I have to confess I hate waiting in line at stores or restaurants, especially at the checkout line to pay the bill. The other day I was at the checkout line at Cracker Barrel and a lady before me was paying for her meal and buying some gift items. The checker was messing up her bill and had to ring her bill up several times with multiple tickets – O brother! I have just started walking with my special boot since my left foot Achilles surgery and I gave the bill to my wife and walked outside to sit down because I can’t stand long in one place.

I wrote a previous article about what drives us in life in our decision making.  In the first article, I discussed that discovering what drives our choices is crucial and certainly worth our effort to better understand the causes and misconceptions about what drives us. My hope is to help us all evaluate what motivates us to make the best decisions and thus discover ways to fulfill God’s calling in our lives.

There is a lot of scripture that believers just pass over as poetic and sounding nice, yet God spoke these words for us to incorporate into our daily lives. One such passage is in John’s gospel were Jesus said he is the bread of life. So many in the body of Christ have taught that this is some metaphysical concept that human reasoning cannot explain or engage with so it becomes poetic theology.

Many professing Christians say they believe that scripture is the word of God and yet somehow they “Cherry-Pick” the scriptures they like and avoid the parts they don’t like. This attitude of rejecting certain scriptures and embracing others ends up twisting our concepts about God and ourselves and can make our Christian faith either powerless or, at the worst, a counterfeit faith.

As people watch the recent shootings in Texas where 19 young kids and 2 teachers were killed by an 18 year-old boy, it should be a stark reminder of how violence is the outcome of a heart devoid of God. Seeing such sights reminds us of what demons did, and still do, in and through people devoid of the spirit of God. Throughout the gospels Jesus was constantly casting out demons that torment people. These demonic spirits are more active today as we get near to the return of Jesus and the final judgement of Satan and his demons.

In this article on “WHY” the power of God comes,  I want to explore what God’s power is for. So much has been taught about God’s desire to heal us from our brokenness, whether it is physical, emotional or spiritual brokenness.  All too often believers get a distorted or lopsided perspective on God’s intentions and willingness to release power for our equipping. That being said, I will take us through various scriptures to unpack what God’s intentions are for a release of his power.  Some of this may be elementary for some of you but, whatever the case, it will remind all of the purpose and plan of God in the believer.

I listened to a sermon recently on how easy it is to live from instinct rather than identity. As believers, all too often I think we live from our past brokenness rather than from who God says we are, and who we should become in him.

Somehow the body of Christ seems to think that if we are humble we should never desire or even confess the desire to be great. Why is this? Is it because we think or have been taught that to desire such a bold thing is sinful or carnal? 

The body of Christ so often seems to have the ability to take a revelation that God gives us about some important spiritual truth and turn it into some doctrine or theology instead of learning how to apply that truth. Shouldn’t we be asking the Holy Spirit to explain how that revelation should be understood and applied? After all, Jesus specifically said the Holy Spirit would be our counselor.

Do we have any responsibility for making a miracle happen? Granted we all should realize that God is the only one who can truly make a miracle happen, but we need to consider a few things about what provokes God to move on our behalf.