God's Power for Your Life

“Is God there?” a child’s voice asked. “I want to talk to God.”

People began leaving requests to talk to God on the answering machine at Radio Colorado Network after the release of the 2003 film “Bruce Almighty.” In the film, God repeatedly leaves his phone number on the lead character’s pager. It turns out that the Network shared the same number.

Some messages were funny, like the caller who recorded, “I know this isn't the number for God. But I'm calling to see if you have the other number.”

Some messages were touching, like the woman who left the message: “I’m in jail right now. Like I said to you last night, ‘I love you,’” she confided to God, after promising to go straight and praying to return to her husband and children.

The Radio Colorado Network wasn’t the only recipient of requests to talk to God. The phone number is assigned to phone customers in more than 30 area codes, many of whom received calls to God in the weeks after the film’s release. One was a church in Sanford, North Carolina. Callers to that number got to talk to a pastor. Named Bruce.

Thankfully, it doesn’t take a phone number to talk to God. In the Sermon on the Mount, after Jesus taught us the way we ought to live, he promised us power for the task.

This is good news. If you’ve been part of our study of the Sermon on the Mount the last few months, you’ve been challenged by the righteousness, sincerity, humility, purity, and love expected of Christ-followers. How can we live up to such a high standard? Jesus promised: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened” (Matthew 7:7-8).

Jesus himself often prayed to his Father. “It was Jesus' habit of prayer which gave him the spiritual power to gain the victory over evil,” Mark Buchanan noted in his book, Your God is Too Safe. “When we find ourselves impotent in the face of life's challenges, it may be because we're out of practice.”

This Sunday morning we’ll discover divine power for the kind of life Jesus expects us to live! Join us at the “Bold Blend” service or the 10:45am “Smooth Blend” service, or listen online Monday (iTunes; website).