Power
“My grace is sufficient for you for my power is perfected in weakness” 2 Corinthians 12:9
Power – Are you interested in your ability or in God’s ability? That’s the thought here. God tells Paul that He is able; that He is capable. The word Paul chooses is the root of our English word dynamic and dynamo. Its root in Greek is always associated with the idea of being able to accomplish.
Just think about the upside-down display of God in this world. God says that His capability is revealed in our inability. God takes the opportunity to show Himself in what I cannot do. In fact, the Bible teaches us that where we act on our own power, God retreats but where we are helpless and incapacitated, God shows up.
Why does God behave in this way? Why doesn’t He just pour on the power by adding to our strengths? The answer is all about glory. God knows (and so do we) that human beings have this incredible tendency to take the credit for things accomplished. And God will not share His glory with something He made. So, He chooses not to act when we are in the driver’s seat. He doesn’t display His heavenly power when we think all we need is a little help along the way. God does not help those who help themselves. He helps those who come to Him desperate and unable. Go back and read the Beatitudes. You will find Jesus saying the same thing. God comes to those who are bankrupt, grieving, oppressed, turned away, empty, guilty and at risk.
We serve the God of nobodies. When I learn to be nothing, than God can make me into anything. My road is the low road, the pathway of Jesus. It is the road of humility and powerlessness. It is the road of obedience. If I want intimacy with the Father, then I must learn to give away what power I thought was mine and allow Him free reign in my life. I must put off my pretenses of greatness and talent and skill. They are only His gifts to me and I must give them back to Him as an offering of the first fruits. God is more than able to flood my life with His ability when I have finally let go of my ego need to have some of the credit. God fills the empty cup, not the half-full one.
The church today is woefully anemic because it refuses to give up its power. There is no display of God’s ability because the church believes that God only needs to add to what it already does. Our lives reflect the same distortion. Is prayer more important to you than praise for what you accomplish? Do you spend more time with God than you do watching television or driving to work? Have you stripped yourself of your own agendas and your quest for glory so that God can do anything He wants with you?
I really wanted to bump this one. This TW is really good. I think the biggest thing that scares people away from the outrageous response of love to this hurting world is that, in the flesh, the problems that need our love the most look completely insurmountable. Surely that crazy woman who is hanging out on the street corner is most likely NOT going to respond favorably to anything I have to offer. At all. It is 100% certain, moreover, that anything I try to do is going to bomb out. Flesh assessment: don’t try.
Enter the Beatitudes. What if I represent those blessings in my skin to a “bankrupt, oppressed, grieving, turned away, empty, guilty and at risk” world, but ONLY on the other side of hitting the very same wall, myself? This list comprises all the things we try hardest to avoid at all costs, but perhaps this list represents what we are the MOST likely to encounter in our own lives the instant we turn around in our headlong flight from the responsibility that love represents. Perhaps as long as I am running, I cannot see my own bankruptcy; my own oppression and blocked choices; my own grief over the lack of love flowing in my life; my own sense of rejection (this one drives our greatest fear of reaching out – what if they don’t respond?!); my own emptiness and lack of anything that could make a difference to someone else; my own guilt and complicity in societal influences that perhaps drove that person into that ditch; and, above all, the RISK I would take in reaching out. Wait. That would put us both on the same boat!
There is nothing more effective to a hurting person than to know they are not alone: someone else sharing their pain (shouldering their burden) can walk with them, and even can lead them out of that ditch. “I know how you feel. This worked for me.” These are words and actions that reach out and actually touch. We are all already in the ditch. I get out when you do, and I won’t get out until I start caring that you do, too. Blessed are those who do not walk by on the other side of the road.
Thank you for bringing this TW up, Laurita. It is very good as usual.
Not only do “our lives reflect the same distortion” because of agendas and “quest for glory” , we turn good for evil, and evil for good, intentionally. You can do all the good you want, but it gets distorted and turned against you.
That really scares me. Love to you 🙂
Oh, Ester, but at the edge of that fear that what we do will be “distorted and turned against” us lies the distortion in our own lives between what we THINK is ‘good’ and what really is good. We can use that fear to never move a muscle, or we can love anyway – and fail – and love again – and fail again – until the day comes that we finally get it right. That fear has to be turned into a fear of NOT doing something in those places, because there lies the frontier of our own desperate need. There in that frontier are the places where I need forgiveness myself. When I forgive you for distorting and turning my efforts to reach out and touch, I get forgiven for distorting and turning my Father’s efforts to reach out to me. I am learning that I am invincible only in the places where He is already truly King. In the rest of them, I need you to show me my forgiveness points, for, sure as certain, I am blind to them. Not for nothing are the poor always with us: they are there as litmus tests to show us our heart’s own hardness towards heaven, and the forgiveness we need most. Every time my love got swatted down, I learned shocking truths about others – true – but, mostly, about me! Imagine that!
Not that it will deter me from doing what is right and good before ABBA, Laurita, certainly not! Some will reciprocate and be grateful, thankfully, when we are moved by compassion, we act, fear or not, with no agendas, nor glory to self.
That power we are endowed with will be rich and fulfilling. Shalom!
The golden calf…
There are truths we can worship by throwing them AS OUR “EXCUSE” OR “REASON” for not trusting in God. The reality these only exist because we look through our own eyes instead of listening to the Spirit of Truth that these temporary realities cannot understand…
While we are being prepared let’s wait patiently for YHVH’ command and not create our own truths of what to promote… God knows best and will always guide each servant exactly as He intends without us creating our illusion of serving Him. Just do not neglect the least of the called…