HOW WE GET POWER, AND HOW IT SHOWS ITSELF
HOW WE GET POWER, AND HOW IT SHOWS ITSELF
We do not seek what we do not need. Where there is no felt need of divine power there is neither a seeking after it nor a preparation of heart for it. It is therefore according to the sense of our powerlessness on the one hand, and our faith in God on the other, that we seek and obtain power from Him. If we are not powerless we do not require power; what we do not feel our need of we do not seek, nor would it be valued were it conferred. The awakened soul feels the need of a Saviour; he knows he cannot save himself, and the more simply and deeply he feels this, the more truly and fully does he lay hold on His arm who alone can save him. We see in the case of the palsied man (Mark 2), that he who bodily exemplified the greatest weakness, most fully unlocked the heart [p. 17] of Christ, and commanded the resources of His power. “When we were ... without strength, ... Christ died”, etc. The maintenance of power of any kind on my own side must necessarily militate against my desiring it from Him, while it would check Him from offering me what I would not prize, and really have no room for.
The great faith of the syrophenician woman consisted in her taking the place of nothingness, admitting her powerlessness and insignificance, while suffering from Satan’s power and while in the presence of the Lord. We have the same principle in Romans 7: “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” The point of utter helplessness is reached and then the heart is prepared for the perfect relief in Christ, and can exclaim, “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord”. This Job reached when he cried out, “I know that thou canst do everything”. “Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes”. Paul learnt it yet more deeply; after his time in the third heaven he found that by himself he could do nothing, but that the strength or power of Christ was made perfect in his weakness.
First, then, we have it established that weakness must be admitted and felt before power is sought for or obtained. Secondly, we proceed to examine the manner or way in which we get power; and then, thirdly, we shall see how the power will demonstrate itself.
I am weak, and I feel it; well, then, there is no getting power apart from Christ: “without me ye can do nothing”. Everyone believing on Christ is safe from judgment; everyone believing on Him risen is brought into deliverance; but power does not necessarily belong to either of these two classes.
Hearing wondrous things in heaven is not power, as we see with the apostle (2 Corinthians 12). Learning from the most perfect teaching does not confer power, as we see with the two disciples going to Emmaus (Luke 24). Power is only acquired by conscious connection with the [p. 18] source of power. Happiness and intelligence in themselves are not power. Either may make me feel that I want power to retain or to use them, but my power depends upon my abiding in Christ, and unless I know Him as the exalted Man at God’s right hand of power, and that I am united to Him there, I can have no effective power here. That is, though I may have an easy conscience, and intelligence of Scripture, yet I am not master of my circumstances, whatever they may be, because I have not power. I may deplore my deficiency and my loss, and see painfully by spiritual sense what I need, but this only proves that I have not got it. I am here in a scene where everything is against God, where a coalition has been formed between man and Satan to acquire the rule of everything, so as eventually to reach a point where in the excellence and abundance of all earthly acquisitions, a man can openly and avowedly exalt himself against all that is called God or worshipped, and this will be the pinnacle of Babylon’s greatness. This is the scene in which we are, and we can have no power except as we are drawing from Him who has been rejected from this scene, but has been exalted to God’s right hand “far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come”.
It is as we are identified with Him who is beyond, above, and apart from, every evil force here, that we are really in divine power beyond, above, and apart from them all. How else could we be? “Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask anything in my name, I will do it”. All my blessing depends on Christ’s work for me, all my power here depends on His being in me; that is, that I am here in His name, Himself characteristically. Many a saint is baffled and tried because he finds out in some emergency that he is not able to cope with it; he has no power and is really like other men. Now the reason of this is, not that he is not at peace in his soul, nor that he is [p. 19] lacking in vivid apprehension of the truth, but it is because his eye is not on Christ at the time, he is not consciously associated and identified with Him who is above it all and who has been taken away from this scene.
The way to secure power now is after the same manner as Elijah’s reply to Elisha indicates when he asked for a double portion of his spirit: “If thou see me ... taken from thee, it shall be so unto thee; but if not, it shall not be so”. It is not said that Elisha saw Elijah more than once, but once he touched and reached the spring of power, and really had known it, it was known for ever, while the mode of appropriating it remains unchanged also. That is, the power does not work in me now apart from Christ; but as my eye in faith is on Him I am endued with His ability to act in my circumstances as He would act in them. I am never independent of Him, blessed be His name. It is joy to the heart devoted to Him to hear Him say, “Without me ye can do nothing”.
Peter walked on the water to go to Jesus; he was above the winds and the waves - in figure above and beyond all the evil forces here, and so long as his eye was on Jesus he walked by the very same power as Jesus; he walked really as Jesus walked at the time, but seeing the wind boisterous he was afraid - his eye turned to another direction, and the power was forfeited - lost, because his link with the One superior to all power here was lost.
This is the secret of our power now; no one can have power, divine power, amidst the various godless powers here, unless, and as he is walking in the clear positive unfaltering sense of his union with a glorified Man at God’s right hand in power. Thus when all the force of evil in religious guise bore down on Stephen, God prepared him for it, constituted him superior to it all, by connecting him through the Holy Spirit with Jesus in the glory of God. He “being full of the Holy Spirit, having fixed his eyes on heaven, he saw the glory of God, and Jesus”. Many, I am persuaded, mistake happiness or intelligence [p. 20] or good conduct for power. Presently I shall explain what power is, and how it works; but first, I am sure it is of the deepest importance to understand how it is acquired, and that it cannot be enjoyed practically apart from Christ Himself; it is His power that worketh in us, and, as the apostle says, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me”. It is an immense help, and a clue to still greater, when I know that all my ability to act for Christ here depends on my conscious identification with Him where He is, not where He was for me; though as I receive power from Him I walk here even as He walked; His life is manifested in me.
Now this leads to the inquiry how power shows itself - how it works. It is evident that if power cannot be in exercise in me but as I, in conscious union with Christ in glory, am drawing it from Him, the power must put me in conformity to what Christ would do; be it in things small or great, it would enable me to meet everything here as He would meet it; to walk on the water; face the enraged religionists of the hour; and be superior to my own circumstances in a prison for Him.
Power is not so much seen in exploits as in the manifestation of Christ’s life at the moment. It is quite possible to present a truth or truths to the conveniences of others, and yet that person to be lacking in Christ’s mode of behaviour in his surroundings at the moment. The power of Christ is required when there is nothing but winds and waves, and this is secured only by faith in Him at the time. Now it works contrary to everything here; it has an entirely new way of doing everything. It does not only renounce the way and manner of men, and the motives which sway them; but it introduces an entirely new way. It is divinely beautiful and simple - Christ-like. It disowns and discards the counsel and ways of men; while it insists on and maintains what is of Christ, it necessarily condemns and ignores man in his motives and principles of action - literally puts him to [p. 21] death; but as there is this power, the life of Jesus is manifested in my body.
Many a one sees light who is not in the power of it; he cannot distinguish other objects in the light of it; he is like the blind man when he saw men as trees walking (Mark 8), he has received light, but not enough of it to enable him to see everything clearly. It was in the second touch of our Lord that the full power of light was communicated.
How many are so far enlightened as really and truly to see; but how few see everything in the light of the truth, and how much easier it is for the teacher to give souls an elementary idea of the greatest truth than to carry them on into the depths, and judgments, and conclusions which that truth, held or known in power, would impart.
We get such expressions as “Strengthened with might [power] by his Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith”, Ephesians 3: 16,17. And again, in Colossians 1: 11, “Strengthened with all might [power], according to his glorious power” - or the dominion of His glory - “unto all patience and long-suffering with joyfulness”. The power shows itself in making me superior to all the forces here which would act upon me, and in setting me so free of myself, so silencing the flesh, that there would be nothing to impede the expression of Christ living in me. It would not be seen so much in works that would attract or strike the public eye as in the quiet, self-possessed tenor of my course which would make my antagonists to stagger and be confounded, and which sensibly would contribute to every saint, even the least spiritual - a certain conscious, moral influence, which no one possesses but as there is known practical power in oneself, because I never can have moral weight to repress in another that which I have not repressed in myself. When the truth is not in word only, but also in power, I am detected by it; that is light which “doth make manifest”; and I am [p. 22] formed by this power of the Holy Spirit in the new life which has superseded the old. Now for this, the teacher or guide, in order to be so efficiently, and an ensample, must increase in power, or he will not help on others, and in his ministry he will never lead on souls beyond a point.
May we learn truly that the secret of power is having the heart kept by the Spirit in conscious identity with the exalted Christ, and that the power shows itself in placing me superior to myself, in spite of every force here, in the way and manner of Christ, so that its work is novel and magnificent.