We live in a strange time in history because we live with so many images of people who are “Inauthentic” and just pretending to be genuine.  For example, news commentators and politicians continually craft an image or narrative instead of being authentic about who and what they believe about God and life in general. It seems that modern culture has increasingly traded good character for a good image.  The really sad thing is that can be expected from the world but many pastors have gotten in lock step with the world when it comes to working on their image more than their character.

When I look at the average believer today I am saddened by the lack of the ability to understand what’s going on in the spirit in any given conversation, let alone what’s going on in one’s own personal life. Too many believers walk in life as if they were never born again but only have the knowledge that God loves them and Jesus died to forgive them.

We live in a day and age when this life is hard pressed on so many fronts. Turn on the nightly news and one quickly sees people are so stressed out they end up doing extreme things that are out of control, like pulling out a gun and shooting someone for little to no reason other than they were mad. It seems people have little to no ability to control their emotions these days.

I have spent four articles thus far building the case that the average Christian believer walks out their Christian experience periodically fueled by their knowledge of the Scriptures and yet very little by the counsel and power of the Holy Spirit as evidenced by the carnality within the church or individual believers. If one would just study the nature of the church today you would quickly discover that most churches and denominations came out of church splits, and not expansion from evangelism since the 1500s when the reformation happened. To be truthful, this had to happen because carnality had been settling into the church since Constantine in 320 AD and the breakaway factions wanting to get back to what the bible said about living as Christ intended believers to live. 

The first article I wrote on this subject asked the question of whether we are fueling our Christian life by the Holy Spirit or just by our human will power.  I used the Jesus Movement as an example of what I and others of this time period noticed, namely the supernatural manifestations of the Holy Spirit in the lives of many believers. It was a powerful time to grow in Christ and I believe it could happen again today if believers become informed and hunger for God like never before.

I am amazed at how many established houses of worship are so afraid of the supernatural they will do anything to discredit reports of the supernatural being manifested in other congregations. I know for some congregations it’s the pastors who are afraid of losing control, but for many it’s bad teaching the pastors received in seminary. When I first got saved I discovered very quickly that few churches actually welcome the manifestations of the Holy Spirit. 

I recently reread a great book by Mark Buchanan called “Holy Wild.” In one chapter he talks about our will power only having so much ability in our lives to change things, and in reality it’s not our will power that is lacking for so many of us but our “Won’t Power.” Let me explain by using my own life as an example.

From the time we were babies we were taught and learned to depend on ourselves, even while we depended on parents and others. Coming into a relationship with God we often have to “UNLEARN” our self-dependency and learn to “LEAN INTO” God’s presence for guidance and values. Becoming a child of God happens when we surrender to Christ’s saving grace.However, learning to walk as a child of God is normally a huge learning curve, especially if you were not raised in a Christian home.

You would think sharing the love of God with others and telling how God sent his only Son into the world as a baby would be an easy thing to do, yet many believers never share Christ, even during the Christmas Season. I want to look at just a few of the reasons why so many Christians struggle with expressing their love for God even when the Holy Spirit sets the stage for communicating our own salvation experience.

When we find ourselves in a struggle that seems we must have a miracle to overcome, I think we often jump to conclusions about what that miracle is meant to look like. All to often God works miracles in tandem with natural means and thus we often don’t think they are miracles at all.