Many people are under the impression that their minds are powerful enough to create their environment. While there is a bit of truth in this thinking there is a lot of danger in it as well. We can veer off the path of submitted holiness to God when we think we have the power in our minds to create our own universe. There can be confusion around the power of Holy Spirit manifesting the things of God in a believer’s life with the human’s ability to manifest that power.
God's power is in His people to act, to do, and to will as He wills. for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure. - Phl 2:13 NKJV When we put the kingdom of God first, He is on our side. This means God’s power is working for us, not against us.
God works in us for His pleasure to be done through us. Yet, every day, every moment we wrestle with the things of this world, our own thinking, our old thinking, and the thoughts of our will being done instead of His. When this type of thinking becomes our motivation, we refuse the power of God to be demonstrated through us. Every time. Every time the problem or situation in front of us looks bigger than God, we are quenching the power of His Spirit that is working in us. Even when this thinking is in our unconscious mind, where we are unaware of what we are thinking, we quench His heart. God wills what is in His heart. Think about that for a moment. What He cares about and concerns Him is in His heart, and He wills that we are at one with Him.
The power of God is like the work that took place, with the dynamis power that was in force when God raised Jesus from the tomb (Eph 1:19-20). This power, think Lazarus, for those of you who know the word of God. This power worked through Jesus to speak to the dead person in a tomb that stinketh, "Lazarus, come out." The power within the words of the Holy Spirit was spoken through the mouth of Jesus Christ. A God in a man's body, and we have God in our bodies. Jesus, Son of God, had the power of God, the Father, His Spirit working through Him when He called a dead thing to life.
God calls the things that are not as if they were. He can do that because He is God – we can only do that if His Spirit in us tells us to do so.
(as it is written, "I have made you a father of many nations") in the presence of Him whom he believed--God, who gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did; - Rom 4:17 NKJV
God can call a dead thing a living thing because He is God. If God gives us a prophetic utterance to speak to the dead thing, like Ezekiel was told to prophesy to dead bones, and He will cause it to rise, we can. The thing proclaimed will happen because it is Him, through you, speaking to the dead thing. You do not have the power in your mind, thinking, or will to make the dead thing live. Your faith in connection with God's power manifests the evidence of God's will.
When Abraham was told he would be the father of innumerous people, the Bible says, And not being weak in faith, he did not consider his own body, already dead (since he was about a hundred years old), and the deadness of Sarah's womb. - Rom 4:19 NKJV
Abraham did not consider the feelings he might have attached to the fact that his body was old and his wife could no longer bear children. He let faith arise, and God delivered. It took some time for the faith result to be seen, and it was not without Abraham and Sarah stumbling into their own way of doing things. Their way produced an Ishmael that was, and still is, a thorn in the side of God's people.
Even after Abraham chose to take matters into his own hands, God restored him to the faith of the original promise, Isaac. Even when Abraham laughed at the idea that his 90-year-old wife and he, 100 years old, could have a child, God made His covenant stand. God made a covenant with people through relationships, not law. The law came later after a rebellious, lawless, and somewhat faithless group of people needed law and order to subdue their chaos.
The problem with people is we get a great god thought and declare that God said, and then it doesn't come forth. It doesn't work. It doesn't manifest as we hoped it would because the words spoken were fueled with human power, not Spirit power. So here we sit in this dilemma that our minds think God said, but it didn't happen. It did not happen because God did not say it. Things are spoken all the time in the name of God when He did not speak them, and we wonder why He did not do it.
We have these grandiose thoughts that if we were God, we would do this thing, so we put our human, finite minds in the mind of God because it sounds good to us. The word says, Who has known the mind of the LORD? Or who has been His counselor? - 1Cor 2:11
We do not know the mind of God, what He thinks or how He works. Only the Spirit of God knows God. Without Him, we have no ability whatsoever to speak the words of God with power. We are mere mortals. People, humans made powerful because He lives in us.
I don't think it is a coincidence that Jesus called fishermen to become fishers of men. Fishermen catch fish and clean fish. Jesus called Lazarus from the dead and told the people around him to unwrap him. Clean him up, get those stinky rags of death off him. Jesus' power in us preaches the gospel and gets people saved. Jesus' power through us casts out demons and gets people delivered. In our submitted will to Holy Spirit, we disciple the people, cleaning them up and getting them ready for the world. His power still works through us in every way but manifests in various ways.
Let's Pray,
Father God thank You for the privilege to be called a friend of Jesus and a child of God. I am thankful that because of my position in Christ Jesus I am a powerful human being. I pray that Your Spirit will always guide my ways and help me to steward Your power in such a way as to always give You glory and not touch it. In Jesus name, Amen.
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