Power to Do What I Cannot Do in My Own Strength

Power is associated with the gift of the Spirit. “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you” (Acts 1:8). The Spirit provides the power we need to live the ways of God and to do the work of God.

The Spirit was poured out on Jesus at his baptism. Jesus began his ministry and completed his mission in the power of the Spirit. That same Spirit was poured out on the disciples on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2), just as Jesus had promised. The Spirit that empowered Jesus in his ministry now empowers us as we seek to live the ways of God and do the work of God. (The outpouring of the Spirit on us is symbolized in baptism by sprinkling. The sprinkling of water on our heads calls to mind the tongues of fire that anointed each of the disciples on Pentecost as the Spirit was poured out upon them.)

Jesus’s promise of the Spirit and the power the Spirit provides was made specifically in reference to bearing witness to all of the world about Jesus and the kingdom of God he put in place (Acts 1:8). But the power available through the Spirit applies to every aspect of the spiritual life. The Spirit empowers us to do what we cannot do in our own strength — from bearing witness to the love of God expressed in Jesus to doing any of the seemingly impossible teachings of Jesus to moving beyond the power of anxiety and worry to enduring the seemingly unbearable to breaking free of old patterns and addictions to forgiving the one who has wronged us to using our abilities to make a difference in the life of another in Jesus’s name. The Spirit is our partner, the one who energizes every aspect of our spiritual lives.

The power the Spirit provides us is grounded in a spiritual principle: the Spirit’s power is tied directly to our weakness.

The Apostle Paul learned this spiritual principle as he wrestled with his thorn in the flesh (2 Corinthians 12:7). Paul pleaded with God to remove this unidentified issue which created such a struggle for him. God’s answer to Paul’s prayer was “My grace is sufficient for you, for (my) power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).

There are two parts to God’s answer to Paul’s prayer. The first was the assurance that God’s grace would sustain Paul in his struggle. He would not be overcome by it or defeated. He would be victorious through what God provided! The second part of God’s answer states the underlying principle to this word of assurance: God’s power only comes into play when our power fails — in our weakness! God’s power is “made perfect” — the idea is “doing what it was intended to do” — as the Spirit empowers us to do what we cannot do in our own strength.

This spiritual principle rubs us the wrong way. We don’t like to be weak. Being weak implies we are inadequate. It means we are dependent. We want to be self-sufficient and independent — or, at least, we want to believe we are. We are like the young child who tells her mother, “I can do it myself!” But as long as we rely upon our own wisdom and strength, we will never know the power the Spirit provides. We will never fully live the ways of God that Jesus taught or do the work of God we have been called to do as God’s partners in the world.

The Apostle Paul learned this great principle and built his life upon it. “So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. For whenever I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:9-10). Paul learned to live out of a spirit of glad dependency on God, trusting God to help him do what he could not do in his own strength. The spirit of glad dependency allowed the power of Christ — the power of the Spirit — to live in him.

So how do we access this power of the Spirit? We do what Paul did: we pray. We pray our struggle. Rather than giving up in frustration and defeat, we acknowledge to God (confess) what we cannot do. We stay engaged in the struggle, giving God permission to work in it. And we wait for God's response - the grace that is adequate, the guidance and insight the Spirit gives, the power to do what we cannot do in our own strength. 

What might we be able to do — in living the ways of God that Jesus taught, in doing the work of God in the world — if we trusted the Spirit to empower us to do what we cannot do in our own strength? What might that look like for you? for me? 

What struggle is the Spirit leading us to pray?

Loving as Jesus Loved

The Spirit’s role is to make salvation — the transformation of our hearts and minds — into a reality in our lives. The Spirit teaches us to think with the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16b). The Spirit works to mature us into the likeness of Christ. The end result of the Spirit’s work in our lives is to empower us to love as Jesus loved, to love those whom Jesus loved.

In his letter to the Galatians, the Apostle Paul identified love — God’s kind of self-giving, agape love — as the first of nine traits he called the fruit of the Spirit. The ability to love as Jesus loved comes through the Spirit’s work in our lives.

In order to free us to love as Jesus loved, the Spirit works to transform the spirit or inner disposition out of which we live. Inherent to our human condition is an inner disposition driven by anxiety and fear — fear of being hurt, fear of being left out, rejected, and abandoned, fear of being inadequate and not measuring up (i.e., being powerless), fear of being insignificant and unimportant (not valued or respected or loved). These fears naturally morph into an angry, negative spirit. The Spirit works to transform this inner disposition or spirit out of which we live. “The fruit of the Spirit is … joy and peace” (Galatians 5:22). The Spirit works to displace our anxiety and fear with peace, our negativity and anger with joy.

The spirit or inner disposition out of which we live governs how we view and treat others. Consequently, what is in our hearts — the interior realm — is reflected in our relationships.

When we live out of an anxious, negative spirit, we are irritated with those who do not measure up to our expectations. We are critical and judgmental of them. Embedded in our criticism of them is an unconscious attitude of being better than them — arrogance. Looking down on them, we distance ourselves from them emotionally and physically. We are hard and harsh in how we think of them, speak of them, and treat them.  But the joy and peace the Spirit cultivates in our hearts allows us to be patient rather than irritated, kind rather than critical and judgmental, generous in how we respond rather than feeling better than them, faithful rather than distancing ourselves, gentle rather than hard and harsh in how we think about, speak about, and treat them. “The fruit of the Spirit is … patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness” (Galatians 5:22-23). These five relational traits are what love looks like in our relationships.

We cannot love when we are anxious and afraid or when we are negative and angry. Joy and peace free us to love as Jesus loved.

Thus, the key to loving as Jesus loved is being aware of and managing the inner disposition of our hearts — what Paul called self-control. “The fruit of the Spirit is … self-control” (Galatians 5:23). The Spirit makes us aware of the anxiety and fear, the anger and negativity deep inside (self-awareness). This awareness is a call to put ourselves in a position for the Spirit to work. It is a call to pray so the Spirit can transform what is in our hearts. The Spirit leads us beyond our anxiety and fear into peace, beyond our anger and negativity into joy. That Spirit-produced joy and peace free us to choose a different what of responding to the other. We choose to be patient, kind, generous, faithful, and gentle. Joy and peace free us to love as Jesus loved … through the transforming, empowering work of the Spirit.

The Spirit works to transform our hearts and minds, empowering us to love as Jesus loved.

(This understanding of the fruit of the Spirit is developed in my book The Fruit of the Spirit: the Path That Leads to Loving as Jesus Loved. The book is available through my webpage: pastorstevelangford.com.)  

A New Creation

The result of the Spirit’s work in our hearts and minds is transformation. “All  of us … are being transformed into the same image (the image of Christ) from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:18). Just as God created us in our mother’s womb (Psalm 139:13), so now the Spirit works to recreate us in the likeness of Christ. Through the Spirit’s transforming work, we become a new creation. “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ” (2 Corinthians 2:17-18a).

This transformation is a process — “from one degree of glory to another.” We refer to this process of being transformed as growing spiritually.  The Spirit works in the midst of life’s experiences to help us grow spiritually. The transformation or growth occurs as we are led by the Spirit and keep in step with the Spirit (Galatians 5:16, 18, 25). The end result of this growth process is spiritual maturity. We are transformed into the likeness of Christ (Romans 8:29; Ephesians 4:3b). We become a new creation.

At the heart of this process of transformation and growth is the renewing of the mind (as we saw in the July 4, 2021 blog – The Mind of Christ). “Do not be conformed (literally: stop being conformed) to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds” (Romans 12:2, emphasis added).

The Spirit teaches us the things of God (1 Corinthians 2:6-16) and the things Jesus taught (John 14:26). Because the ways of God are different from our ways (Isaiah 55:8-9), the things the Spirit teaches us confront how we have been trained to think: merit-based thinking, us-them thinking, either-or thinking, black-and-white thinking, right-and-wrong thinking, ego-driven thinking. They call us to think with a different mind. (Thinking with a different mind is the root meaning of the word commonly translated as “repent.”) They call us to think with the mind of Christ.

The things the Spirit teaches does not just confront how we have been trained to think. They also confront what is in our hearts — the anxiety and fear that drive us, the attitudes that govern how we view and treat others, the self-serving, self-focused spirit out of which we live. As the Spirit transforms how we think — instilling the mind of Christ in us — the Spirit also works to transform our heart. The Spirit leads us beyond anxiety and fear into an ever-deepening trust in God’s steadfast, faithful love. We move beyond our innate spirit of self-reliance into a spirit of glad dependency upon God. The Spirit cleanses the attitudes of our heart so that we see others the way God sees them. The Spirit nurtures a humble, teachable spirit within in place of the arrogance that views those who are different as less than and not deserving. The Spirit ingrains a servant spirit that displaces our default self-serving, self-focused spirit.  The Spirit cleanses our heart, transforming it. We become a new creation, transformed from the inside out.

As a new creation, our lives reflect the likeness of Christ. The old has passed away; everything becomes new (2 Corinthians 5:17). Compassion and kindness displace the critical, judgmental spirit that is a natural part of our default nature. Humility and a teachable spirit displace the spirit of arrogance that fuels our critical, judgmental spirit. Patience and understanding displace the irritation and impatience we feel when people fail to measure up to our expectations or do things our way. We bear with others when we are at odds rather than attacking, discounting, and rejecting. We are quick to forgive, refusing to hold onto a hurt or harbor a grudge. A spirit of thanksgiving and gratitude take the place of our fear-based scarcity thinking. Generosity takes the place of giving that is calculating, merit-oriented, and governed by what-can-I-afford-to give thinking. The peace of Christ displaces the anxiety that troubles our hearts and minds. Joy flows naturally from within. We live together in meaningful, supportive relationships that are patterned after the ways of God. We love as Jesus loved. (This description is based upon Colossians 3:12-17). “All this is from God” (2 Corinthians 5:18a) — the work of the Spirit in our lives.

The Spirit is at work in us, recreating us in the likeness of Christ. The Spirit is at work transforming us, replacing the old with that which is new. The Spirit is growing us up, leading us to Christ-like spiritual maturity. The Spirit is at work in us. As a result, we are a new creation.

The Mind of Christ

The Spirit is the member of the Godhead who brings God’s salvation — the transformation of our hearts and minds, conforming us to the image of the Son — into reality in our lives. The Apostle Paul identified the Spirit as the one who is transforming us “from one degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians 3:18).

The Spirit’s work has many dimensions to it. In my last blog (A Spirit of Adoption, June 27, 2021), we saw how the Spirit nurtures within us a spirit of intimacy, freedom, and boldness in our relationship with God. The Spirit teaches us to trust God’s steadfast, faithful love (grace), thereby leading us beyond guilt and shame, beyond the fear of condemnation and judgment.

A second dimension of the Spirit’s work is teaching us to think with “the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16). As we grow in Christ, our thinking begins to be shaped by the character of God and the ways of God. The Spirit guides our thinking (1 Corinthians 2:13), moving us beyond the way the world taught us to think. The Spirit teaches us to be spiritually discerning (1 Corinthians 2:14). In short, we learn to think differently.

Paul spoke of this change in how we think as “the renewing of the mind” (Romans 12:2). He identified it as the key to being transformed. This same understanding is found in Ephesians 4:22-24 and Colossians 3:9b-11 where putting off the old self and putting on the new self happens by being “renewed in the spirit of your minds” (Ephesians 4:23).  

Putting on the mind of Christ occurs as the Spirit teaches us the character of God and the ways of God (1 Corinthians 2:10, 12-14) along with the ways of the Kingdom that Jesus taught and lived (John 14:26). These new understandings, in turn, confront the spirit and attitudes of our hearts. Through these confrontations, the Spirit works to cleanse the heart. “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me” (Psalm 51:10). The heart is cleansed as the mind is made new. Our hearts and minds are changed and our lives transformed through the work of the Spirit.

As the Spirit fashions the mind of Christ in us, we begin to relate out of grace and forgiveness, laying aside merit-based thinking. We learn to view and value, accept and embrace each person as a beloved child of God, moving beyond the us-them mentality of tribal thinking. We learn to value diversity as a gift from God, moving beyond the comparing and competing of better than-less than thinking. Secure in our identity as a beloved child of God, we no longer seek to establish our identity at another’s expense — “I’m not like them. I’m better than that.” As we learn to live out of the mind of Christ, we use our power to serve others rather than to manipulate, control, or dominate others for our own advantage. All of this kind of shifting from … to is the work of the Spirit in our lives.

And it all begins by the Spirit teaching us to think differently — from a spiritual perspective. Changing how we think leads to the cleansing of what is in our hearts. By changing our hearts and minds, the Spirit changes how we live. We are transformed by the renewing of the mind (Romans 12:2).