Power to Help

Last weekend after our worship service, a lady came up saying her new car (less than 100 miles on it) appeared dead. It would not start, and none of the electronics were functioning. Everything was unresponsive.

Some of our men analyzed the situation and concluded she had left something turned on, draining the new battery to nothing. They recommended she get her car jump-started and let the battery re-charge. Common problem. Probably happened to most of us more than once.

 Sometimes we feel like that spiritually. We might look good on the outside, but we feel a little (or a lot) dead inside. We don't really feel much toward God. When we try to focus on spiritual things or read the Bible, something like a low-lying June fog clouds our brain. Doubts flit around our mind like flies on a sultry summer day. We are tired, distracted, and unfocused. How can we connect with God? Is there any help?

The last two days, I have been writing about the importance of God's word. Today, I want to point out that power is available to help us know and understand God, and really connect with Him.

Writing to the Ephesian Christians, Paul told them he was praying that their eyes would be opened to see the power that was available to them. The Greek word he uses for “power” is dunamis.  This is the word we get our English words dynamite, dynamic, and dynamo from. Paul is clearly trying to tell us that a lot of power is available to help us know God and experience his power in our lives.

Here are a few other verses about the power available to us. Notice how many times Paul uses the word “power.”

“I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

 ^“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.” Ephesians 3:16-21

My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power.” 1 Corintians 3:4, 5

“I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection. . .” Philippians 3:10 (When Paul says he wants to know the power of Christ’s resurrection in his life, he is not thinking here about the Resurrection at the Second Coming. He is saying He wants God’s resurrecting power to be at work in his life now, on a daily basis.

That is what he was saying in Ephesians 1:18-20 too. “I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know (by experience). . .his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead.”

What kind of power does it take to raise the dead? The power God is offering to jump start and maintain our spiritual life is the power of the Holy Spirit. (He is very powerful. He created the world at God’s command, gives us new birth when we trust Jesus as our Savior, and will someday raise us from the dead at the Resurrection.) Actually, we don’t need a jump start; we need a resurrection or new creation. That’s because the Bible describes us as being dead—as in dead, dead.

“As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins. . .but because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy,^ made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.” Ephesians 2:1-5

Our spiritual deadness is why the writers of the Bible cry out to God to resurrect them spiritually and to create a new heart in them. David wrote, “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me.” Psalm 51:10,11

So when we pray for God’s help to understand the Bible, we are admitting we are a little (or a lot) dead and need His creative power to resurrect us. When we admit our sin and our need, He can help us. In fact it is His great pleasure to help us. But first we have to admit our need; because if we don’t see a need and think we can figure it out on our own, He can’t do much to help us.

God absolutely loves to help us, His children. Jesus died to make that possible. All we have to do is admit our need, ask His help, and believe He will do it (that’s faith). Chances are He is already at work.

Michael Brownfield

Italics Mine. Scripture quotations from the New International Version of the Bible; 1984 by the International Bible Society