I had the privilege of leading a Bible study with my college and career group on Saturday, and I thought I would share it with the rest of you. Something that I focus a lot on is being empowered. I love the word and the passion behind it. It gets me stirred up and makes me want to take on mountains and giants. Being empowered by the things of God is what keeps me motivated and full of life.
Here is a delicious piece of Scripture that empowers me.
2 Peter 1:2-4 “Grace and peace be multiplied to you in
the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord; seeing that His
divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness,
through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and
excellence. For by these He has granted to us His
precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust.”
My favourite part here is verse
3: "seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining
to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His
own glory and excellence."
Granted us everything for life and godliness? Holy smokes. I believe this gives us the true meaning of relying on God.
As Christians,
we can often have a mindset that we are completely helpless without God
intervening and doing everything for us. Think about some of your cries out to
God for Him to help you. Where maybe you knew what the answer was or what you
needed to do, but didn’t feel empowered to do it. Sometimes it’s when we need a job, looking for a spouse, succeeding
in your finances, or something as big as finding your calling in life. We pray
for God to take care of it, to bless us, or to give us the answer. And those
are not wrong prayers! But there is so much more to prayer than asking God to
take care of us.
The story in Mark 4:35 - 42 is where Jesus calms the storm. Cole's Notes version is Jesus and the disciples are in a boat, there's a huge storm, Jesus is sleeping, the disciples are all "Baaah! We're gonna die!! Jesus, don't you care?! Wake up and do something!" So Jesus gets up, and tells the waves to chill out and be quiet, but then turns to the disciples and says this, "“Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?”
That's a kick in the stomach right there. The disciples are pleading with Jesus, freaking out, needing Him to intercede. And He wasn’t actually super impressed with that. But He did tell them what they were missing. He empowered them to be able to do it themselves.
There is a huge difference between knowing a biblical concept and believing it to be true, and actually applying it in your thought life, your decisions, your actions, and your regular life. The difference between us and the rest of the world, is that we have Christ living and moving through us. It’s not “doing it ourselves”, but it is taking the tools that God has placed within us, and taking on the challenges in life with tenacity and persistence.
1 Timothy 6:12 says, “ Fight the good fight of the faith! Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses.”
The concept of weakness in the Bible is not to make us feel that we are in a constant state of helplessness. For every mile of road (or truth), there are two miles of ditch. The truth here is that we need to rely on God. On one side of the ditch, we have people who think they can do everything without God and that He is just there to make us feel nice and do good things for us once in a while. But on the other side, which seems to be easier to fall into, we believe that we are always weak, and never able to fight any battles. God is Almighty, so therefore we are cowards and infants.
2 Corinthians 12:9-10 says “He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
The key here is “God’s power resting on me”. His power is the focus, not our weakness. We can often take Scriptures and focus on our inabilities, our faults and sins, and our limitations. And although all of those things are true without God, our attention needs to be directed on Him and how He works through us! Romans 8:11 tells us that the same spirit that raised Christ from the dead lives in us! That has been given to us when we accepted Christ.
And while we do need to recognize our limitations apart from God and humble ourselves, it’s unhealthy not to recognize the power He has placed within us. He loves us more than we are able to grasp, and I think He is sad or disappointed in the moments where we don’t access what He has given us when He sacrificed His life for us. God is so completely for us and like He says in 2 Peter, He has given us everything pertaining to life and godliness. He is an empowering God.
Feeling that
empowerment comes from so many places, including hearing His voice, messages from
speakers, other people speaking truth over you, and obviously the Bible. Scripture
is absolutely full of empowering and encouraging words and we need to be
drawing our attention to how His glory is made manifest through us.
These are some of my favourite empowering verses, and if you're going to read them, read them with passion, excitement, and fervor!
1 Corinthians 15:58 (Message Bible) “With all this going for us, my dear, dear friends, stand your ground. And don`t hold back. Throw yourselves into the work of the master, confident that nothing you do for Him is a waste of time or effort.”
Ephesians 6:10-13 “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power.
Put on the full armour of God, so that you
can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For
our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against
the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the
spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore
put on the full armour of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be
able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.”
Romans 8:28-32 “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified. What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?”
:37 “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.”
For the most part, God works through us, not just for us. Let yourself be available to that and see what incredible things happen in your life.
