build of ourselves, the understanding that we have of who we are, becomes twisted and distorted. That one thing has ruined … is ruining … many a life.

One of the most perplexing questions that each of us faces in life at some point, is: Who am I? What was I made to do? All to often we go looking for the answers in all the wrong places, and the image that we build of ourselves, the understanding that we have of who we are, becomes twisted and distorted. That one thing has ruined … is ruining … many a life.

One of the things that many people ponder in life is this question, “Who am I?” We have so many pictures and images of who we should be thrust under our noses each day … and yet none of them ring true, so we end up feeling a bit like refugees, lost. The media and the advertisers, they want to define success for us. They want to tell us what it means to be open-minded. They want to tell us what we should aspire to. They want to tell us what a happy, well adjusted family looks like, and what beauty looks like and what we have to achieve, who we have to be, what we have to look like, to be successful.

They tell us if we don’t look like this, we haven’t made it, but we will if we buy their product and I don’t know about you, but I can get so lost in that maze because my life never quite looks like those images of success that they wave under my nose. And we compare ourselves with other people, people who look successful and so often we come to the conclusion that we aren’t. And so that question, “Who am I?” rattles around in that empty, hollow void inside. Who am I?

Have you ever been to one of those fairs, you know where they have Ferris wheels and merry-go-rounds and amusements and sideshows? And in side-show alley, they have those distorted mirrors. You know, you walk in front of one and you look all tall and skinny or short and fat or all wobbly and wavy. They’re good fun for a little while, about a minute or two. But imagine, imagine if our mirrors at home were like that, all distorted … not good.

I remember when I was working as an IT consultant one of the clients I used to work for, the front door of their offices had this glass that was a perfect distortion of me. It just made me look a bit slimmer and a bit taller, you know I could have stood in front of that door all day and looked at myself. We’d like to have a mirror like that at home, wouldn’t we? Or would we?

My hunch is, whenever we get a distorted image of ourselves, of who we are, that’s not a good thing even if we happen to like the distorted image better than the real one. For example, the distorted image that society puts up that you can be whoever you want to be, it’s all up to you, it’s all out there, just go and be whoever you want to be.

I’m 5 foot, 9 inches or 174 cm tall, so it doesn’t matter how much I want to be a basketball player, I’m never going to be a basketball player. In fact there are some things in life that I am decidedly not good at. If I try to be those things, it would be a bad fit. Maybe that’s why so many people aren’t happy, because they’re trying to do jobs or be someone that they’re quite simply not cut out to be. Aspiring to something that we’re never going to be any good at is one of the worst things that we can do in the world. I wonder if that’s why there are so many people, who literally hate their jobs.

I was looking at a recent ‘job satisfaction’ survey on the internet. Have a listen to these stats: 45% of workers say that they’re either satisfied or extremely satisfied with their jobs. You know what that means? That means that 55%, or over half, aren’t.

Of those 45% who said they were happy, less than half again, in fact only 20% said that they felt really passionate about their jobs. That means that 80% of people don’t feel passionate about their jobs and 33%, fully a third believed they’d reached a dead end in their careers, there was no hope for a future. 21% were eager to change careers.

I think that these statistics are a tragedy. The vast majority of people aren’t passionate about what they do every day. So many people aren’t enjoying their lives. But …. let’s look at the flipside of that coin. There’s a whole bunch of people wandering around in life, believing with every fibre of their being, that they’re worthless. ‘Oh, I’m only a stay at home mum. I’m only a clerk. I’m not as smart or as good looking or as talented or as successful or as wealthy or whatever as the next person.’

So many people and advertisers and product manufacturers and self styled guru’s out there want to tell us who we should be and how we get there and if we aren’t we need to get onto their program. Amidst all of that, here’s a question, who am I? Who are you? In the cosmos, in the scheme of things, how do you define your worth and who you actually are?

And if you’re living your life that way, then you are living a powerless life. A life that will, ultimately, count for nothing. In a very real sense, that was the life that I was living, until I discovered what God said about me. How God sees me. What His view of me from Heaven’s balcony looks like. And that’s something that you find in the Bible over and over again.

I want to set you a challenge today, to read Ephesians Chapters 1 to 3 – only a few pages – and to write down all the things that just those three chapters say about you. Let me just give you the first few:

You are a saint, grace and peace are yours, you are already blessed with every spiritual blessing, you were chosen before the creation of the world, predestined, adopted into God’s family, redeemed, forgiven, God’s grace is being lavished on you, wisdom and understanding are yours, God’s will is made known to you … and we haven’t even arrived yet, at the tenth verse of the first chapter.

Do you get it? The Bible presents a radically different view of who you are. The Bible tells you who God says you are. So instead of believing the distorted images that the world reflects back at you, you can see, a crystal clear, accurate representation of who you are. As one of my Bible College lecturers, Dr Barry Chant, often used to say – you and I need to ditch our self image, and develop a faith image, by discovering and believing what God says about you.

Because when you know who you really are, who you are in Christ, you will have laid hold of the power to be who God made you to be. It’s a power that will completely and utterly and radically transform your life.

You see God is no other pedlar of good philosophies or belief systems; He’s not some distorted mirror of low self–esteem or unrealistic stereotypes. If God is truly God, if God made you and me, how does He see us? The answer to that question tells us who we really are.

And not knowing who we are is like trying to navigate your place from A to B, with an inaccurate map. Blind Freddy can see that that’s no way to live life. I come back again, to the many people I speak to about the problems that they’re experiencing in life. When I ask them … how often do you read your Bible, they invariably tell me, in a low voice, with obvious embarrassment … Well, not very often.

Okay then, so when was the last time you opened your Bible and spent just five minutes listening to what God wants to tell you? The answer? For many it’s months and even years ago.

Who am I? If that’s a question that you want the answer to, a question let me say that you want the right answer to, if you want an accurate map for your life, then the only place that you’re going to find it is in God’s Word.

Because when we come to His word, the Bible with questions like “Who am I?”, His Spirit breathes those truths into our hearts. I can’t do that for you, only you can do that with Him, only He can do that for you and that stuff is the stuff that’s in the Bible because all of us who are led by God’s spirit are children of God.

So let me take you back to that challenge. Open your Bible, go to Ephesians Chapters 1 to 3 in the New Testament. Read them. And write down everything that you find in those few sort pages that tell you who you are. I found thirty statements about my identity. Let’s see how many you can find. Right them down, ponder them, believe them … and tell me then if you don’t find power unlimited to live your life.