Tropical Storm Beryl- Power Outage

Forgive me. I intended to get this posted yesterday. By the time I juggled everything that had to be done, it didn’t get up.

The wind and rain awaken me at 3:30 this morning. My first though was, “Do we still have power?” Even before we went to bed (we don’t normally get a lot of sleep when a hurricane or tropical depression is bearing down on us), there were already places in Jacksonville without power. At midnight, the rain stopped and the winds grew quiet, so I knew the center of the storm was passing over us. I finally fell asleep. I was awakened at 3:30 as the backside of the storm was moving through. I didn’t want to awaken Wayne so I decided to tiptoe to the den. I did awaken him, but at least I tried not to. I don’t understand why he woke up when the door slammed. No, I very carefully eased the door shut, but you’re aware of every sound when you are in a storm.

In the den I flipped on the news, did I forget to tell you…we had power… well, we did! Our TV doesn’t work without power. The radar showed the storm was passing through…the worst was over. I clicked off the television and started my prayer time. It wasn’t long until I heard a loud boom. At first I thought a big tree had fallen, but you feel the ground shake when that happens. The boom was an electrical transformer in the neighborhood directly behind us. They lost their power…we still had ours.

If you’ve ever been without power, you know…it’s no fun! It’s miserable. Besides the TV not working, nothing works. Everything you want to do you can’t do…because you don’t have any power. You can’t cook…you can’t vacuum…you can’t wash the clothes. It sounds like some folk’s vacation, but its no fun when the house is hot and you’re hungry. No, I’d rather have power and get the chores done, than sit in a dark, hot house. A day without power is NOT good! You know for certain when the power’s out!

Yet we hardly recognize our difficulty to accomplish God’s plan for our life as the lack of spiritual power. We struggle to raise our children or to succeed on our jobs without recognizing that the root problem is the lack of spiritual power. We’ve grown up, but our mantra hasn’t changed since we were that 2 year old explaining to our mom—“Me do it.” So God watches as we struggle. We fuss and cuss…I didn’t say that, we’re farther along spiritually than that…. We fuss and fume…powerless…frustrated and ineffective. We struggle to accomplish things in our own strength. You know what I’m talking about—we struggle to do things God never intended us to handle in our own strength…things that were designed for us to accomplish in partnership with Him. God wants us to do our part, the natural part, then allow Him to do the God part.

Too many times I’ve struggled instead of plugging into the resources of heaven for the power I needed; like the times that I’ve struggled with a bad attitude. Most of the time, I simply wanted a Band-Aid when He wanted to do a root canal or a root extraction on my root of bitterness. Then there’s been times I’ve struggled to believe for answers to prayer. His plan was for me to saturate my mind in Scripture, so I could enjoy the God kind of faith that only comes by hearing and hearing the Word.

So often I want to do things in my own time and my own way, but I’ve found God insists that His timing and His way is the only way. Too many times I’ve discovered the only way to have the fruit I desired, the patience I longed for, the love I just couldn’t muster-up comes only when I plug into the outlet of His divine supply in prayer and obedience. All of life has to be lived that way. I want to be independent. We still need the power of Pentecost in our lives. His power to accomplish what only He can do! God wants me to live out every area of my life dependent on Him. It requires faith and surrender. We must recognize we still need the power of Pentecost in our lives today. We are dependent on His power to accomplish what only He can do!

We need electrical power, that’s easy to remember, but do we live our lives in such a way that it requires God’s power to accomplish what we do? If we live life without requiring His power, we are living way, way, WAY below what God has for us.

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