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Day 11-"Strengthen"

Day 11- "strengthen"
Strong's definition for strengthen: from the greek krataioo (krat-ah-yo'-o); from NT:2900; to empower, i.e. (passively) increase in vigor:
(Biblesoft's New Exhaustive Strong's Numbers and Concordance with Expanded Greek-Hebrew Dictionary. Copyright (c) 1994, Biblesoft and International Bible Translators, Inc.)
So in essence, the Lord, speaking through Paul, is saying
'I pray that out of his glorious riches he may "Empower" you with power...' Doesn't that sound a bit redundant. Duh, will he empower us to weakness, or self-love, or pride? However, I believe the point here is that the human race has a form of power. We can wield influence, we can expand our portfolio and get people to do our bidding, we can build bombs and nukes to show how powerful we are, we can put men on the moon and robots on mars, and send spacecraft through our solar system. We can build big buildings, we can gain PhD's, we can gain wealth, prosperity, influence. We can split atoms. We can tame animals, we can, we can, we can. But in all reality, we can only do so much and in all actuality even that isn't much. The Lord can spread out the heavens like a curtain, the Lord can tell a mountain range to crumble and it would, the Lord can create Light, the Lord can make an atom, the Lord can understand quasars, the Lord can comprehend the rising of the sun and the setting of the same. The Lord can claim power over the earth and all that is in it for with His very word He spoke it into being. The Lord, can calm the seas, the Lord can raise the dead, the Lord can make water into wine and wine into water, the Lord understands equations both the simple and quadratic, he is not restrained by time, body, flesh, height, depth, width, space, earth or sky. The Lord can make planets, stars, galaxies, universes, black wholes, gamma rays, x-rays, microwaves, and the Lord can see a sparrow fall and a leaf wither. He can, Ha Can, He CAN. So, let me ask again, does it sound so strange that He who CAN, would empower us with power? I see it this way, our realm of influence is within a radius of 384401 km or roughly 240,000 miles. Now don't get a big head I'm not done yet. We're gonna talk about why we need to be strengthened. You're now thinking wow we've gone pretty far out but I'm gonna blow your mind. The farthest estimation of how big our universe is is 8,083,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles away, if I did my math right. In light years it thirteen billion light years away (one light year is about 590 trillion miles). But that is just in one direction since we are not the center of the universe we could be seeing just the closest edge of the universe, and the other edge is twice that far away making the universe a possible 24,249,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles across. Which means that our 240,000 mile sphere of influence of what we call our empowerment of the human race is only 1 x 1021 of power, of the universe. For example if you take one 3 foot step you are point 1 x 10-21 of the way to a 570,000,000,000,000,000 mile journey, or a 1000 light year trip. 1000 light years would get you two-thirds of the way to the Horse-head Nebula. I'd say we need to be strengthened. We are small, we are weak.
Finally, I also looked up the definition for strengthen and one of them was, "to fasten upon." So in essence the Lord who made the boundaries of our infinite universe also will fasten upon our hearts the same strength that comes from Him. He will strengthen us for the glorification of Himself. The reason we need strengthened is because we in our own power thought we were strong but we've been proven by nature to be rather infinitesimally small. We need, need is not a strong enough word, we must have His strength to even breath. Strengthen us Father for the works You have prepared for us!

Day 10- "may"

Day 10- "may"
Grammatically speaking, "may" is a word that could quite easily be misunderstood. Often we use "may" to mean possibly, might, maybe, and other such words. Yet, I don't think that is the purpose in this verse. Webster's Thesaurus gives these possible synonyms: "be allowed, be permitted, be authorized, be at liberty to, can, be privileged to." So contextually, Paul is explaining to us and the Ephesians that He is laying prostrate in prayer with the intent that the Lord, whom whatever he touches is glorious, give us the privilege... Amazingly, through Christ our strength (which we'll go over next time) is no longer from within us, within our frail human condition. To often we believe that we deserve strength or blessing or happiness from God, but in reality, it is only through His profuse benevolence that we have anything at all. Because He has chosen us and set us as believers apart, He also has given us the privilege, the "may," of becoming like Him in strength and glory and character. "May" is not a perhaps it is a privilege. Through Christ we are privileged to see His strength up close and personal. "To be close is a mounting terror of His might."