Today I got to lead our group of Fellowship Riders to breakfast and around the area.  Karen got to take pictures as usual and everyone is always thankful to her for that.  The page with the pictures from today can be found <<here>>.

As part of my “duties” I was also allowed to give the devotion before we rode.  This was one of those times when as I was writing, what I thought I wanted to say ended up not being what I was saying at all.  The slogan for Fellowship Riders is “Powered by Christ” and that ended up being the theme of my devotion.  I thought I would take this opportunity to share it here with anyone who might stumble upon this page.  So here it is…

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On our patch for Fellowship Riders, our slogan is “Powered by Christ”.  Today I’d like to share a little with you what it means to be “Powered by Christ”.

When Jesus talked about power He declared that He “has power on earth to forgive sins” and to prove this power He told a lame man to pick up his bed and go home.  The man was healed and walked away.  (Mat 9:6)

In the book of John Jesus said that He had the power to lay down His life and the power to take it again. (Joh 10:18)  Now I think we can all agree that would be a demonstration of real power for sure.

And later when Jesus was standing before Pilate, Pilate told Jesus that he had the power over Jesus’ life.  Jesus simply looked at him and told Pilate that he had no power other than that which had been given to him from above.

After this, we are told that Jesus was crucified and died.  He was buried in a tomb, but then three days later, that tomb was found empty and Jesus was appearing once again to His disciples proving that He really does have the power He claimed.

Then, just before ascending into Heaven while talking with His disciples, He told them that He would send the Holy Spirit and they would receive power.  (Acts 1:8)  Now that sounds great, and we have preachers all over the place telling us that we have been given this power to live the good life.  We have been given this power so that we can conquer the world and take all it has to offer for ourselves.  We only have to speak things and they will come into existence.  Is that the type of power that Jesus promised us?  Let’s let Him finish His sentence.

Acts 1:8  “But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you;”.  See, there it is…but wait, there’s more.  Jesus continues.  “and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”  Did you catch that?  Jesus said I’m giving you this power, but it is for a specific purpose.  This power is to do the Will of God and to spread His Gospel over all the earth.

Think about this very poor analogy for a second.  When you put fuel in your bike, do you do it so your bike can enjoy it and run all over the place on its own?  Or do you give it power so it can take you where you need to go and fulfill your purposes?

The same is true here.  God gives us power to do His will.  God gave people in the Bible power to do His will, not to live it up and enjoy this life to the fullest.  Remember, this life is only temporary.  The apostles were given this power and yet none of them lived what we would call an easy life.  Remember, they were tortured and killed for their teachings.  Why would we expect any less if we are as committed to His will as they were?

So, to be “Powered by Christ” means that we are given power by the Holy Spirit to spread the Gospel to all the world.  We just happen to do it on two wheels.  And what is this Gospel we are sharing?  It’s important that we can put it into words.  1 Peter 3:15 tells us to always be prepared to give a defense for this hope that we have.  If you have trouble doing this, practice with a Christian friend or loved one.  As Peter said, “always be prepared”.

So, in a nutshell, here is the Gospel…

God created everything and is perfect, but man is unable to maintain God’s standard of perfection and therefore is condemned for breaking God’s laws.  But because God is kind and merciful, He became the perfect man Jesus, lived a sinless life, keeping all the laws that we could not.  He suffered and died in our place as only He could, taking the full wrath of God on Himself for all the sins we have committed, paying our fine in full so that we can be seen as perfect by God even though we aren’t.  He then rose again on the 3^rd day proving that He is God and has power over sin and death.

At this point everyone has 2 choices.  Either continue on as before and reject this, or realize that we have all sinned against a perfect and holy God and are worthy of condemnation.  At that point the only sensible thing to do would be to repent of our sins and trust in Jesus for our salvation.  There is no middle ground.

If you have ever struggled with sharing that with someone, remember the words of Jesus that we talked about earlier.  “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me…”  It is not by our power that we do this.  We are “Powered by Christ” to do His will!