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Using God's Power Instead Of Our Own

During a picnic on an extremely hot day at a Wisconsin lake, Norwegian-American Inventor Ole Evinrude’s future wife, Bess, told him how much she would enjoy some ice cream. So the young man gladly made a five mile round-trip by rowboat to bring the ice cream to her.

When he returned exhausted with a container of melted ice cream, Ole told himself there must be a better way. Putting his mechanical mind to work, Ole Evinrude field-tested his lightweight, detachable motor for small boats in 1907. After the outboard motors went into commercial production, Bess wrote the advertising slogan:

“Don’t Row! Throw the Oars Away!”

Ole Evinrude was not a lazy man, but he understood the limits of human power. Each day we employ machinery to accomplish the tasks of life. But we often stubbornly rely on ourselves when we’re trying to serve God.

In Ephesians 3:16 , the apostle Paul wrote of a better way:

“That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man.“

Instead of self-effort, Paul urged believers to find strength in “Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us” (Ephesians 3:20).

The bottom line is this: Don’t row! Let’s use God’s power instead of our own.