Walking Empowered.

Some time back, God was speaking to my heart.  Almost like a challenge and it’s a challenge I want to throw out to you, today.  What if you walk into your day, certain of His Presence and confident of His care?  On that particular day, I had been thinking about some fairly sizeable stressful things that were taking place in my life. 

Maybe you have some things going on in your life right now, that are pressuring you.  What if, we didn’t entertain any fearful ideas?  What if we didn’t allow discouraging tapes to rewind again and again in our minds?  What if the moment anything remotely discouraging or fearful began to raise its ugly head, we shut it down and remind ourselves of the faithfulness of God?  Truthfully, this has been an ongoing practice of mine but on that morning, God seemed to be asking me for something more.

He challenged me to begin to expect a positive outcome, no matter the circumstance.  You know the Word does say, that He will work all things together for our good, yet I allow myself countless times to entertain ideas that say otherwise.  I don’t know about you but my default program often seems to take me in an entirely different direction.  I am a work in progress.

It's also about taking the time immediately amid the difficulties, instead of allowing the devil to torment us throughout our entire day.  We can do something radical and begin to worship God right there in the midst of our difficulties.  We can get our hearts and minds focused and fixed on Jesus and who He is and the fact that He is right here with us.

Every challenge that comes our way, He has a solution.  He is not worried or concerned and since we are His and He cares for us, why should we fret, especially since He has promised to help us?

As He spoke these truths to my heart, I became acutely aware that I couldn’t do this in my own strength.  I needed to be empowered by His Spirit to walk in that place of a confident expectation and to remain untouched by the cares of the world. To have a resting place amid the stressful storm swirling about me, I need His power! 

I can’t muster up a positive attitude like all the new age gurus would want me to believe.  They merely think that a positive thought or affirmation will magically pop them across the great divide of uncertainty. I can’t even draw solely on my history of goodness with Christ.  We need power! The power of God to stay in the place of hope-filled expectation.  We need Jesus and nothing or no one else will do!  We need Him and His empowerment.

I realize even as I type, I use to think that if I confessed, declared, proclaimed, and grabbed a hold of the Word that I could somehow stay positive.  I also believed that’s what I was supposed to do.  I mean, as a good Christian with the armor of God, I was to put on the whole armor, take up my shield of faith and do all these great things. And while these are all important in our walk of faith, there is still something missing with this equation.  Jesus, and the infilling of His Spirit!  

The wholly dependency of being filled with the Holy Spirit, continually.  Otherwise, I am still operating out of my strength and best efforts. We must be filled, again and again!  We need His empowerment to walk in peace and stay in His Peace in midst of every storm.  But how many of us take that time throughout our day to focus on Him, depend on Him and draw on His power?

I want to walk throughout my day with the conscious awareness that He is with me.  I want to walk knowing that whatever happens in my day, Jesus is ready to lead me in victory, into a positive outcome, regardless of the circumstances.  I want to walk with that certain expectation and unwavering hope.

I am reminded of the disciples that went before me. In Acts 4:1-27 the scripture records that Peter was filled with the Holy Spirit as he spoke.  The Jewish religious leaders of that day were respected by many and had the authority to take someone’s life if they felt someone was being blasphemous or was a threat to the church in any way. 

They had taken Peter and John into custody on the heels of a man being healed through Peter and together with John, they preached about the resurrection.  The following day, they set them before the council to determine their fate.  Their very first question in verse 7 was, “by what power have you done these things?”  I love that they recognized that such a substantial miracle does not take place without power.  They wanted to know, where did this power come from? 

After, being strongly reprimanded by these Jewish leaders, Peter and John were threatened and told not to speak or teach in the name of Jesus.  Yet, right there, in front of the council, Peter took the liberty to preach Christ. He even went so far as to confront the religious leaders about their sin, guilt, and responsibility for the murder of Jesus Christ.

There seems to be even more that I am laying hold of as I read these passages.   I am receiving a Holy Spirit nudge to pursue Him more actively to be filled with His Spirit, especially during a time when I would want to retreat or feel overwhelmed. This is the time to press in and lay hold of the power of Christ.  The power needed to maintain His peace in my mind and heart.  This is my right as a child of God, as a disciple of Christ, to walk in His power every moment of every day.  Yet, I even sense Him urging me to lay hold of more.

The scripture records that people were seeing something more that set these men apart.  In verse 13 they saw “boldness” and not the boldness of any humankind. They managed to put two and two together and witnessed this was a boldness like no other.  It goes on to say at the end of that verse that they “realized” that Peter and John had been with Jesus. 

There it is folks, that defining moment that there was something extraordinary that set these men apart.  They had a boldness that could only come from spending time with Jesus!  That’s what I want, boldness!  A boldness that can only come from spending time with Jesus and being filled by His Spirit!  I pray, that you will rise up to this challenge and seek to be continually filled with the Holy Spirit and to go out in His boldness day after day!

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Acts 4:13 NKJV

13 Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men, they marveled. And they realized that they had been with Jesus.