Do We Understand Why Power Comes? (Part 1)

So often believers have one of two mindsets about when and if we have God’s power actively working in our lives. Having or experiencing power from God to perform healing or experience miracles often is confusing at best, and can tend to create a misunderstanding of scripture that makes us stumble in our beliefs or practices.

The first concept or mindset that believers develop is that only special people can preform miracles of God. These believers feel they are, if you will, “Off The Hook” with any responsibility to walk in power. The second tendency or mindset is with believers who have experienced personal miracles, and so assume anyone can move in the miraculous whenever they want just because they are Christians. It is my opinion that both belief systems are inflated and exaggerated and scripture bears this out.

It is so easy to relegate the responsibility of walking in the power of God to the will of God and thus feel justified for not walking in such power. It’s also easy for many to feel they are off the hook by believing that only special people can pray for a miracle to happen. Not all Old Testament prophets walked in the miraculous, just as not all Christians do. Just as it is easy to think it’s only one thing that hinders us in our walk in the Lord so it is not just one thing that hinders us with regards to the miraculous.

Answers to our prayers often have various factors such as the will of God, the faith of the person, spiritual warfare and the list goes on.

A life of faith is both simple and complicated. When we come into a relationship with God the Father, through Christ, it seems so simple and yet in reality there were a lot of moving parts to our conversion. Someone witnessed to us maybe multiple times, over a long period of time. The Holy Spirit convicts our hearts many times, maybe over months and years, of the reality of God and his offer of forgiveness before we finally surrender. We often wrestle for a period of time with our past mistakes, and then there is lack of willingness to surrender. Because of our past brokenness there may be more complexities to overcome before our conversion. What appears to be a simple thing often is a very complex thing. God often orchestrates many things we may never understand to help unbelievers come to faith in him.

When we look at healing either from the Old Testament or the New Testament we can start to see just how complex healing or miracles can be. If we look at many of the healings Jesus preformed there is a mixture of details revealing how people received their miracles and i want us to explore just some of them.

Sometimes Jesus performed miracles just by himself, without help or assistance. Sometimes he performed a miracle with the assistance or cooperation of the person needing the miracle, and at times he worked with others’ faith who interceded for the sick or needy person. Since normally we don’t know if God will heal or not, Jesus encourages to pray in faith and not give up. The question still remains as to what happens when we pray and what does God expect of us when we do pray? 

When we pray are we encouraging God to release a miracle or is there something else that he wants to happen? What if by praying we actually strengthen our faith by focusing on God as the healer or miracle provider rather than the problem or sickness? What if God is trying to develop our faith so it grows grows while we pray so that faith grows to full strength and meets the requirement for God to move supernaturally?

Let’s look at just a few elements of what promotes God’s miraculous power being displayed in the life of Jesus. Mind you this is just one event and there many more to explore to find the answer we are looking for.

First, we need to realize that Jesus emptied himself of his nature and power of being God, according to Philippians 2:6-8 where Paul says Jesus became a human being with all the limitations of a man. Secondly, Luke’s gospel says that when Jesus was baptized by John the baptist he was filled with the Holy Spirit before being tempted in the wilderness. This is significant because Jesus shows that he needed to be filled with the Holy Spirit just like we need to be filled if we are going to defeat the enemies over our own temptations.

Luke 4:1

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the desert.

Thirdly, Jesus often withdrew from the public eye to get refreshed in the presence of his Heavenly Father. It was during these private prayer times that Jesus was filled and energized with the power of the Holy Spirit. Without regular “REFILLS” of the Holy Spirit our power for miracles or personal victories become minimized, even though God still loves us and wants our best. Luke also references that during one particular ministry time “The Power of the Lord was present” which implies at other times it was not.

Luke 5:16

But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.

Luke 5:17

One day as he was teaching, Pharisees and teachers of the law, who had come from every village of Galilee and from Judea and Jerusalem, were sitting there. And the power of the Lord was present for him to heal the sick. 

Finally, Jesus finds himself ministering to a crowd from inside a house when four men brought a paralyzed man to get prayed for but were unable to get this man into Jesus presence.  So they went onto the roof of the house and made an opening to lower the man down to Jesus. Amazing, the tenacity of these friend to do such an act of kindness and determination. Scripture says when Jesus “Saw” the faith of these friends he declared the man is forgiven and healed. So in this particular event the faith of others made the difference in this paralyzed man’s life.

Luke 5:20

When Jesus saw their faith, he said, “Friend, your sins are forgiven.”

In this story and others, there seems to be a combination of “REASONS” why miracles or power are released from God to us. Sometimes God just decided to move and there is no reason outside of his divine wisdom to account for why, but there are other times that God responds to the infilling of the Holy Spirit and the faith of those seeking help. These two key elements are powerful to the believer who seeks the Lord’s assistance. If we want to move mountains  in the natural we have to rely on the Holy Spirit and our own developed faith muscles.

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.” 

Questions:

1) Do we realize that being regularly filled with the Holy Spirit is vital to our empowerment? (Eph 5:18)

2) Do we realize that without faith on our part God will not respond to our request for power, but with faith we, by God’s help, can move mountains? (Heb 6:4)

Loving to uncover the secrets of the kingdom of God through His word,

Pastor Dale