Power, Love, and a Sound Mind
Ps Geoff Wiklund
Hi, Campers! We’ve come to the main message. Power, Love and a sound mind. This is the main scripture ‘For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and a sound mind’. I want to have a look at firstly, what God has not given us. He hasn’t given us fear. You can actually translate that word cowardice, and we know that cowards don’t enter the Kingdom of God and so you have to understand here God has not given it to us. So it either came from within ourselves or it originates with the enemy.
So Job said something very interesting. He said, ‘that which I have feared, has come upon me’. So you can fear things into being or faith things into being. Which would you rather have? That which you have faith about or that which you have fear about? I know for me its faith. But faith and fear are actually the same thing. The definition is the same; you’ve heard me say this before. It’s the expectation of things not seen. And so, it’s kind of important that we understand that fear doesn’t come from God, it comes from the enemy. So we have to really come to the place of faith rather than fear. And there has got to be a replacement there. God will give you faith we tend to come up with fear ourselves.
It’s interesting that Jesus said this: ‘Not heeding the word spoken, said unto the ruler of the synagogue, fear not, only believe.’ Wow. Jesus’ words ‘fear not, only believe’. I think as I am speaking this today, some of you hearing the sound of my voice, it’s a word for you. God is not asking you to have fear here, He is asking you to just believe what He has said. So it doesn’t matter what your circumstances are, traumatic as they might be, all you have to do is believe. Okay? We need to banish the fear; we’ll talk a little bit about that.
Look at what Proverbs says: ‘anxiety actually causes depression, but a good word makes it glad’. Where do I find good words? In the Bible. You know what, I find it as I read the Bible, there’s good words in there for me and they are the things that guide me day by day. My wife and I, every morning get up at seven o’clock. I feed the cat, and then the cat comes and sits with me. We have devotions, Joanne reads, I read, and we talk about what God’s been speaking to us. We pray and we have communion. It’s our daily routine, it’s what we do. When Kirsty found me this morning, I was waiting for her because I had an early start this morning and hadn’t quite finished my Bible reading. What did she find me doing? Just doing the last chapter of that and God speaking to me. So the way we replace fear is to just get into the Bible and just read it, but meditate on it, think about, see what it is saying to us.
Look what Philippians says to us: ‘Do not be anxious for anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be known unto God, and then, the peace of God which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus’. Now, some people have a different translation. There it says: be anxious about everything, and moan and winch about it, and then let everybody else know about it. That’s not quite what it says there! It says to let your request be known to God, not your moaning and winching to anybody else. I think we need to get the translation correct!
So what do we do? There are things that will happen that we are anxious about. We got to put them into Gods hands. He says ‘cast all your cares unto me because I care for you’. Hey folks, we got to learn to do that. We got to give those anxieties and fears to God because He says He wants them. Okay? Let’s learn to do that.
Then we talk about Power. It’s this word where we get ‘Dynamite’ from. It means strength, power, ability, inherent power, power residing in anything by virtue of its nature. Its goal is excellence. So three things we can divide it into.
Firstly, there is the power for performing miracles. So right there in you, God has given you the power to do miracles. Isn’t that amazing? He just uses ordinary, everyday people like you and me, in order to work out His power. I just love that. God just says lay hands on the sick and they shall recover. He doesn’t say that you have to be special, or gifted, or anything else, just ordinary people. You know what? God has just actually limited Himself to our prayers so that His power has worked through us. And I can just think of testimony after testimony, where Gods power has been released through ordinary people to do extraordinary things.
The second part of it is there’s a moral power. We talked about the ability to say no before, and the courage to say yes. That’s the moral power. That’s where you and I say: ‘Hey listen, we’ve got some standards here, and we’re not moving from those. Our behaviour is dictated by what the Bible is speaking to us, and we’re not going to steal, not going to cheat, not going to backbite, these are the things that… we won’t gossip, those are the things. So there’s a moral power. I want to say God patrols those things and enables you in order to live a Godly lifestyle.
The third part is influence. Now, it does mean that riches and wealth can have an influence, but also the resources of numbers. The more people who stand up to say no to things, or to say yes to God, we create a positive influence in the place. So it’s incredibly important we realise that there’s a power that comes from us having the courage to live a Christian lifestyle.
Now I want to talk a little bit about love. It says ‘brotherly love, affection, goodwill, love and benevolence’. What does Jesus say? He says: ‘By this, you will know you that they are my disciples if you love one another.’ Wow. People know that you are a Christian if you show love. You know, I’ve been to camp now for over thirty years, and one of the key things that makes camp camp, is that people love one another. I just watch people hugging on one another, crying on one another, praying for one another, caring for one another, it’s just pure unadulterated love, and that’s the difference. That is it.
So, how important is love? Well, Romans says: ‘Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good’. When you and I respond to a negative with love, it just destroys the power of that evil. So, hear what I am saying today. This love that we’ve got here in our key verse, it means that when stuff comes our way in a negative atmosphere, Gods saying I want you to overcome it with love. When these guys were trying to destroy the woman caught in adultery, what does Jesus do? He just loved her. He said ‘I’m not going to condemn you’. And so it’s about you and I learning not to condemn, but to love in a Godly manner. God is love, that’s what the Scripture says. If we are going to be like Him, then you and I need to love.
I don’t know, here am I, sitting this age, John and I were just talking about how old we are, and I’m getting older by the day. I’m starting to learn this stuff that love is actually the most important thing in the Bible. You know what, as I was driving down here, and thinking about this message, I didn’t put this into the PowerPoint, but God just gave it to me… you know, 1 Corinthians 13, that very powerful message on love… He actually talks about what it is. Love is not being proud; not puffing itself up, love is giving people the benefit of the doubt, not jumping down their throats. And so we need to look at that whole 1 Corinthians 13 and how do we live that out on a day by day basis? Love is not being impatient, love is not being unkind, it is the actual opposite of those things, and yet, that is what we flip into so easily. And God says hey we’ve got to make a change.
So how do we know? That’s interesting. I spoke on John 5 recently and Jesus said this: ‘you do not have the love of God in you’. And who was He speaking to? Here are some signs that we don’t have the love of God in us. Firstly, they won’t come to Jesus. Well, you got to think about that, don’t you? Jesus was inviting them to come, but they wouldn’t come. What about you? Are you holding back? Interesting….
Secondly, they were looking for the honour that comes from man and not from God. So, if we are looking to be honoured by people, the motivation for that is not love, the motivation for that is pride, glory, all the wrong things.
The third thing, you take a look at John 5 you’ll find these things there; ‘they don’t hear God at any time’. There’s a lot of voices out there at the moment, you know, people send me stuff on Messenger… Goodness me, if I watched all the things that people sent me, I’d be spending hours. Most of them just go in the bin, I’m sorry; I just have no time for them. You know, what I have got time for, is hearing God. I want to say to you today: that’s the key thing. You and I, we’ve got to hear from God.
Here’s the fourth thing, they don’t believe. We’ve talked about the importance of faith, but those people, who don’t have love, they don’t believe.
And here is the last one: His word doesn’t abide in them. It might come and flit for a visit for a while, but it doesn’t abide… it doesn’t make its home there. I want to say to you people, that if we want to have love in our lives, the Word of God has got to live in here… That’s fairly severe, isn’t it? That’s a bit testing, but you know what? That’s Scripture. That’s what it is all about. I think that’s a good test for us to have a look at, maybe be convicted.
Then lastly, he talks about a sound mind. ‘Admonishing or calling to soundness of mind, to moderation and self-control’. Now, I just want to note: men, it says self-control, not remote control. You know, they’ve found that some men after they’re dead, their thumbs are still moving three days later! Tell ya, serious…
We need to grab this gift daily for victory. In order for us to live in victory, we need what God has given us. There’s three little things here. It is sound. In other words, it lines up with Scripture. A sound mind is one that lines up with Scripture. If it doesn’t line up with Scripture, it’s not sound. It’s going to fall over.
Secondly, it’s moderate, it avoids all the extremes. You know, you’ve got these people way out here, and way out here, whatever. You know, that’s not where God’s at. I don’t think. If we read Ecclesiastes, it says that God is able to grab this side and this side and bring them together. Isn’t that a powerful thought? That’s to me, it’s not that the extremes don’t exist, but we’re able to grab a hold of it.
And the third thing is this: we exercise our God-given authority. How much authority did God say you are given? All authority. All authority, we have to grab a hold of that God-given authority and do it.
So, in conclusion, what are we saying today? I think we got to banish fear. We got to get rid of that you know. Here is a reality folks, if you want to give that fear to God he’ll take it from you. We just need to offer it up to Him as a sacrifice.
Secondly, we need to move in power. When we pray all of heaven is behind what we pray in order to move Earth to make His will happen.
Thirdly, we need to respond with love. When stuff comes at us, we just need to ask the Holy Spirit, Lord, how do I respond in love? Because if I just respond out of myself, it won’t be good, so we have to very careful to respond the way Jesus would have responded.
Lastly, we need to be of sound mind and the way we’re of a sound mind is through the power of the Holy Spirit. That self-control, that discipline, that soundness, the Holy Spirit gives us that.
Let me pray for you. Father, I pray for each one in the sound of my voice, Lord, that you will fill them with your love, according to Romans 5:5. Lord that they would move in your power. Lord, that you will deliver them from fear and Lord we receive that sound mind, that self-control, by your Holy Spirit today, to walk in victory, in Jesus’ mighty name. Amen.