Steppin Up To A New Level Of Power Series

Stepping Up To A New Level With Power

2/12/06 Genesis 1:27-30 Matthew 20:20-28

Suppose for a moment that when you wake up in the morning, there is angel at your bed and He says, “God is giving you an unlimited amount of power for the next hour and a half. Do as you please with it. What’s the first thing that comes to your mind as to what you would do? How many of us changed our situation in life?

How many of us immediately thought of the poorest of the poor and changed their positions? How many of us thought of granting healings? How many of us did something on a world wide scale? How many of us became rich or famous? How many of us led people to Christ?

I want you to know that God has given each one of us an unlimited amount of power, but it is spread out through time in small segments. In the first book of the bible, when God created us, God created us in His image. We know that God is all powerful, therefore if we are in His image, we are given a certain amount of power. Right after God said, “let us make man in our image”, the next statement was “and let them rule over.” Now the them refers to male and female and the rule over refers to all of the rest of creation including the earth itself.

Later again in verse 28 God makes us aware of the power He has given to us by again instructing us to subdue or to conquer the earth, and again to rule over every living creature. God gives us power from the moment we come into the world. God equipped us as babies with a high piercing scream to give us power with adults. That scream will often get us what we want whether it is to be fed or to get a diaper changed.

Each of us has been equipped with a certain amount of power in our home, in our church, in our school, on our job, and in society. Power is the influence to make things happen. When I speak of stepping up to new level with power, I’m not referring to finding a new source of power, but rather steppin’ up to a new level of controlling the power that we have.

Men have an incredible power over women, in that women seek healthy loving relationships, and will submit to men to get it. Men are generally stronger than women and can use physical power to over come them in getting them to do what they want. When this goes to the extreme, we have men on boys beating on women and girls in relationships.

Women and girls have an incredible power over men. You know how to dress and speak in such a way as to get the average man to turn his head again for a second look. You can get a man to risk a 25 year marriage to spend 30 minutes with you, or you can get a young guy to forget about 18 years of child support payments just to spend 15 minutes with you. It will be the most costly 15 minutes of his life.

Parents have power over their children. You can love them or you can terrify them. I’ve done funerals where kids have said nothing good about their parents, other than they were mean and strict. Children have power in their homes. They can be loving and obedient and build up the home, or they can be rebellious and destructive and make life in that home absolutely miserable.

Teachers have power over their students. They can build on a child’s life to inspire them to become nurses, scientists, doctors, workers and a lot more, or they can take the attitude, look I’m paid whether you learn anything or not. Students have tremendous power in the classroom. They can choose to equip themselves to reach their dreams, or they can join in disrupting the classroom so that very little learning takes place.

Employers and supervisors have incredible power over their employees. They can make life at work meaningful and coming to work a positive experience or they can make 8 hours seem like an eternity of drudgery and harassment. Employees have an incredible power with their employers. They can help make a business profitable, or they can help run it into the ground.

Power is never a once sided relationship even when it looks like it is. Back in the civil rights era, the segregationist in the south had the police, the national guard, the courts, the city government , county government and city government on their side, and they lost to a group of non-violent blacks. Part of understanding power, is knowing that you have it and then choosing to use it wisely.