“I know how to get along with humble means, and I also know how to live in prosperity; in any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need. I can do all things through Him who strengthens me” ~ Philippians 4:12-13.

Beloved, I ask you, have you come to the place in your relationship with God where you truly and fully know that you “can”? No matter the storm; no matter the hardship; no matter the challenge; no matter the duty; no matter the appearance of weakness and insufficiency: do you knowingly proclaim in full assurance “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me”?

God grows me daily to understand that “I can.” Is it always easy? Is it always pleasant? Is it always with courage? Is it never accompanied by struggle or pain? Of course the answer to all is a resounding “no!” However, God continues to teach me truths that make the struggle worth the growth pains. Today I share one with you that only recently formed in me. Before I do, let me preface this word with one truth you must understand. I am NOT, in what I am about to tell you, saying that we can be God or take His place in any way. Know now that is not what I am telling you, or you will miss what I am saying and the power for life it gives to fully believe, “I CAN do ALL things through Christ!”

Reading John 5:16-18, these words grab me: “(Jesus) calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God.” The Scribes and Pharisees raged at Jesus, angered by this connection, but this is true of Christ like it can never be for us. Jesus is God incarnate. Jesus came to show us the Father and make Him known to us. Jesus came with the calling and equipping of God to make us one with Him in Christ. Now bear with me.

As I contemplated that thought, “Making Himself equal with God”, asking Jesus what He wanted me to see, He spoke, “Our Father, who art in heaven” (Matthew 6:9). Instantly I realized Jesus, instructing my heart that our ability to know “I can do all things through Christ” requires we find this same expression of unity with the Father for a life of power. He must be “FATHER” to ME. The thing the Pharisees accused Jesus of, He instructs us to seek the Father from that very stance: we are the image of God.

Jesus, our example, tells us in John 14:7-15, “…He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me?” Jesus, in John 17, prays that we will be one with Him and the Father as He and the Father are one (vs. 22). If Jesus prayed it, it must not only be possible, but expected. We are the people called of God, equipped through Christ, beloved, to be one with the Father, expressive of His glory in Christlikeness. This is our position in Christ.

“Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me; otherwise believe because of the works themselves. Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do; because I go to the Father” ~ John 14:11-12.

Jesus calls and equips us for greater works, beloved. He empowers us to express the reality of the Father: His person, character, nature, and power in the earth. That comes with authority and full provision for the task. When we grasp hold of our unity with Father through Christ and fully possess it as our own reality, knowing He plans for our success in fully accomplishing His good will in His good way, pouring Himself through us to do so, then we will know beyond doubt the “I can do all things” that God holds out to us in Christ.