Power
What comes to your mind when you hear this word, Power?
This word can apply to so many things in so many ways. Jesus spoke this word to His first disciples.
Acts 1:8 But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
Jesus said they would receive power. Dunamis means ability, abundance, power, strength, mighty wonderful work, and violence.
When the Holy Spirit comes on a believer in Jesus, He enables that believer to do things beyond their natural abilities. He imparts boldness to move believers beyond their limitations into the possibilities of God’s will.
If a believer is hampered by intimidation and fear, they are not walking filled with the Holy Spirit as they should. Being filled with the Holy Spirit enables boldness, confidence, and enablement to do, say, and be something greater than our natural selves might otherwise imagine saying, doing, or being.
God has a plan for every believer. His will and purpose will always exceed our natural abilities and talent. He is not limited to our natural abilities because He empowers us to do according to His good will and pleasure.
We limit ourselves when we think of ourselves only according to who we think we are in the natural. Thus, when He reveals His will, it seems too ridiculous to imagine doing to us, and we shrink back from it. His will is according to whom we have become in Christ Jesus and the empowerment of the Holy Spirit given to work in and through us.
If we fail to believe the gospel and its message of becoming a new creation made fit to receive the Holy Spirit, we will struggle concerning the will of God for our lives. We will struggle because we only see our own natural abilities and talents and measure what comes to our minds and hearts based on those limitations. But according to the gospel, we are capable of anything God says is ours to do and to be.
Natural-based thinking will limit us to doing life according to the flesh as opposed to the Spirit, and that leads us to desire to only measure ourselves based on morality standards and with comparison to others. If we are a good boy or girl compared to most, we think we must be walking with God. But such thinking is very off base with the truth of the gospel. The gospel is not about being good boys and girls strictly in a moral sense. It is about being supernatural children of the living God equipped by the Holy Spirit to be and to do according to His good pleasure. It transcends merely being morally astute and on point. It goes further to the place of His divine purpose for our lives, fueled by His supernatural power at work in us in the person of the Holy Spirit.
You can go to church every Sunday, sing the songs with feeling, pray the prayers, and search the Scriptures in a powerless reality. When the reality of the gospel and the promise of the Holy Spirit are left off the table, all you are left with is religious practices meant to make you feel better about yourself but powerless to affect change on this earth. God gives power! Jesus offers us power! He intends that we affect things in the direction of His will. Powerless Christianity is dangerous; it is like a useless drug that prevents those under its spell from gaining any real advantage from the operation of the Holy Spirit and the power that He brings with Him. Powerless Christianity cannot truly bring anyone to the place of realizing the will of God for their lives with the awareness that even though it is bigger than they are, they are enabled to embrace it with confidence and faith, assured of success based on the help of the Holy Spirit. We need His power! Many need to break off the shackles of powerless Christianity and step into the supernatural reality where they are empowered by the Holy Spirit to do and to be.
