I’m always so impressed when I see my strong Christian friends putting God first in their lives, serving in ministry, loving others selflessly, showing mercy and grace in difficult situations. It’s unfortunate that these people stick out like a sore thumb when Jesus calls every one of us to do the same! These people are truly living out their faith for God’s glory and quietly moving mountains. I pray that all of us will lean in to the same kind of obedience. But you probably feel like I often feel, that you can’t do those things for some reason. If so, this message is for you.

Dear Christian, do you know that you have super powers? You’ve probably heard that “faith can move mountains!”

Matthew 17:20 – “He replied, ‘Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.'”

But there’s a catch. Your power is activated by ‘yielding to God’s power’. In other words, it’s not the strength of your faith, it is the substance of your faith that is powerful. You can have a lot of faith in the wrong things and have no power. OR you can fail to activate your power because you do not obey God. And there is the danger of trying to be powerful in things God never asked you to do, using faith as an excuse to get your own way, but that’s a blog for another day. God empowers us to SERVE HIM, not ourselves.

Our faith leads us to trust God’s power to control the situation. His power is displayed through our submission and obedience and willingness to act or not act in accordance with our own desires. If that seems confusing, let me explain.

Every day we have to choose how to react to many different situations. You could be at home with your family, at work, or in public. It might be a positive or negative scene, but you want to represent Christ.

Let’s say you find yourself at a party and people are drinking and you observe that two of them are getting angry and possibly about to fight. You might get nervous or, depending on your personality, you might get excited. As a Christian, you need to remember that you have a responsibility to your master Jesus.

You have some choices in any chaotic situation. You can leave. You can join the argument. You can stand by and watch and see what happens. You can act in your own strength and wisdom and decide to what to do next, OR, you can pray!

James 1:5 – “If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.”

Every situation is different. God may actually want you to leave, speak up, or be silent, but He always wants you to pray. But he may move you to intervene , in HIS power, in some way. But to be able to know what God wants you to do, you need to be close to God. That means you should be seeking God daily, hourly, so that you become used to the Spirit controlling your words and actions.

The power I speak of comes from doing what Jesus calls “abiding” in Him. You can’t be a powerful servant of Christ unless you are ‘IN Christ’. This is hard to explain because it goes against our natural desire to be our own boss. The unsaved naturally give in to their flesh, even when they think they are ‘good people’. But Christians don’t automatically lose our old ways. We have to fight this constant resistance from our flesh that does not want to submit to God.

John 15:5 – “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”

And our human limitations of hunger, fatigue, hormones, illness, etc. can make it even harder to resist the demands of the flesh that want immediate satisfaction. So even when we believe in Jesus, we are weakened by our flesh. Pride is always ready to stop us from obeying the Spirit. But thankfully we have the Holy Spirit to help us in our weakness.

When I am weak, He is strong! We must always remember this. We can tend to try to act in our human strength when we are feeling empowered for various reasons. But that actually puts us in danger of being outside of God’s will and doing what WE think is best. So we must be careful to pray when we are feeling on top of the world AND when we feel beat down.

Galatians 5:16-17 – “So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh.”

Back to our power. The devil cannot control us. He doesn’t have that power. But he can tempt us and we sometimes tempt ourselves. The power of God to rescue us and to help others comes from being very careful to obey God, to pray, and to ask for wisdom. The next step is to act in faith, believing what we know about God to be true.

So in our story earlier, after you pray and open your heart to the Spirit’s guidance, you need to proceed from whatever the Spirit leads you to do, trusting that God knows what will happen next. He may give you a specific Bible passage to guide your, or you might suddenly get an idea of how to distract the two angry people, or he may just tell you to get out of there and don’t go back. He will never tell you to do anything that is sinful or goes against what is in the Bible. If you don’t get a specific instruction, just keep praying for God to intervene, and do not add to the chaos.

In a different type of scenario, God can empower you when you want to share your faith with others but are not sure how to start. Pray and pay attention to the opportunities God provides. People are often primed by God to hear the message and we just don’t know it. Ask the Spirit to give you the words to speak.

Acts 1:8 – “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

The world and the culture are in crisis! Children, families, teenagers are dying and suffering from the effects of the culture wars. They need the healing power of Jesus. They do not know the truth. God wants to use us in this supernatural battle! But the flesh and the devil are hard at work to distract and intimidate us into staying neutral. We must be willing to put aside our own comfort and let God work through us.

What does the Lord’s prayer say? THY will be done. We are often the medium that God uses to accomplish this prayer. Yes, He can act apart from our cooperation and He does. But it is our privilege as God’s redeemed children to cooperate with His plan by surrendering to His Spirit in our day to day lives.

The Holy Spirit is not a meme or a positive affirmation. He is a powerful person and He lives inside us. Let Him guide you as you prayerfully submit to His will and you will discover the true power of faith. You will enjoy the blessing of seeing God act and He will get the glory!

Shout out to my faithful Bible study teacher for being such a good example of a powerful servant.