Know Power

TO READ: John 13:1-20

Now that you know these things, God will bless you for doing them.

John 13:17

People who leave their graveclothes behind them act, speak, and walk quite differently.

A young teacher accepted Christ. Dead to God, he was called by Christ out of the tomb of his troubles and loosed from his graveclothes. “Whenever teachers are on playground duty in my school,” he told me, “the rest of us rip them to shreds behind their backs. Since I’ve found Jesus Christ, I can’t find it in my heart to do that anymore!”

Another woman, who worked in a factory, held her own with the coarsest of men, her language turning the air around her a royal blue. The day after she walked forward at a Billy Graham crusade, a man sidled up and made a snide remark. She stood there, listening in silence. “What’s up with you?” the man asked in amazement. “Last night I lost half my vocabulary,” she said simply. Her graveclothes lay at the foot of the cross where they belonged.

But how do you find the power to live without the old, familiar graveclothes that have been so much a part of your old life? Sometimes, as in Lazarus’s case, you need a helping hand. At other times, God frees your hands to remove them yourself. He tells you to put off the rags of the old life. We are to remove lying, stealing, laziness, bad language, bitterness, and clamor (Ephesians 4:26-31).

“Know power” works. “Now that you know these things, God will bless you for doing them,” said Jesus.