Pastor Kevin G. Harney writes,
“God’s Kingdom isn’t about getting more power – it’s about being empowered to face life head on and fulfill His purposes for us.”
How do we find this empowerment and overcome the difficulties of life? Pastor Harney discusses gaining empowerment from God.
How can we find empowerment despite our human nature being inclined to sin?
Pastor Harney draws from the teachings in Romans 6 where Paul talks about being buried with Christ and raised again in new life. To become empowered, we must embark on a journey of faith.
“… repentance is part of it; a part of it is knowing that we’ve been buried and our old self has been crucified. That picture of going under the water and coming out again, that picture of being buried with Christ and raised again in new life.”
Each day we must acknowledge that we’re dying from sin and dying from ourselves. We must acknowledge that we’ve been raised with Christ and that He ascended and sits at the right hand of the Father.
“He’s the one who walks with us now, and fills us now by His Spirit.”
What other promises can we gain from knowing that Christ ascended to heaven?
Before Jesus left this world, in John 16:7 he said,
“But very truly I tell you, it is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.”
So by seeking out time with God, we are given the Holy Spirit that Jesus promised to us. Pastor Harney emphasizes that this is a day-by-day journey that brings us closer to God and allows us to draw strength from Him.
This strength that we gain from God helps us to battle our sinful nature.
Another key point that Pastor Harney emphasizes is that no one is perfect. We all struggle with sin and we’re all going to make mistakes. Even Paul wrote in the Bible that the very thing he hates he finds himself doing, whereas every good thing he wants to do is difficult to do. He then laments and says that he’s a wretched man, and what we need to take away from this is that he’s honest that he struggles, and we all have struggle.
“I think in that honesty comes from that place of repentance and with that honesty comes that movement towards saying ‘God I can’t make it day-by-day without walking in your presence, without being filled with your spirit, without walking in your power,’”
We try so often to do what we’re not meant to do. We try to be powerful and we try to do it ourselves. Or we often will feel like there’s nothing we can do and so we give up and we quit.
“But then I say ‘wait a minute, there’s hope in Jesus because he fills us with his power, he walks in a relationship with us, and when we fall and when we stumble and when we do the very thing we hate to do, his grace is sufficient. His grace is enough. But he still calls us to walk in his power and walk in his strength and the repent and become more of the man or the woman of God that He wants us to be. And the whole writing of this book, my heart’s passion was, I want to help people find those sources of strength and power that will really fill them day by day to live for Jesus.”
