Power

For the past two weeks, I have been thinking a lot about the power of God. I've had some really interesting conversations with a number of people about this topic.

I tend to emphasize God's redemptive power in my life, perhaps because that is the most tangible and expressionable for me. I so clearly see how God is shaping me and making me new. There is no doubt that He has saved me and is currently making me new, transforming me to be like Himself. Nearly everything I experience points me back to that. Thankfully God has opened my eyes to how He is actively working and displaying His power in myself, in my sanctification.

In all of that, I sometimes forget about Jesus' power when He was on earth. It is truly amazing to read what Jesus did to show Himself to people on earth. Jesus gave sight to the blind, healed the sick, raised the dead. Some of the most powerful moments happen in just a few sentences: "On a Sabbath Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues, and woman was there who had been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years. SHe was bent over and could not straighten up at all. When Jesus saw her, He called her forward and said to her, "Woman, you are set free from your infirmity." Then He put His hands on her, and immediately she straightened up and praised God" (Luke 13:10-13). Can you imagine? This woman was bent over for 18 years - 18 years - until Jesus saw her, put His hands on her, and raised her up. That is ridiculous and incredible and amazing.

I also forget about God's works before Jesus came to earth. God's gracious and mind-blowing covenant with His people, the parting of the Red Sea, and the endless examples of His provision for His people are just some of my favorite examples. This doesn't even get to God's work through the judges, through the kings (both good and bad), and the prophets. Every page of the Bible is ful of examples of God's power, either displayed physically or through His love.

All of these things seem so fantastic and almost unbelievable. I think that is why its so much easier for me to focus on God's power in His work in my life. Yet these stories describe the God that I say I believe. And I believe that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He is unchangeable, and so that powerful, awe-inspiring God of the Bible is the same one I serve today.

I can tell you "Bible" kinds of stories of God's power in my own life. I have seen God do the impossible. The easiest to explain occurred on mission trips and in Hungary last summer. I have story after story of my time in Hungary when God did the impossible, from silencing the birds to having a conversation with a girl that I had given up being able to talk with. But I have also experienced God's power outside of these intentionally missional environments. I have had God provide monetarily for me time and time again. My senior year of high school, after Thanksgiving, I only had about $30. That Sunday, the Lord urged me to give $20 as an offering. "Lord, You know I need gas, and I need to buy Christmas presents, and I don't have much money, and I don't have any babysitting jobs lined up," I prayed. "But I an going to trust You in this. You are going to have to come through here." I wrote that check and just waited. A week or two later, I randomly received a check in the mail for $200 from my uncle, because he thought maybe I could use a little extra. Little did he know that he was the tool God used to work so powerfully in my life! Some may see that as a coincidence, but because God knows me so integrally and intimately, He knows how He displayed His power to me in that instance.

I think those stories are harder to tell, because they are easy for people to write off as coincidence. Yet personally, deep in my heart, I know the truth. And I also believe that we as Believers, who say we believe in this God of the Bible, have to trust in that power. I have to trust that God is who He says He is, that He will work just as powerfully today as He did before. I can walk in faith and ask for the impossible because I know the God I serve. I know that He is the God of the impossible. I know that more than anything else I want His will, and that enables me to do what might seem unreasonable.

I want to live trusting in God, in His power. I want to ask and watch how God displays His power today, through provision and love and miraculous works just as He has done in the past. Because I have seen Him do it in my life up till now, and I know that He will continue to do so. I want to live freely, trusting in the God I say that I believe.