This week we're learning steps to the power of God.  First, receive Christ as your Lord.  Second, admit your need for the Spirit's help.  Third, ask the Spirit to cleanse your soul and restore your relationship with your Father.  To experience the Spirit's power, we must be cleansed from everything which hinders the Holy Spirit in our lives.

Are you ready to take this step?  Then take a moment for a moral inventory.  Write on a piece of paper anything which is hindering the Spirit in your life.  If you're not sure, ask him and he'll show you.  Confess these sins specifically to God, and claim his forgiving grace and mercy.  Cleanse the "plug" and you will know the power.

Last, ask the Spirit to control and empower your life.  A power tool doesn't have to do this, for it has no will.  But we do.  We must ask the Spirit to control and empower us, before he will.

Will you do this right now?  In prayer, simply ask the Spirit to take control of your life, your mind, your time, your abilities.  Surrender your will to him.  Promise to obey him wherever he leads you.

Then believe that he has.  Nowhere does the Bible describe how it "feels" to be empowered by the Holy Spirit.  Some of us will feel something unusual; others will not.  I seldom do.  The proof is in the results, not the feeling.  So step out in faith, believing that the Spirit has empowered you, for he has.

And do this daily.  The literal Greek of Ephesians 5:18 is, "Be continually being filled."  Whenever sin corrodes your relationship with him, confess it and claim cleansing.  Then reconnect with the Spirit.  Continue in communion with him all through the day--stay "plugged in."

As you do, remember that God empowers us according to his purpose for us.  The Holy Spirit never empowered a Christian in the Book of Acts except to make him or her a more effective witness.  If we are not willing to serve and share Christ, we will not have the power of the Spirit.  If we are, we will.

What can we expect God to do with and through our lives once we are empowered by his Spirit?  How will he direct and use our churches once they are filled with people who are filled with the Spirit?  Let's continue tomorrow.

Copyright © 2008.  GodIssues.com.  All rights reserved.