More Power to You
Today I want to take a look at the true source of power. What is our true power? All of us need daily power. I talked with someone the other day and said, “How are you doing?” He responded, “Well, I’ll be all right if I can just get through the day” That’s a pretty heavy situation to be in. But in a sense, many of us feel that way, if only we have enough power to get through the day, if only we have enough power to do the things that are ours to do. We need that daily power and we need to know the source of that power.
After the resurrection, the disciples were sort of in that same situation. They’d gone to what was known as the Upper Room and they were feeling dejected, helpless and powerless; they didn’t know what to do with themselves or which way to turn. And Jesus appeared to them. He instructed them to wait in the city, to wait in Jerusalem, until the promise of the Father came.
We can find that story in the gospel of Luke, also in the book of Acts which records the activities of the apostles after the crucifixion, resurrection and ascension. It says “He charged them not to depart from Jerusalem but to wait for the promise of the Father.” Then a little later it says, “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth.”
These were tremendous words of hope that he gave to them. And we know that, after this time, we come to the experience of what has been called Pentecost. Pentecost was actually a Jewish celebration fifty days after Passover, but we remember Pentecost for different reasons. I won’t go into that at this time because I want to focus on the steps to realizing the true source of power so we can begin to apply it to our daily lives.
Jesus’ words remind me also of the Old Testament, when the prophet Isaiah was speaking to the exiles from Israel who were in Babylon. He was giving them similar words of hope. He is talking about the presence of God in our lives, and says, “He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary and young men shall fall exhausted, but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” There we get a vision of new strength, new vitality, a surge of energy that comes when we tap into the true source of our power.
So God meets us where we are, bringing us blessings all the time. But we have to be open to receive those blessings. So, what is the source of true power and how do we find it in our daily living? What hinders us, what stops us from receiving God power? It’s available to us all the time as the promises say: wait for the promise that will renew you. But we don’t always experience it. And why is that? What hinders us?
There are two things really that hinder us from experiencing God’s presence. The first one is hurry, and the second one is worry; hurry and worry. We tend to do a lot of both. We think we have to hurry to get places, but the thing that falls by the wayside when we get in a hurry consciousness is our time of true prayer. That is the first thing to suffer, because we don’t give enough time to it. We might say, “I don’t have time to pray right now because I have to hurry up, I have to get somewhere, to do something.” So the prayer often gets pushed to the back.
Hurry hinders us, it begins to ease the awareness of God out of our lives and we begin to slip away from the true source of power. The power is not out there somewhere; the power is truly within us. We can only find that power if we take time to pray, to get still and open ourselves to receive it. Hurry interferes with that; and the other thing is worry.
Worry hinders us receiving God’s blessings. And how does it do that? It blocks the flow of good to us, because worry simply means that we’re not trusting God. We say we believe in God and trust in God, but then why do we worry? We all do it, we worry. Worry gets in the way of us feeling and knowing God’s presence because we’re not really trusting. We may believe in God but we’re not really trusting God.
We have to begin to really trust God, to let the hurry go and to lessen the worry. Then we can begin to receive the blessings of God’s presence.
If we would just take the time to get still and pray, the answer will come; our direction will be there for us, our way will be opened. But we must take the time, put aside the worry, and take the time to pray.
The disciples recognized the importance of prayer. It says in the scripture that they did stay in Jerusalem in the Upper Room, “and they were all there, in one accord, in prayer.” Mary, the mother of Jesus, and other women were there, and the brothers of Jesus were there. And they all prayed together.
Sometime later, at Pentecost, the Holy Spirit touched them as Jesus had promised, “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.”
Daily power is our greatest need and prayer is our greatest resource. Sometimes we think of the demonstration of power as a brute strength, assertiveness, and aggressiveness to get things done and to thunder through life. But that’s not true power.
True power is never noisy, it doesn’t beat the drum, it doesn’t toot its own horn, it never puts people down, and it never belittles others. True power takes decisive action and claims authority of the inner self as is necessary, but it doesn’t make a big fanfare of it. True power is always demonstrated in gentleness, but sometimes we forget that and think we have to put on the big show.
David, says in one of the psalms, “The Lord is my rock and my fortress; in him will I trust. Thou savest me from violence and thy gentleness hath made me great.”
Unfortunately, we often equate gentleness with meekness and think of it as weakness. But it’s not so, for in true gentleness and in true meekness there is strength. Jesus said, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” Some might say “That’s not really true, because it’s the pushy ones who inherit the earth, the ones who are aggressive and assertive and want to take over, they inherit the earth.”
Now, the translation of the Greek word “meek” really means “tame,” in relation to having tamed the powers within ourselves, having them in harness as it were, in order to move them in the right direction, to be aligned with the true power within us. That’s what the word really means; it doesn’t mean weak at all. It implies a sense of serenity, a sense of centeredness, of harnessing those powers within us.
In the French translation of that same passage, it translates to “Blessed are the debonair.” That gives us a totally different feeling, one of courtesy and charm. Put those two translations together and we can come up with a word in our contemporary society that really characterizes this attitude of being. What is that word? Cool!
“Blessed are the cool.” When you are cool, you have it all together, you don’t get upset about things, you don’t have to push your way through things; you are smooth, you are cool, you go through things easily, you project an image of gentleness and confidence and you move forward with assurance.
St. Francis de Sales says, “Nothing is as strong as gentleness, and nothing is as gentle as true strength.” It’s prayer that gets it all together, and when you get it all together you suddenly find that you have that secret power that goes before you to make your way safe, easy, and successful.
God is blessing you now, as you stay cool!
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Rev. Alan A. Rowbotham, a Unity minister for over forty years, invites you to subscribe to his free inspirational newsletter, Spiritual Solutions.
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