How Dare We Be Powerless

Last week I spoke to another youth camp. I'm spent, but everything in me is shaking with desire. My mind, will and emotions are stormy. The Holy Spirit is flying in and around my vision. I can't shake the lump in my throat and, frankly, I don't want to. Maybe I can make some sense of it with this blog.

Youth camps typically bring students out of some sampling of our society's misery. This camp was no different. But what is different for me, at any rate, is that I've been focused on the call and ministry of Moses and how he miraculously led Israel out of Egypt. God has had me dipped in the various nuances of what happened; a shepherd's staff becomes "the rod of God" and eats serpents, splits seas and generally shakes a world super power into surrender. After our week of camp was done and I sat listening to these teenagers share their stories my heart cracked wide open and my eyes haven't stopped pouring a river of prayer ever since.

How dare we, the Church of the Risen Lord, be powerless? How can we accept our impotency in the face of the raging devourer who is eating children and families alive? What excuses will we bear in our trembling hands before our Father when He asks an account of our stewardship of His Kingdom on earth? He declared that His Kingdom will ultimately become the Kingdom of this earth, that EVERY knee will ultimately bow and EVERY tongue will ultimately confess and that there is a surpassing greatness of His power aimed at us who believe which is the same power that raised Jesus from the dead. Yet, we are all too often powerless in Pharaoh's presence as he slumps in his throne and giggles under his breath at our demands to release God's people.

Please don't read in my words any shame or blame at you who give me the time to read this word. I am in an inventory which requires me to ask real questions in order to find real answers. Last week, while I saw some physical healings that made me dance with joy I also heard stories of teenagers who will go home to the potential of hell greeting them at the door. I gave as much instruction as I know to go home with power and confidence but I also know that the rest of us, on the outside of those stories, must be equally, if not more, empowered in order to become part of a tipping point in history!

Which one of us will be that tipping point? What moment of deep calling out to deep in God will light a burning bush? Who will open his or her spiritual eyes to see God, high and lifted up, at precisely the right tick of the clock that will cause the pillars of the Throne to shake at the cry for justice on earth from the God Whose Holy character will not long wait to heal the great leprosy of the children of His making? He baits us up into His presence that He might ask, "Whom shall I send and who will go for Me? Have you dared to live long enough now with tokens of My power? Are you ready now for a burning coal of Heaven to permanently blister every word you speak?"

I dared my church yesterday with these words; "The culture of unbelief we live in demands a faith and a believing from us that is uncommon so that we might put on display a God we can never intellectualize or debate a watching world into believing." In the fullness of time, God sent His Son. Now, in another fullness of time, we are here in this hour. How dare we be powerless?