They Didn't Know The Power Of God

    Only three days before Jesus was arrested and taken to the cross,
He was teaching the crowds gathered in the temple grounds.  The
preachers and politicians didn't like all the publicity that Jesus was
getting, so out of jealousy they tried to debate with him trying
somehow to prove Him a fake and show Him up.  What they just couldn't
admit was that He was indeed who He said He was.

    The story is recorded in Matthew 22:23-33.  Now the Sadducees who
were a denomination of the Jewish faith at the time and they tried to
test him by giving a theoretical or "what if" question concerning
marriage and how it would be recognized in the kingdom of heaven.  In
verse 29 Jesus hit the nail on the head when He began His response by
saying that, "You are mistaken (or deceived), not knowing the
Scriptures nor the power of God."

    How that short little verse speaks to me as well as so many others
in our day with so many different half-baked religious groups around. 
Even though I was raised in the church, at 17 years old I was drawn
off into a cult that believed what they called the doctrine of eternal
progression.  They taught that God was at one time a man just like you
and me until He earned his right to be God.  Also that as His
children, we too could earn by our good works the right to become a
god like He is and create our own worlds and universes.

    Soon after leaving this group, I had a roommate who studied the
Word of God with me.  I loved this brother dearly, but he fell into
another weird group that made the mistake of saying that since Paul
was the apostle to the gentiles, only those portions of scripture that
were written by him were valid for us.  The rest of the Bible was
written for the Jews only.

I don't know what finally happened to my friend, but I found that as I
started to read the Bible for myself instead of depending on what
others were always telling me that it said, God started to open my
eyes and I began to understand what it really said.  As I started to
learn who Jesus is, I also found that by submitting myself to Jesus
and inviting the Holy Spirit of God to come and live within me, I
began to experience the power of God.  The power to desire for God to
make me into the kind of man that He wanted me to be.

    As I see it, it was when I stopped trying to use the Bible to
prove what I believed already and began to study it so that I could
bring what I believed into line with what God was doing, that I
started to move ahead.

    Even today in my ministry, the challenge is still to find out what
God is doing rather than wanting Him to bless what I am doing.  If
your plans seem to be going nowhere, try getting into His plan.  It
works.

Frank Cooke