Power Indispensable

You cannot live the normal Christian life without a demonstration of power.

“Normal” as in being right. I recently learned a powerful paradigm: right is right if nobody is doing it; wrong is wrong if everybody is doing it.

Consider the following words form the Apostle Paul to the church at Corinth:

And my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. (1 Cor 2:4, NKJV)

He is saying that you shouldn’t believe me if all I have is mere talk, but you should believe me when my message is backed up by a demonstration of God’s power – power to know of your problem before you tell me, power to heal you when you are sick, power to work miracle when you need one, power to differentiate if you are bothered by evil spirits or led by God’s Spirit, and power to prophesy into your future – speaking great things into being while they are not yet.

What is good for the great apostle is good enough for me. That’s why I insist that the gospel we preach must be backed up by a demonstration of God’s power.

What if we haven’t got it?

Then there’s only one thing to do: ask until you get it. You have not because you asked not.

The worst thing we can do is to make excuses. Paul couldn’t have meant what we read. The days of power is past with the apostles all dead. Because I don’t have it, it cannot be true. We don’t have to emphasize healing as we have good doctors now and good medicine. The supernatural only appeals to the simple and superstitious but today folks are knowledgeable and educated.

But does God’s word tell us that a day will come when our standard will be different from that of the Apostle Paul? Who gives us the right to demand faith without demonstrating God when even Paul dared not?

We are called believers, not doubters. Doubters doubt; believers believe. Every word God said. Plainly. Simply.

For the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power. (1 Cor 4:20, NIV)

So if we want to preach the Gospel, we must back up with power. It is that simple.

The Power of Righteousness

The Old Testament emphasizes on the power of sin, whereas the New Testament stresses on the power of righteousness. Believers ought to differentiate between the two, else they will be confused while reading their Bible and not be able to reap the full benefit for their lives.

One powerful illustration to bring across the point is this: in the Old Testament, touching a leper makes one unclean; in the New Testament, touching a leper makes the leper clean. In fact Jesus authorized his disciples to cleanse the lepers (Matt 10:8).

Have you ever thought about this: in asking them to touch the leper Jesus is asking His disciples to break the Law! Why could his disciples now break the Law? Because it is no more about right and wrong, it is about Life. Law defines what is right and what is wrong, but it cannot give life.

Remember what happened in the Garden of Eden? Adam and Eve chose to know right and wrong instead of choosing Life. And so began mankind’s downward spiral until the Redeemer comes.

The Old Testament’s emphasis is the power of sin. Again and again it tells us that we are unable to overcome the power of sin (and it is sin that causes all human misery). All that passing laws against sin did was to produce more lawbreakers (Rom 5:20, MSG). That is exactly why we need a savior. After the Savior has done His job saving, sin has no more hold over us. We have been made righteous by His work and now have His Life living in us and out of us!

It is a beautiful thing that we can now expect the Life of God to flow out of us. When it does, it will overcome all forms of darkness surrounding us. Sin, sickness, oppression, fear, poverty and you name it; they have no fight with this Life. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly (John 10:10, NKJV).

So for believers the focus now is the power of righteousness, not the power of sin. Christians are New Testament believers!

If we fail to grasp this we will be looking for the power of sin even in the New Testament. If we insist on trying to be right on our own, it is like trying to be like Adam and Eve, doing it all over again. This is reading the Bible backwards.