A Mandate for Greatness: We are not Powerless

So I started writing this post maybe a dozen different times in my head. Now I’m finally sitting down to do it. I want to start off by saying that I am not a blogger (nor do I have any desire to be one), so when I say to share this if you feel led, it isn’t to build any sort of blogging platform (or even somehow increase my music platform, all of that is in the hands of God). It’s more that I’ve felt this increasing burden to share some of the things the Lord has been putting on my heart. I don’t do that in arrogance; after all, 1) God can talk to all of you too and tell you all wonderful things that we all need to hear, and 2) I am realizing more and more how little I know and how much there is to learn. So I think what I’m doing here is a little less “Hey guys, I have obtained the keys to all knowledge, sit down and be inspired by my wisdom and understanding” and a little more “We’re all on this journey and I think I see the next step, so I’m going to take it and anyone who wants to come can come too.” And I’m sure it’s my own insecurity that leads me to write this disclaimer, because I doubt that any of you were thinking any of that, so clearly I am not perfect.

Also, this series is kind of directed towards people who are in the church. If you’re not in the church and you’re reading this, hey there! Read on! Just be aware, I’m going to be briefly touching on some things that will probably require some deeper explanation that I don’t have the space for here, so if you have questions, hit me up on Instagram and I’d be happy to chat with you. Same goes for if you are in the church and are like “Huh….?” If my DM’s blow up I might have to delete this and take a second stab at it XD.

Now that that’s out of the way…

This is going to be the first post in a series that I’m going to call “A Mandate for Greatness”. When I say “mandate”, I mean an assignment from God. I believe that the entirety of this generation has a mandate for greatness on it. There’s so much opportunity for each and every one of us to truly embrace who we are in Christ and run with it in a way that I don’t think the world has ever seen before. They’ve seen a few do it (e.g. Jesus, the apostles, etc.). But there hasn’t been a time in history where all of the people of God collectively began to take hold of their identity and run with it, not in a brief sprint or quick spark that dies out, but with endurance, not growing weary of doing good. And in this time, I believe we can take hold of that calling. I’ll get into why I believe that in another post. For now, I want to talk about a crucial first step that we can take now and in this moment.

To start, I’ll say this: following God usually requires letting go of some things. More often than not, the things we have to let go of are mindsets, or ways of thinking. When you change the way you think and the way you look at things, it has the effect of changing your actions. If I think I’m in the middle of the Arctic tundra, I’m going to act very differently than I would if I thought I was on a beach in the Caribbean. If I think that God hates me, my outlook on Him and on the world He made is going to be very different than if I truly believe that He loves me. If you find that your actions aren’t lining up with what you say you believe, take a look at your mindset. 9 times out of 10, that’s where the problem is.

One mindset in particular that we all need to let go of if we are truly to embrace what God wants us to do in this time is this: we are not powerless (roll credits).

For some of you, that might hit you like a ton of bricks. You might be thinking “Easy for you to say, Kaleb. You don’t know what I’m going through. I am very clearly powerless. Always have been, always will be.” If that’s you, hang on a second, we’ll come back to that. I first want to address everyone thinking “Yeah, that’s right! I’m not powerless!” Because for some of us, it’s really easy to agree with that statement. People say it all the time in motivational circles. It makes for a great post on social media. It might give you the warm fuzzies when you’re feeling down. It might be a genuine encouragement when you’re about to give up. And that’s wonderful. But here’s the thing. We’re great at saying that we’re not powerless when it makes us feel good to be powerful. But when being powerful means, “Hey. You can take ownership. You can take responsibility”, suddenly it isn’t so warm and fuzzy anymore.

I’ll give you an example. Let’s talk about the secret place for a second (if you’ve been running with me for a minute, you know that’s my favorite topic. If you haven’t, that’s what I call your quiet time with God, the time that you set aside to be with Him). When it comes to the secret place, we can very easily step into a powerless mindset, and make all sorts of excuses not to spend time with God. “It’s too late, I have to get up early in the morning,” we say, or, “It’s too early, I need my sleep.” But missing out on that time isn’t often something that we allow ourselves to take responsibility for. How often do we say “I don’t feel like hanging out with God today. I really don’t feel like my time with God is important. I don’t feel like anything useful happens during that time. I’d rather watch Netflix, because even though nothing useful is happening when I do that either, at least it’s fun“? If you do say that to the Lord, I commend you for actually being real with where you’re at. And after saying that, how often do we say, “Even though I feel all of those things, I am not dominated by my feelings, because I am powerful, not powerless. So I’m going to spend that time with God anyway because I am determined to minister to His heart, and I will give Him my time whether I get anything back in that moment or not”? I would like to suggest to you that this is where we can get to.

And here I would like to address condemnation. Condemnation is a terrible thing, and it has a two-pronged attack. We’ve recognized the first prong, but I don’t think we often acknowledge the second. The first is actually embracing condemnation. That sounds like this: “Ugh. I’m not perfect. I’m doing the wrong things. God must hate me. I really suck. I’m the worst. Ughhhhhh. Why do I keep messing up? Am I broken or something? What’s wrong with me?” That’s not of God. If you find yourself thinking that way, stop yourself and start to think the opposite. Romans 8:1 says, “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.” Walking according to the Spirit is taking a heart position of obedience to God. When you determine in your heart to obey the Lord, even after you have messed up there is nothing to condemn. God does not dwell on your past failures, He is always looking for your response. Because you are powerful in Christ, you can always respond by walking in obedience to God.

But then there’s the second prong. That sounds like this: “Ugh, condemnation is the worst. I used to live there and I’m not going back! I’m actually kind of scared of it… Oh no… how am I going to keep myself from ever going there again? I know. I’ll just avoid all responsibility. If I’m not responsible for anything, then I can never condemn myself, because I don’t have any control or impact on anything that happens around me! Yay, condemnation free!!” While this does free you from condemnation (sort of), it’s the definition of powerlessness and it robs you of a ton of other things. So often in scripture it talks about running with endurance, or not growing weary in doing good, or pressing on towards the mark. In those things, there is effort on your part. When you throw off the idea that your actions actually have an impact on the outcome you get from something (or in biblical terms, you reap what you sow), you miss out on so many great benefits (e.g. spending time with God, because once you push past that “but I don’t want to” feeling, it’s actually really amazing). In fact, it is a testimony to the love and mercy of God that despite the fact that you are truly responsible for all of your failures, He covers them with the blood of Jesus and chooses to forget your willful disobedience. Not only this, but He doesn’t continue to call you willfully disobedient. He sees the opposite in you. So you can embrace what He says in faith and actually start to walk it out.

And that goes for the people who felt the idea of being powerful was ludicrous as well. Your situation may look bleak. Your experience may look horrendous. Everything you’ve ever seen might tell you that there is absolutely no way for you to overcome what’s before you. But nothing that the enemy can do to you can rob you of the choice to either embrace that narrative, or embrace what God says about you. He says that you’re more than a conqueror (and conquerors are pretty powerful). He says nothing can prevail against you, and no weapon formed against you can prosper. And taking hold of that is as simple as actually allowing yourself to believe it, because no one wants to feel powerless.

But let’s get practical. How do we actually do this? What does it look like to get rid of this powerless mindset and be powerful?

First, it’s important to say that this isn’t a thing to try to do in your own strength. That’s a cliché that we say in Christian circles all the time, but I don’t think I really understood it until the Lord explained it to me like this. He was sharing with me all of the things He was giving for me to do in this coming season, and I was in this place of feeling extremely powerless. The thought of doing any of these things was overwhelming; I literally couldn’t muster the strength to even dream of doing what He was talking about because the thought was just too exhausting. I’m sure some of you can relate. So I started to complain about how I literally just didn’t have the strength to do what He was saying. And very calmly, God was like “You don’t need any strength. I’m your strength. What do you need your strength for?” And I had an aha moment. And as I embraced what He was saying, all of the exhaustion fell off, and I realized that my tiredness and weakness was coming from expecting to have to accomplish all of what God was saying in my own strength, and expecting to be exhausted by it. The second I let go of all of that, it instantly became possible in my mind, and the joy of dreaming with God was there again. So if you’re hearing what I’m saying right now about being powerful and feel exhausted by it, let that expectation go. It doesn’t have to be exhausting. God is your strength, you don’t need to use yours. It’s like being carried by someone who never gets tired. How could that be exhausting?

So that’s key number one: don’t try to be powerful in your own strength. Be powerful in God’s strength. Don’t allow yourself to entertain whether or not you have enough strength to accomplish what He’s putting before you, because you don’t need your strength. Yes, that is a radical way to think, because if God isn’t there to lean on, you would be screwed. I’d like to suggest that that’s where your faith comes in. Yes, it is a scary thing to step into. But I think we need to face it; the call that’s before us is literally impossible to do if we’re going to try to do it in our own strength, so let’s not even try. Looking at the current state of our world (or maybe you only need to go so far as the current state of your life, things can get very hard), halfway doing it isn’t cutting it.

Here’s a second practical tip: be on the lookout for areas where you think you’re powerless. It could be in loving your spouse, or your siblings, or your friends. “Sure I would love them, but they just keep acting like this… I’d love to be kind to them, but they keep…” Do you hear the powerlessness yet? The way someone else acts doesn’t have to determine the way you respond to them. For more on that, I’d recommend reading Keep Your Love On by Danny Silk.

Another very pertinent example in this time; your feelings. We let our feelings run all over the place with us to such an extent that we actually start to identify with them; “I feel this way” and “I am this way” start to blend together, and that removes any opportunity of actually moving in a way that pushes against how you feel. I will be very clear here. God is not your feelings. Sometimes God wants you to do things that you don’t feel like doing in the moment. And that feeling doesn’t always magically disappear when you realize that God is the one who wants you to do it. To walk with Him in those moments, you have to understand that you are more than your feelings so that you can put them in subjection and do what He sets before you to do. We can’t love comfort so much that we only obey God when it’s comfortable, and pretend like He doesn’t exist when it’s uncomfortable. The fact that we act like that actually creates a doubt that a lot of us face… that nagging “is it all in my head?” whisper that causes you to question whether or not you can hear God. You don’t question whether or not you can hear the Lord when He starts telling you things that you don’t want to do. You might question whether or not you want to hear Him speak (been there lol), but you certainly don’t question whether or not you can. I think a lot of us hear from the Lord a lot more clearly than we would like to admit, because admitting it would mean also admitting to ourselves that we’ve been actively resisting Him. It’s okay. Right now, in this moment, you have the opportunity to yield to His voice.

So let’s wrap this up. You are powerful! Whatever God sets before you to do, you can do. It might not feel nice when you start, but as you commit to doing whatever the Lord gives you to do, there’s so much life, purpose, and peace. Depression can’t stay in that place, I’ve experienced it in my own life. The Lord does so much for us in this completely bonkers relationship that we find ourselves in. He made it possible for us to enter into the relationship before we even knew we wanted (or needed) it, leads us so very carefully down the path we need to walk (even when we try to take things off course), and gives us the strength we need to take every step. But relationship is never entirely one-sided. We are called to love God, and love requires choice and action on our part. So let’s take ownership of the very little that we have to give to the Lord and give it with everything we have. As David said, far be it from me to offer something to the Lord that costs me nothing (2 Samuel 24:24). If it costs a little discomfort, so be it. If it costs a lot of discomfort, so be it. It’s so worth it that there are people literally dying all over the world for it. I refuse to love my comfort so much that I exchange the time I set aside for my Father for Netflix while my brothers and sisters in Christ are being tortured for it.

The greatness that’s on your life is going to require some ownership. Don’t be afraid of it, the strength to take it and walk the walk well is there for you.