by Matt Sorger
Being aware of your weaknesses helps to remind you of your dependency on God’s grace. Abraham Lincoln once wrote, “We have forgotten the gracious hand which has preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and have vainly imagined in the deceitfulness of our hearts that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.”2
Knowing we need God’s empowerment enables us to receive His grace on a daily basis. I’m sure if we forget, it won’t be too long until we are reminded. It’s a daily dependency and walk with God.
But He said to me, My grace (My favor and loving-kindness and mercy) is enough for you [sufficient against any danger and enables you to bear the trouble manfully]; for My strength and power are made perfect (fulfilled and completed) and show themselves most effective in [your] weakness. Therefore, I will all the more gladly glory in my weaknesses and infirmi ties, that the strength and power of Christ (the Messiah) may rest (yes, may pitch a tent over and dwell) upon me!
—2 CORINTHIANS 12:9
It’s good news to know that God can strengthen us in our weaknesses. God’s grace really is enough. We can’t add anything to it. When it comes to living a powerful life filled with God’s grace, we have to learn to yield and surrender. It’s about yielding, not striving.
Going with the flow of God’s power within us is like driving a car. Yielding to God is not a “stop” or “go” sign. It’s a yield sign. Near my house in New York is an intersection where I have to merge with oncoming traffic through a yield sign. As I approach the intersection, I have to watch and look to see the flow of traffic that I am coming into. I watch the flow, and I follow and merge into the flow of existing traffic. The same is true with God’s Spirit and power within us. His power is flowing. His Spirit is moving. I have to slow down, look to see where His Spirit is moving, and then move into it. As I do, I receive His grace to do all He has called me to do.
In a moment of need I have to slow down, turn my focus on God and His Word, ask for His help, and then receive it right in that moment. The more I have learned to yield to God’s help in the moment I need it, the more victorious and joyful I am. Walking in God’s grace is really all about walking with God moment by moment. The more I feed my spirit, the stronger I will be to overcome negative things. Whatever you put in is what will come out. If you are feeding your spirit the Word of God, when you need God’s help, His power will be right there to strengthen and help you. But if you don’t call out to God in your moment of need, you will most likely be operating in your own strength, which will quickly fail.
God’s Grace Works in You to Make You Who You Are
But by the grace (the unmerited favor and blessing) of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not [found to be] for nothing (fruitless and without effect). In fact, I worked harder than all of them [the apostles], though it was not really I, but the grace (the unmerited favor and blessing) of God which was with me.
—1 CORINTHIANS 15:10
God’s grace makes you right with God (Rom. 3:24), and after you are right with God, you can then become right with yourself and with other people. I want you to really understand how to overcome everything negative in life. God’s grace, the presence of the Holy Spirit within you giving you power to reign in life, will empower you to overcome every evil tendency in yourself and every temptation from the enemy. You see, your battle is not just with the devil. Sure he will bring temptation to you, but what you must first get victory over is your own self. You can submit to God, resist the devil, and he will flee from you. But you can’t cast yourself out. You have to kill and crucify your old self by God’s power within you.
The good news is that your faith in Christ releases His grace within you to help you overcome every evil tendency in your flesh. (See Romans 6:14; James 4:6; Titus 2:11.) His power helps you to overcome every weakness in your own self. All are born with a sinful nature and with weaknesses. Some of these weaknesses are inherited from your family line. They are generational iniquities. They are tendencies within your own self toward sin.
You often see this in families who struggle with alcohol, witchcraft, and sexual perversion. These sinful tendencies are often times passed down from one generation to the next. Sometimes the DNA and soulful makeup of a person causes him or her to struggle with certain things. At times these inherited weaknesses can skip generations. The only way to overcome these things is by the grace of God. His power within you will help you resist your own flesh and live in a way that pleases Him. But there is a choice you must make to receive God’s grace and help to overcome what you know is wrong. God’s grace does not remove your free will. But if you choose to plug into His grace, He will be right there to help you every step of the way.
Dwight L. Moody once said, “Grace isn’t a little prayer you chant before receiving a meal. It’s a way to live. The law tells me how crooked I am. Grace comes along and straightens me out.”3
Grace Removes Every Obstacle in the Way of God’s Presence Filling Your Life
I love the story in Zechariah 4 where the prophet is talking about rebuilding the temple. In this portion of Scripture a house is being built for God’s presence, but the builders are facing some opposition. Zechariah begins to speak to this opposition: “For who are you, O great mountain [of human obstacles]? Before Zerubbabel [who with Joshua had led the return of the exiles from Babylon and was undertaking the rebuilding of the temple, before him] you shall become a plain [a mere molehill]! And he shall bring forth the finishing gable stone [of the new temple] with loud shoutings of the people, crying, Grace, grace to it!” (Zech. 4:7).
The house of God would be built by God’s grace. Just before this the prophet declares the word of the Lord to him, “Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit...says the Lord of hosts” (v. 6). In other words, God’s house would not be built by man’s strength and ability. It would be started and completed by God’s grace. He is both the foundation and the finisher. As the Bible says in 1 Corinthians 6:19, we are God’s house. He is building us into a dwelling place for His presence. As He builds us, the work is accomplished not by our own strength, but it is accomplished by His grace. The finishing gable stone is put in place with shouts of “grace, grace!” God completes His work in us by His glorious grace.
Everything in your life that would hinder God’s presence from filling you will be moved out of the way by His power. Every mountain of opposition is coming down. Every valley is being raised up. God’s grace will deal with every hindrance in your life. You are destined to be God’s house filled with His presence.
Gifts of Grace
God will use your life in ways that far exceed your wildest dreams. Not only will God give you power to live holy and in a way that pleases Him, but He will also share His marvelous gifts of power, revelation, and utterance with you by that same grace.
The Greek word for the gifts of the Spirit is charisma , which Strong’s Concordance defines as “gifts of grace; a favor which one receives without any merit of his own.” You can’t work for or earn them. They are given freely by the Holy Spirit, just as salvation is. You can have all of them—and the more you pursue them, the more you will have!
I encourage you to simultaneously pursue both God’s fruit and spiritual gifts in your life, all by His grace. First Corinthians 14:1 tells us to earnestly desire spiritual gifts. I often lay my hands on my own belly during times of prayer and ask the Holy Spirit to stir up and manifest the gifts of the Spirit that are within me. As seen in 1 Corinthians 12:8–10, these gifts include word of wisdom, word of knowledge, faith, healing, working of miracles, prophecy, discerning of spirits, different kinds of tongues, and the interpretation of tongues. These spiritual gifts are invaluable manifestations of God’s power in our lives. As you ask God to stir them up, He will.
You Will R
eign in Life
For if because of one man’s trespass (lapse, offense) death reigned through that one, much more surely will those who receive [God’s] overflowing grace (unmerited favor) and the free gift of righteousness [putting them into right standing with Himself] reign as kings in life through the one Man Jesus Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One).
—ROMANS 5:17
Through God’s overflowing grace you will reign as kings in life. His grace is not just enough; it is overflowing. It is more than enough! You can reign in life through this grace. You can overcome every sin, every thought, every attitude, and every action that hinders your life. Yield to His grace in you, and receive all the power you need to live an extraordinary life today.
CHAPTER 4
The Power of Truth
Show Me the Stuff
FLASHBACK—1985. LONG ISLAND, NY. We were watching Back to the Future in the movies for $2.75 a ticket. Gasoline was $1.09 a gallon. Big hair was hitting an all-time high. My brother was break-dancing. Various music artists were singing “We Are the World” to raise money for famine relief. I was reading my favorite comic books. And my mom was on a journey to find the source of power for healing. While working in a chiropractor’s office, one day my mom got the thought, “In the name of Jesus, be healed.” She didn’t know where it came from, and she didn’t realize what was being revealed to her by the Holy Spirit. Years earlier she had given her heart to Jesus while watching a Billy Graham crusade on a Sunday night at home. My brother and I were just small children, and Sunday night was our family night. As we fell asleep watching TV, Billy Graham would come on. Every week she would cry and give her heart to God, but she had no foundation at all in God’s Word. While she had asked Jesus to forgive her sin, she still had some very humanistic beliefs. She thought that all roads led to God, and as long as someone believed in God, they would go to heaven.
While working in the chiropractor’s office, she began to meet people who were involved in New Age practices. They wore crystals and practiced meditation, yoga, and psychic healing. They had tapped into a dark power source but were deceived into believing that it was from God. During this time a woman invited my mom over her house to learn a New Age meditation mantra. While my mom was on this journey to find the power source for healing, she stumbled into a deceptive force. As she was leaving this woman’s house, a sickness “fell” on her. The very thing she thought would help people opened a door for sickness to enter her life. This began a long two-year journey of searching for the truth.
After exhausting every New Age possibility there was, she began to get a revelation that her sickness started when she strayed away from her Catholic roots, which was Jesus crucified, dead, buried, and then resurrected. It was the night she was at the Catholic healing mass that she renounced every New Age thing she had ventured into and turned her heart totally back to the God of the Bible.
When she put her faith solely in Christ, she was completely healed by God’s power and truth. As she spent time in the Bible, God spoke to her very clearly one day: “Why would My Son have to have His beard plucked out, thorns put on His head, a spear in His side, and be crucified and tortured, if there was any other way to come to Me?” She instantly realized by a revelation of truth that Jesus was indeed the only way to God. This was God’s blueprint for salvation—Christ alone. That was also the week I gave my heart to the Lord and accepted Jesus as my Savior. Jesus not only healed my mom, but He also revealed to us that He was the only way to get to God. He was the power source she had been searching for all those years. We had finally made our way home.
Coming Into Alignment
I have had several cars throughout my history of driving. My first car was a fifty-dollar special that my dad bought for me when I was first learning to drive. It’s white interior looked black! We scrubbed it, trying to make it look “new,” but it was anything but new. I loved that car. I nicknamed it the “Blue Bomb.” The exterior was navy blue, and it was a bomb!
One day while driving the car, I noticed that it kept swerving off to the left. I had to keep pulling the steering wheel to the right to keep the car on the road. It needed a major alignment. When the wheels are misaligned, they can cause the car to swerve in a wrong direction. This will cause damage to the tires, affecting the traction. If not corrected, the car could have ultimately skidded, causing danger to both myself and other drivers around me. This is why even in our daily lives it is so important to be rightly aligned.
Alignment means “to bring into cooperation or agreement with a particular group, party, or cause; to adjust or improve proper relationship.”1 Just as a car needs to be aligned periodically, we need to have our minds continually aligned with truth, or we can go off course.
What Are You Thinking On?
Where the mind goes, your life will follow. Don’t underestimate the power of your own thoughts. They determine how you will live. We have two choices: to walk in the power of the Spirit or to walk in our old sinful nature.
The most powerful law that operates in the life of a Christian is the law of the Spirit of life. Paul teaches in Romans 8:2, “For the law of the Spirit of life [which is] in Christ Jesus [the law of our new being] has freed me from the law of sin and of death.” When we accept the sacrifice that Christ made on behalf of our sin, God subdues, overcomes, and completely deprives sin of all of its power. Sin no longer has dominion and control over us because of the law of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit controls our lives. But how does this really happen?
The secret is shared with us in Romans 8:5. “For those who are according to the flesh and are controlled by its unholy desires set their minds on and pursue those things which gratify the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit and are controlled by the desires of the Spirit set their minds on and seek those things which gratify the [Holy] Spirit.”
The secret to living in the power of God and having all of your desires, thoughts, attitudes, and actions controlled by the Spirit is by simply making the choice to set your mind upon things that the Holy Spirit likes. When you set your mind upon the Word of God, your entire life will go in a direction that pleases God. This is why knowing the truth of the Word is so vital to living a life of power.
Knowing the Truth Will Set You Free
Jesus taught us in John 8:31–32, “If you abide in My word [hold fast to My teachings and live in accordance with them], you are truly My disciples. And you will know the Truth, and the Truth will set you free.”
God’s truth will not only release power into your physical body, but it will also enable you to receive God’s power for the full healing and restoration of your mind. Years ago I knew a woman who had been committed into a mental institution. Her mind had become very disturbed. One day she found a Bible and began to read it. No one prayed for her. She just simply spent hours a day reading God’s Word. As she did, her mind was completely healed to the point where she was able to get up and just walk right out of that institution. This is the power of truth.
One thing we must all understand is that truth is absolute, and we can know the ultimate source of it. When we have an encounter with the living God, we come to realize that the ultimate truth is found in the Bible. Once we have this foundation, we can then access all the benefits of God’s power that come from knowing His Word.
The truth will not only heal your body and mind, but it will also reach down into the deepest areas of your soul, emotions, and identity, bringing total freedom and wholeness into every area of your life. The key to your lasting freedom and deliverance will be God’s Word.
The Holy Spirit Is Our Teacher
But the Comforter (Counselor, Helper, Intercessor, Advocate, Strengthener, Standby), the Holy Spirit, Whom the Father will send in My name [in My place, to represent Me and act on My behalf], He will teach you all things. And He will cause you to recall (will remind you of, bring to your remem brance) everything I have told you.
—JOHN 14:26
Following my mom’s heal
ing and my personal salvation, I entered into the “School of the Holy Spirit.” God began to so ingrain His truth into my heart that no deception could ever gain access again into my belief system about who God was, about what was right and wrong, and about God’s will for people to be whole. The Holy Spirit came as my personal Teacher to lead and guide me into all truth, one scripture at a time.
One thing I have learned is that without the Holy Spirit it is very difficult to fully understand the Bible. I know of people who had not given their hearts to God and read the Bible like a textbook. It was impossible for them to fully understand what it was really saying. Only when the Holy Spirit comes into your heart and life can you fully understand the truth of the Word. The Word of God is spiritual in nature and must be spiritually discerned. Your teacher, the Holy Spirit, is the best power source for truth there is. He will help you interpret Scripture with other Scripture verses and reveal to you the true meaning in its historical and biblical context.
Just Show Me the Stuff
In order to live in true, authentic, holy power, we must wholeheartedly desire to know the truth. When people are seeking after power more than truth, they can fall into deception (Matt. 24:11–12, 24). In the story of my mom, even though she fell into deception for a season, her heart’s motive was to know God’s truth. This motive ultimately led her out of darkness.
In my experience as a minister, I have had people approach me, including leaders, whose sole desire was to see signs and wonders without the preaching of the word. Surprisingly, three different leaders said to me in so many words, “You know, if the preaching of the gospel could have gotten the job done, it would have been done a long time ago. What we need are the signs. I just want to see the stuff. I don’t want you preaching more than just a few minutes. We want the miracles.” There are some who diminish the Word of God in pursuit of the supernatural. This is very dangerous, as it can open the door to deceptive power that is not rooted and grounded in truth. The true source of power is always the gospel of Jesus Christ.
