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.