You Will Receive Power - Ascension Sunday 2020

"You will receive power" (Acts 1:8).

Jesus promised us, his followers, power ... God's power ... power through the indwelling Spirit. "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you" (Acts 1:8). (That promise was fulfilled at Pentecost. More about that in next week's blog.)

We humans like power. Power makes us feel capable and strong. It means we have the strength to do and to achieve. It makes us feel in control. And we humans like to be in control ... which is why we like power and hate being powerless.

Being powerless makes us vulnerable. It equates to being out of control. Being powerless means someone else or something else has power over what happens to us. Every experience of fear is fundamentally an experience of feeling powerless (being vulnerable, at risk). The level of anxiety with which we live is directly tied to the degree of powerlessness we feel. Few things create as much angst and anxiety in us as feeling powerless.

Thus, Jesus' promise of power speaks to something deep within - that for which we long (power), that which we fear (powerlessness).

What is this power Jesus promised?

Jesus promised us the power of the Spirit ... the power the Spirit gives ... God's power ... and, thereby, a power beyond our own. The Spirit empowers us to do what we cannot do in our own strength. The Spirit empowers us to do what Jesus taught (John 14:12). The Spirit empowers us to live the ways of God. The Spirit empowers us to love as Jesus loved.

We experience the Spirit's power at the point of our powerlessness. (Sit with that thought a minute.)

And that creates an emotional bind for us. We don't like being powerless. We fear it. We resist it. We fight it. But acknowledging our powerlessness (need) opens the door to the Spirit's power. It puts us in a position to receive. It puts us in a position for the Spirit to work. It puts us in a position for the Spirit to empower us to do what we cannot do in our own strength.

Understanding this spiritual reality-we experience the Spirit's power at the point of our powerlessness-leads us to embrace two spiritual practices so that we might experience it in our lives.

First, it invites us to treat our experience of powerlessness as a call to prayer. Rather than fearing and fighting our powerlessness, we allow it to prompt us to turn to the Spirit for the power to do what we cannot do in our own strength. Recognizing our anxiety and/or fear prompts us to claim God's promise "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness" (2 Corinthians 12:9). It calls us to still our hearts and minds, placing ourselves in a position to access the Spirit's power. (My book The Fruit of the Spirit: the Path That Leads to Loving as Jesus Loved describes how to still our hearts and minds in the midst of anxiety - what Paul calls self-control and I call self-management.)

A second spiritual practice is the cultivation of a spirit of glad dependency. This spirit moves beyond the self-sufficiency we so value (and its underlying arrogance). It embraces the limitations that are inherent to our humanness. It accepts the challenges life brings. It expresses a deep trust in God's grace and faithfulness. The spirit of glad dependency trains us to live in partnership with the Spirit. (Daily meditation is one way to cultivate the spirit of glad dependency.)

Living in harmony with this spiritual reality-we experience the Spirit's power at the point of our powerlessness-impacts the way we use the power God has given to us. (Our power has many forms: ability, knowledge, wealth, experience, achievement, position, standing, the right to choose or free will.) 

Our default inclination is to use our power for the good of "me and mine." That includes using our power against those we view as "other." Partnership with the Spirit trains us to use power the way Jesus used power: to serve others. The Spirit moves us beyond our default self-oriented nature by transforming our hearts and minds, ingraining the servant spirit (the mind of Christ, Philippians 2:5-11) deep within us.

"You will receive power" ... God's power ... power through the indwelling Spirit (Acts 1:8). But the power we receive is not power to do whatever we please or power to get our way or power to control others or power to control what happens. Rather, it is power to manage ourselves. It is power to live the ways of God that Jesus taught. It is the power to love as Jesus loved.