So happy that we have this opportunity to meet together and study God's Word. That is one of the ways we worship Him. There are three main ways that we worship the Lord: One, we sing praise to Him. Second, we pray, and third, we study the Word. We give our testimony and we study the Word together. In a Protestant worship service we always have the pulpit in the center because the pulpit is where the Word sits, and that is the focal point of our worship, the study of God's Word.

God's Word always challenges our minds. Did our Scripture Reading today challenge your thinking? That chapter challenges my thinking every time I read it. It goes over in Job 26. If there is somebody who is discouraged or struggling, Job is one of the books you ought to read. Whenever I am struggling or I am facing trials or discouragement, I love to study the book of Job. It is one of my favorite books.

The book of Job is about a man, of course, who faced terrible, terrible troubles. First of all he was bereaved of all of his children. He had ten children and they were all killed at one time. Now, you cannot imagine how that would feel unless you are a parent yourself. If you are a parent and all of your children were killed in one accident, you can imagine just a little bit how you would feel. Every one of his children were killed.

Then, his wife turned on him and told him to curse God for all the terrible things happening to him. Just a few minutes before he lost all of his children, he lost all of his possessions and all his wealth. So he was reduced from wealth to poverty and bereaved of all of his children, and his wife turned on him. Then he had these three friends who came to talk to him, and what did they do for him? In Job 16 he said, Miserable comforters are you all.

They spent the whole time berating him about how awful a sinner he was. In the first part of Job 26 he talks about this, about the value of their counsel and their help when everything they said was calculated, it seems like, to make him more discouraged. In Job 26 Job is meditating about the power of God. He says, for instance, "He hangs the earth on nothing. He stretches out the north over empty space." Job 26:7. He talks about how He works in the world. It says, He "pierces the fleeing serpent." Job:26:13. (If you have a Bible with a marginal reference, you will like to look that up and see what other texts in the Bible talk about that.)

Turn to Job 26:11, it says, "The pillars of heaven tremble and are astonished at His rebuke." Verse 13 says, "By His Spirit He adorned the heavens." When you look up into the heavens at night through a telescope and you see all these heavenly bodies; Arcturus is mentioned in the book of Job. It is one of the really fast suns. Most of the planets or heavenly bodies are going relatively slowly. In terms of Arcturus, they are just going fifteen or twenty miles a second. Arcturus goes 257 miles per second.

Astronomers have called it, the run-away sun. God asked Job later, He said, Are you able to guide Arcturus? He is a speed demon going through the sky. Can you guide him? Or can you bind the sweet influences of Pleiades? Pleiades are moving in a southwesterly direction. Here is this group of stars and they are all moving together. God said to Job, "Can you bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades.?"

He talked to him also about Orion. Orion is a subject of special interest to Christians. It is one of the most glorious places in the heavens. Orion is about six hundred fifteen light-years away from us and now that it is wintertime, we can see the constellation of Orion very clearly--unless it is cloudy.

Of course, the world we are on right here, our little solar system, we are going along about sixty-six thousand miles an hour. It says here in Job 26:13. It talks about these different things in the heavens that God has adorned the heavens by His spirit, He has hung the north over an empty place and it talks about how He controls all the weather, the dead look. "His hand pierced the fleeing serpent," it says, at the end of verse 13. That is a very interesting subject to study.

But then, notice verse 14. He comes to a conclusion. "Indeed, these are the mere edges of His ways and how small a whisper we hear of Him." Now, he has just talked about the heavens and all of these marvelous things that God controls as beyond our power to comprehend. But he says, All of this, that is just the edges of His ways, we just hear a whisper of His voice.

"But the thunder of His power, who can understand?" Job 26:14. Can you understand it? We do not even understand the mere edges of His ways. We cannot explain it. He hangs the earth on nothing. And we are flying through space. We cannot explain all of that. We cannot even understand the edges of His ways, the whisper of His voice. Job says, "Who can understand the thunder of His power?"

I want to talk to you for a little while today about the thunder of His power. The reason I want to talk to you about that is this. I find that there are many Christians that are discouraged. Do you know anybody who is discouraged? Do you know anybody who is struggling with something in their life? It just seems like they cannot overcome it and they do not know what to do and they have these trials and these discouragements.

Maybe they have financial trouble and sickness, trouble with their family, trouble on the job. All kinds of trouble. The trouble seems so big, that they just feel overwhelmed. Do you know anybody like that? Sometimes from our human viewpoint the outlook seems hopeless. So we say to ourselves, There is no hope. Do you know what our problem is? We have no idea of the thunder of His power, and of His love for us, and what He can do for us. So, in order to teach us, God has to allow us to get into situations that are absolutely hopeless, so that He can teach us that He can solve our problems.

There are many stories in the Bible about that very thing. In fact, God allowed the giants of faith in the Bible to get into situations where the situation just looked hopeless. David came back to Zicklag and it looked so hopeless that His men were so bitter in spirit when their wives and their children were gone, they said, This David fellow, he has gotten us into a mess. We had better just get rid of him.

They were so discouraged that they were going to stone the leader. Of course, that would not have done any good. That would not bring their wives back. David was the very one they needed to help them get their wives back. But it was a hopeless-looking situation. Often times God allows His children to get into situations that look hopeless so that His power can be revealed, so we will learn to trust in Him.

Let us look at a couple of situations like that in the Old Testament. Now, in the book of Genesis Abraham is called the father of the faithful and he is mentioned in the New Testament as one of the heroes of faith in the Bible. Look at Genesis 18. God had to allow Abraham to get into a situation that, to his point of view, was hopeless, so Abraham could learn something.

In Genesis 18 you have the story of how God appeared to Abraham. At this time Abraham was about ninety-nine years of age. Sarah, his wife, was approximately ten years younger than he was. The Bible is very clear about this in the New Testament. Paul talks about it. Sarah had passed her menopause some years before that, so she could not have a child anymore. At this time, Paul says, that Abraham was impotent, so he could not father a child and Sarah could not mother a child.

Now, God is talking to him and God says, I am going to give you a son. Sarah was in the tent and she started to laugh, because that was impossible. It was a double impossibility. Abraham could not father a child, Sarah could not mother a child, and Sarah knew that, so she began to laugh. Now she did not laugh out loud, she was just laughing to herself in the tent, you understand?

Look at verse 13: It says, "And the Lord said to Abraham, Why did Sarah laugh?" Look at verse 14: "Is anything too hard for the Lord?" What was the Lord trying to teach Abraham? Now, the Lord could have given him a son twenty-five years before and they would have been very happy. But they would have thought that they had the child on their own. So, the Lord said, This is going to be a miracle child. You are going to find out that this child is for Me.

So the Lord allowed them to get into a situation where they could not have a child. They knew they could not have a child. In fact, they were so sure that they could not, that Sarah laughed at that idea. That is why they called that child "Laughter." That is what the word, Isaac, means in the Hebrew language. It means "Laughter."

What was the Lord trying to teach Abraham? The Lord said to Abraham in verse 14: "Is anything too hard for the Lord?" Friend, what is there in your life that is too hard? It is not too hard for the Lord. Job said, We only hear the whisper of His voice. Who could understand the thunder of His power? There is nothing in your life that is too hard for the Lord.

Now, Abraham was not the only person who had this kind of an experience. Moses had the very same experience. Turn in your Bible to Numbers 11. Moses is another hero of faith in the Old Testament. Numbers 11:21 and on: "And Moses said, The people whom I am among are six hundred thousand men on foot. (That was in addition to the women and the children. There were six hundred thousand men.) Yet, you have said, I will give them meat that they may eat for a whole month. Shall flocks and herds be slaughtered for them to provide enough for them? Or shall all the fish of the sea be gathered together for them to provide enough for them."

And the Lord said to Moses, "Has the Lord's arm, been shortened?" Do you know what Moses was doing? He was insulting the Lord because he could not understand. He could not comprehend how this could be. :Now you shall see whether what I say will happen to you or not. You are going to see whether what I said will happen or not. I am telling you, you are going to eat flesh for a whole month." and Moses said, "Lord, do you know how many people are with me? There are six hundred thousand men besides all the women and the children. Are we going to have to get all the fish out of the sea to feed these people flesh for a whole month? The Lord said, Is the arm of the Lord shortened? Now, you are going to see whether it happens or not." Did it happen. Well, it happened within twenty-four hours they had so much flesh food that it was laying all over the ground two or three feet high.

They ate flesh for a whole month. Moses did not know what they were going to do. How are we going to solve this problem? The Lord said, You will see. Just wait and see. Now Jesus tried to teach the disciples the very same lesson. In fact, He taught the lesson two times. He taught them this lesson once early in His ministry and He taught the lesson again after His resurrection.

If you want to look at the second time He did it, look in John 21. Now, He had already done this for them once before. Peter was a fisherman. They fished at night. People still do this, by the way. When I was down at Corpus Christi a few years ago, I stayed in the house of a man who made his living fishing. He had his own boat. He went out there in the bay area--not in the open ocean--there is a protected area in the bay where they fish. It is part of the ocean, but it is protected because there is a little inlet out farther.

About eleven o'clock at night, he went to work and he worked all night. Then we went down and picked him up in the morning. So they still do the same thing that Peter and the apostles did, they fished at night. Fish cannot see the net so well at night. You are a lot more successful. In fact, in the book of Luke when the first time Jesus worked this miracle, Peter said, Lord, we have already fished all night and we did not get anything. But you asked me to, so I will throw in the net.

They did the same thing in John 21. They fished all night and they did not catch anything. In the morning, Jesus asked them, "Do you have anything to eat?" They said, "No, we do not have anything." Jesus said, "Cast your net on the right side of the boat and you will find." So they cast it in and the net was so full they could not draw it in. It was full of large fish, one hundred and fifty-three, the Bible says.

What was Jesus trying to teach them? There is no problem in your life that cannot be conquered through His power and strength.. Either on the inside or on the outside. Our trouble is this. We do not understand or believe or have faith in the power of God to save us from the situations we are in so we do not even ask for help. We try to solve the problem ourselves.

God is watching us struggle along. He is watching us in all our discouragement. God is saying, "When are you going to ask Me for help?" We think, from our human point of view just like the disciples, and just like Abraham, and just like Moses. We think the situation is hopeless. It is not hopeless. I have had people say to me, I have tried to overcome this problem in my life over and over again for years, and I cannot.

So it is hopeless? Right? No, it is not hopeless. The disciples had been fishing all night. It looked hopeless. They had not caught a thing. But when Jesus came to their help, immediately their problem was solved. Now, they still had to cast in the net. They still had to draw in the net and they still had to go to the market and sell the fish. The Lord did not make it so they did not have to work. They still had to work. They had to take those fish down and sell them.

If you want to see the power of God revealed in your life, you need to be involved in working for others. One of the reasons God cannot do very much for a lot of Christians is that we are so self-centered that God sees if He did something for us, we would become more and more self-centered. So, He just has to let us be. He cannot do very much for us.

If you really want to see the power of God revealed in your life, get involved in working for the salvation of somebody else. Go and visit somebody who is in the hospital. Visit some church member or somebody who is not a church member who is discouraged or who needs help. Get your mind outside of your own problem and get involved in helping somebody else with their problems and you will find that the divine power starts working in your life.

When Jesus was here, He gave us a perfect example of this. As you study the life of Jesus, you will find that never, even on one occasion, did Jesus ever work a miracle for Himself. All of His miracles were worked to help somebody else. If you want to see divine power in your life, get involved in helping somebody else with their problems.

Let me tell you, there are plenty of people around Wichita here who have problems that we need to help. The people who are pastors, the people who are elders, and the people who are deacons, they cannot visit everybody who needs to be visited? Did you know that. Oh, they may visit them once a year, but some people need to be visited more often that once a year. Do you believe that?

If you want to see divine power operating in your life, get involved in helping somebody else to be saved. I was so encouraged and so excited to hear of the letter that Peggy wrote. Did you know that we have been advised by inspiration that this is one of the special missionary activities that women can do? That is writing Christian letters?

I have often wondered about that, why it is specifically mentioned about women writing letters. I was trying to figure out whether we men have such poor handwriting that people could not read it or what it was. But that is a special missionary activity that women have been advised that they can do. That is something people can do from their own home.

We all can find something to do to get involved in helping somebody else. Well, this group of Christians were trying to help other people find salvation. There was a Christian missionary band group. So, there were some people in this group who had experience on the ocean. It so happened in the providence of God that they were able to obtain an ocean-going vessel, a ship. They made this a missionary ship and they stocked this ship with Christian literature and they sailed to various ports around the world.

They advertised when they got into the port and they would sell their literature directly and give literature away directly from the ship in port. So they were sharing their faith with people all over the world. But, they had the same kind of experience that the disciples did and like many Christians have had. They ran out of money.

Have you every run out of money? Have you ever been in a situation where you said, Lord, unless you turn something around in my life, I am not going to be able to eat. Something has to change. I cannot keep going on the way I am going. Well, that is what happened to them. Lots of times God allows us to get into some kind of a real problem in our life so that we can turn to Him for help and we can see His power working in our lives.

So, they were in a foreign port and they did not have enough money to keep going. They could not leave and go somewhere else. They were there and they were out of money. So, they decided they had better pray. So they went on the shore. They got a motel room and the whole group of them met there and they started to pray. Some of them started to fast and pray. They prayed all day.

They opened their case before the Lord and they showed Him what the problem was. Here we are, trying to do Your work, trying to spread Christian literature all over the world. Here we are, out of money, and we cannot go on. What are we going to do? They had to check their ship once in a while. They had a little boat, of course. All ocean-going vessels have lifeboats. They had to have a small boat so they could go out to the ship in the harbor there. So, they watched their ship and did what they needed to do to take care of it, but they were meeting every day. A whole day went by. Another day went by. The third day went by.

One of the things I have learned as I have studied this subject; God has all power. God has the solution to every single problem that you have right now. But God has to get our hearts into a situation where He can help us the way He wants to help us. So sometimes the answer to our prayers is delayed for a little while. Have you ever had that happen? The answer to your prayer is delayed for a little while. God has all the power, but He sees that something has to be changed in my heart and that is why I have to keep praying.

Prayer does not change God. He knows what the solution is before I ever start. Jesus said in Matthew 5, He said, Do not be like the heathen. They think they are going to be heard for their much speaking. When I was with my parents, they were missionaries in a heathen country and I have seen some of these prayer wheels. You have a handle on it, you have many prayers written down and it is inside a glass cylinder and they turn the crank. And when they turn the crank and you can say thousands of prayers an hour because that thing is spinning and all those prayers are in there.

So, you can say lots of prayers very quickly with one of those machines. Jesus said, That is what the heathen do. They think they will be heard for their much speaking. Do not you be like them, because your Father knows what things you have need of --when? Before you ask. So the purpose of prayer is not to change God. The purpose of prayer is to change me. So, I have to keep praying when there is a delay.

So they prayed three days. Nothing happened. They did not know what they were going to do. They said to themselves, We will just have to keep praying until the Lord shows us the solution to our problem, because we are stranded here. We cannot go on. They could not even go back to the United States. Those big ships, you know, you do not fill the oil tanks in one of those big diesel engines to go across the ocean for fifty or one hundred dollars. You are talking about thousands of dollars.

So, they were stranded until they got a sizable sum of money. They were not praying for one hundred dollars or five hundred dollars. They needed a substantial amount of money to go on. They had the literature. They had the ship, but they could not move because they were out of money. So they prayed five days. They prayed six days. They prayed seven days. They prayed a whole week. Could not see a thing. Did not know what to do.

What would you do then? See, they were in the situation that Abraham was in. Do you remember how many years Abraham had been praying for a son and the Lord told him that He was going to give him one? He had been praying for at least twenty-five years. When you understand he has been praying for twenty-five years for a son, it helps you to better understand the story in Genesis 18 when Sarah laughed. Because they had been praying for this to happen for twenty-five years and they had not gotten an answer yet. So, it just seemed like it was never going to happen.

Eight days went by. Nine days went by. They kept praying, praying, praying, Lord, here we are. We are stranded. We have the boat. We have the literature. We want to spread Your message to the world, but we do not have enough money to go on. What are we going to do? Show us what to do.

I think it was on the tenth day. They were still praying. Now, they were praying in a hotel that was evidently a number of stories high and when they looked out the window, they could look into the harbor from their hotel and they could see their ship out there in the harbor. It was about the tenth day that they were praying that the Lord would show them what to do.

What are we going to do? We have been praying for ten days. One of them looked out the window and looked at their ship, and called the attention of some other people and said, Look at our boat. The water seems kind of foaming around our boat. They said, It sure does. We had better go out there and see what is going on.

So they got into their little boat and went out to their ship and started looking and there were all kinds of fish around their boat. They got some nets and they started putting the nets in and filled them up and they filled the boat full of fish. Then they filled another boat full of fish.

There were so many fish around that ship that when they sold those fish, they had all the money they needed, just like in John 21. God's hand is not shortened. He can do the same miracles today that He did in Bible times, any time it is necessary. In fact, we just hear the whisper of His voice, we do not understand at all the thunder of His power.

So in just a few days they had all the money they needed. They had not had to go out and find jobs and work for several months. They were ready to go out and do their missionary work again. They were ready to leave.

Is there some problem in your life and it just seems that it is overwhelming and there is no way out of it? What are you going to do when it looks hopeless? Are you asking for divine help? Are you praying about it? Are you asking the Lord to change your heart and to get you in a position so that He can answer your prayers, so you can see His divine power operating in your life?

This truth of the power of God is emphasized over and over again in the Bible. Evidently as God's people, we have trouble remembering this. We have a problem with forgetting. The children of Israel had this trouble and Isaiah started reminding them about it. Here in Isaiah 40 he was talking about this very subject. This is a common subject of the Bible writers.

They remind the people of God of the power of God and what He wants to do for them, so they will exercise faith and trust in Him and realize that this situation that is impossible for them is not impossible for God. Isaiah 40:25, 26, the Lord says, "To whom then will you liken Me? Or to whom shall I be equal? says the Holy One. Life up your eyes on high, And see who has created these things, Who brings out their host by number, He calls them all by name, By the greatness of His might And the strength of His power, Not one is missing."

Look up at the sky, the prophet says, and start to get a little idea of the greatness of His power and Job says, All of that, that is just the edge of His power. The thunder of His power who can understand? We cannot understand it. What we see and what we experience is just the edge, that is just the whisper of His voice. Do you realize, friend, if you are weak, helpless and spiritually you seem ready to die, if you put your trust in Jesus there is all the power that you need?

In fact, it is so plenteous, there is more power than you need. That is why, even if you are the weakest saint, or the weakest sinner and you are struggling with temptation and you do not know what to do. Put your trust in Him. God longs to reveal His power to His people. He is waiting. He wants to reveal His power in your life. He wants to show the whole universe what He can do in you!

So often we struggle with some bad habit. We cannot seem to get control of our appetite or some habit that we have or control our tongue. The Bible does say that no human being can control the tongue. No human being can control it, but I want to tell you, friend, we serve a God that has unlimited power. His power is unlimited and all that we see is just the whisper of His voice, the edges of His power. That is all we see. And that is plenty, for everything that needs to be done in your life.

In the New Testament we have many examples again of people who found out that there was nothing that God could not do. When the angel Gabriel came to Zacharia, remember Zacharia could not believe it. He could not believe it because he was too old to have a child, too. He and his wife had prayed for a child for years, for decades, they had never had one, so he had given up. He could not believe it. The angel said, Well, you are going to find out whether what I say is true or not. You are not going to speak any more until it happens.

Then the angel went to Mary. She could not believe it either. She said, How is this going to happen to me? I cannot have a child. I am not married. The angel said, That is no problem with God. Notice what Mary said about that, then. Look in Luke 1:46, you have the song of Mary. You have Mary visiting Elizabeth in Luke 1:39.

But before that you have Christ's birth announced to Mary starting in Verse 26 "For with God nothing will be impossible." Luke 1:37 With God, what? Is there something impossible in your life? Not with God there is not.

If you are the weakest, you do not have education, you do not have money, you do not have intellectual brilliance or your do not have physical health or whatever problem you have, that is not any impossibility with God. Nothing is impossible with God if you commit your life to Him. The most important thing, though, is have you committed your life to Him so that there will not be any impossibilities for you?

One time Jesus was talking to the disciples and He told them about something that was really hard. There are some things that are hard, and God Himself, recognizes that they are hard. Jesus told the disciples, He said, It is very hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. That is one of the reasons, by the way, that in places like England, France, Western Germany, Austria, United States, Canada, and places like this, the Gospel is not accepted as readily as in other places of the world where people do not have as much money. Jesus said that. John Wesley acknowledged it. All the Protestant reformers understood it.

In fact, the leaders of God's work through all ages have found this out. Comparatively few of the rich accept the gospel in comparison with the poor. So when Jesus told them that it was hard for the rich to be saved, the disciples said, How could anybody be saved? They thought that the rich would be in first place.

Look how Jesus answered them in Matthew 19:26. Can a rich person be saved, too. Notice what Jesus says, "But Jesus looked at them and said to them, 'With men this is impossible (that is for a rich person to be saved), but with God all things are possible.'" With God all things are possible!

Oh, friend, has the devil tried to discourage you because there are troubles in your life so that you feel that you cannot be saved? You say, Pastor John, you do not understand how weak I am. I may not. I really do not need to know how weak you are. I do not even understand how weak I am. I know day by day that I have no power or strength at all, and I ask the Lord for help.

It does not matter how weak you are. If you are the weakest one, it still does not matter because with God--what does it say? All things are possible. We do not understand the thunder of His power. Job says, All we hear is just the whisper of His voice. That is all we hear. We see the edges of His ways when we look up at the sky.

We see a little periphery of what He can do. We do not understand the thunder of His power. All things are possible, Jesus said. Well, who are all things possible to? Look at Mark 9. Here is another person who could not figure out how his problem was going to get solved. Mark 9. You have here the man whose son is possessed with a demon and he comes to Jesus. You see here in Verse 22, he says, "If you can do anything"--imagine, asking the God of heaven that! "If you can do anything, please help us. Please have compassion on us and help us."

That is an insult, by the way, to say to the God of heaven, If you can do anything. Jesus immediately answered that insult and He said to this man, He said, "If you can believe. . ." It is not what I can or cannot do. That is not the question. If you can believe. Well, if you can believe what? Look at verse 23, Jesus said to him, "If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes."

Well, this man had such a struggle with doubt. I like this Scripture. I am glad that this Scripture is in the Bible because this was a man who was really struggling with doubt. Now he realizes that if he does not believe, his son is going to stay possessed with a demon for the rest of his life. It all depends on whether or not he can believe.

Now he is really scared and he is struggling with doubt and he says to himself, What am I going to do? So, he made a decision. He made the same decision that the weakest person here can make. He decided and he said in his mind, I am going to believe. He chose that he was going to. At the same time that he made that decision, he realized he was in the presence of One who knew exactly what was going on in his mind. He was struggling with doubt, because his situation looked impossible.

So, here is what he said, in verse 24, "Immediately the father of the child cried out and said with tears, 'Lord, I believe; help my unbelief.'" In other words, Lord, I am choosing to believe, but I am struggling with doubt. Now, I have a question for you. This is a very important question if you are struggling with doubt. The question is not hard. Was this man's son healed or not? What is the answer? He was healed!

So, if there is somebody here and you choose to put your trust in Jesus, even if you are struggling with doubt, if you choose to trust in Him, will His power be revealed in your life? Will it? Yes, it will, if you choose to believe.

I want to deal with what God wants to do in your life through His Holy Spirit. As human beings we tend to be impressed with the physical, the things that we can see. Somebody is healed of cancer. By the way, I have seen people healed of cancer. God can heal people from any disease. I have seen it happen.

We are impressed with things like that. But I want to tell you that God wants to do something for you far beyond that. God wants to heal your heart from the sting of sin and enable you to live a new life that is in perfect harmony with His law. If that does not happen, if you just get healed from cancer or tuberculosis or AIDS or some physical disease, you are still going to die in a little while.

But if Jesus heals your heart from the sting of sin and gives you the power through His Holy Spirit to live in harmony with His law, then you can receive the gift of eternal life. That is really what He wants to do. God has all the power that you need. If you put your trust in Him, He will give you power through His Holy Spirit and that is one of the main reasons for the giving of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus promised His followers the Holy Spirit so that they would have power to overcome sin in their life. That is one of the tests of whether or not we have the Holy Spirit. Jesus said to Nicodemus, "Truly, truly, I say unto you, except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot see the kingdom of God. He cannot enter the kingdom of God." John 3:5

When you receive the Holy Spirit, you receive power to overcome sin and to live a Christlike life. Let us read that in the Bible. Look first of all in Romans 8:6,7. "To be carnally minded (that is fleshly minded) is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God nor indeed can be." Somebody here in that situation?

I meet people like this all the time. They say, Pastor John, I cannot do it. And I say, You are exactly right. I am glad that you have that figured out right. You cannot do it. That is what the Bible says. Romans 8:7, You cannot do it. I cannot do it. But, if you receive the Holy Spirit into your life, what is going to happen?

Look at verses 13,14 "For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God." Who is it that gives you the power to live a new life that is in harmony with God's law? The carnal mind cannot do it. And people say, I cannot do it. I say, Yes, you are right.

Romans 8:7 says that you cannot do it. I cannot do it. But if you receive the Holy Spirit, what will happen? What you could not do becomes possible because with God all things are possible. Oh, friend, sometimes as I have studied inspired writings, I have wondered to myself, There is so much that God knows about so many things, why is it that He did not tell us any other things?

Jesus could have told us so many things about science, and about physiology, and about nutrition and technology. We could have had all kinds of things to study. He could have revealed all of these things. Why did He not talk about any of that? Because Jesus realized that no matter how much you have or how much you know, if you do not have life, you are going to lose it all.

So, the theme of Jesus preaching was just one thing, How can you get eternal life? That is what He talked about. If you get that, then you can study everything else, you can get everything else. But if you do not have life, you have nothing. To receive life, you have to receive the Holy Spirit in your life so that you live a new life.

Have you received the Holy Spirit? If you receive the Holy Spirit in your life you have the power right now to live a new life. Do you want to receive the Holy Spirit in your life? Do you want to open your heart to the Lord and say, Lord, I am surrendering everything to You. I am choosing to believe, even if you are struggling with doubt, you can choose to believe.

I am choosing to put my trust in You. What does the Lord want to do for you? Oh, friend, someday if you are faithful, you are going to see the thunder of His power. I want to see it, do you? Right now God works and we hear the whisper of His voice, the still small voice. He comes to people and He says, "Do You want Me to live inside? Do you want My Spirit to change your life, to change your heart?" If that happens, friend, then, soon you will be able to see the thunder of His power.

We all want to see that. We all want to have joy when it happens. One of these days when the world ends, I want to tell you, friends, people will see the thunder of His power like the whole universe has never seen it before. There are some things that are going to happen in a little while that have never happened before.

The prophecies in Revelation predict it very clearly. Some things that have never happened before, you are going to see. You are going to see the power of God in a little while. But if you are going to have joy when that happens, you have to receive His Spirit into your heart now so that you have life now, so that your life is in harmony with His law. Do you want to receive His Holy Spirit into your life now? Are you willing and ready to say to the Lord, Lord, I am surrendering my life to you. I want to receive Your Spirit into my life, now. I want new life.

We have to have it, friend, if we are going to have eternal life. But God is waiting to give it to us. That is what the gospel is about. We look from the book of Genesis and right through the New Testament. God teaches this lesson over and over again. He had to teach it to the apostle Paul. He had to teach it to Peter. He had to teach it to other people.

In the New Testament the stories are written down, where they learned that if they put their trust in Him, all things were possible because the Holy Spirit would give them power to live a new life. Friend, if you want to tell the Lord that right now, I want to pray for you.

Let us kneel down and ask the Lord to give us His Spirit and to work out that life, the new life inside.

Father in heaven, we are poor, weak, sinful, erring human beings just like the people that we read about in the Bible. We are so excited when we read of Your power. We know that we just see the edges of Your power and hear just the whisper of Your voice. We long for that day when we will be able to see the thunder of Your power. But we know that to be ready for that time, we must receive Your Holy Spirit in our life and must receive divine power to live a new life now. I pray for each one who is opening his or her heart to You. Lord, you know what problems are in each persons life, that to that person seems impossible. We are so happy that we serve a God to Whom nothing is impossible. We claim the promise that Jesus said that all things are possible if you can believe. Lord we choose to believe. We pray that you will help our unbelief. We pray that Your Spirit will be given to each one of us and give us that power to live the new life that is in harmony with Your divine law. And we thank you for hearing and answering our prayer, for we come to you in Jesus' name. Amen.