Spiritual Empowerment

Living comes across as hard far too often. However, last week I talked about going for better. I’m a mix of disappointed, confused, and excited about where life will go next when looking back at what I did last year. The great thing is that I can tell all of this to God and gain his help. He will empower us to live the life how he wanted us to all along.

He reminded me to dig into blog posts from an old blog to determine what to share this week. I’ve done this a few times because of being busy. This week I couldn’t think of the words I wanted to say. It led to me realizing I still wanted to whine about things I already handed over to God rather than letting Him empower me to move on His way. Don’t worry, Father and I will have discussions about this and maybe it will lead to something I can share someday.

However, I think the following old post says it well.

Spiritual Empowerment

Paul suffered a lot to tell the world about Christ and how we are to operate as a family under God the Father. Even when imprisoned, he wrote letters of encouragement, and sometimes discipline, to help everyone stay on the right path with God. God empowered him for his mission and no matter what, he kept doing it. He understood God’s love and showed it to everyone he met, even in letters he sent.

Eph 3:12-19 NLT

Because of Christ and our faith in him, we can now come fearlessly into God's presence, assured of his glad welcome. 13 So please don't despair because of what they are doing to me here. It is for you that I am suffering, so you should feel honored and encouraged.

14 When I think of the wisdom and scope of God's plan, I fall to my knees and pray to the Father, 15 the Creator of everything in heaven and on earth. 16 I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will give you mighty inner strength through his Holy Spirit. 17 And I pray that Christ will be more and more at home in your hearts as you trust in him. May your roots go down deep into the soil of God's marvelous love. 18 And may you have the power to understand, as all God's people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love really is. 19 May you experience the love of Christ, though it is so great you will never fully understand it. Then you will be filled with the fullness of life and power that comes from God.

In this part of Ephesians, he tells us we can go boldly to God because God gladly welcomes us. No matter what is going on, He wants us to talk to Him about it and gain His guidance. Paul did this regularly and knew what man did to him did not matter compared to his relationship with Christ. Therefore, he told people not to despair about his persecution because God’s work would be accomplished. We all should be able to have this same fortitude with God, no matter what people think of us for following God.

Paul prays for them to have the empowerment of God. It takes God’s strength to do the work, and He gives us this power to do as He directs us. We don’t have to do this on our own. As soon as we do, things fall apart. This empowerment not only lets us do what we should, but we can do it under severe persecution like Paul. He never gave up despite beatings, attempted stoning, and imprisonment. His letters still got to the various churches as his way of reaching out when he could not be there. The churches could send people to visit him. Many of his captors learned about God because he let God’s power handle what needed to be done.

We are the vessels that His might and love can flow through into the world, no matter where we are. We get all of this because of God’s love that runs far deeper, farther and higher than we can imagine. God never leaves us alone or without His help to live life to the fullest the way He intended. He will never give us a mission that we can’t finish. We can go boldly to Him for all the help that we need, even to confess we got lost in our purpose. He will set us straight and send us back out with His power. Don’t be afraid to go to Him about anything. He will keep you on track in His mighty love and power. All we have to do is listen and go where He says, like Paul did.

Picture by TA Sorrell