Powerless!

“

They will soar on wings like eagles”

God gave the prophet Isaiah an incredibly encouraging promise to share with His people during a time when they were facing a very harsh reality and had no strength to endure it:

“But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.” Isaiah 40:31

Have you ever noticed that when an eagle soars, it doesn’t use his own power? An eagle can stay aloft for hours without ever flapping its wings! Instead, the eagle rides an invisible force that creates lift beneath it, something called “thermals”, a rising updraft formed by the breath of the wind and the fire of the sun. Is there anything in all creation that exudes freedom more than an eagle soaring across the sky? It’s no coincidence that the source of those thermals, wind and fire, are symbolically used in scripture as descriptions of God’s Holy Spirit.  Making the choice to set aside any reliance on your own power and completely trust in and rely upon the divine “wind beneath your wings” is the key to walking in the freedom God longs to see us enjoy. But it’s not easy. In fact, we humans hate embracing our powerlessness because it absolutely wrecks our pride.

As anyone who has any familiarity with the twelve steps of Alcoholics Anonymous or any of the myriad of rehab programs patterned after it can tell you, the path to freedom from any addictive behavior must begin with an acknowledgement of the problem and, most importantly, of the fact that “I am powerless over it!” The reason that twelve step programs are successful, is that the steps are nothing more and nothing less than a full-on gospel presentation!  If you are a Christian, you have already walked this path and embraced your own personal powerless condition at least once in your life. You had to! You absolutely had to agree with God about your powerlessness over sin in order to receive the free gift of salvation. It’s an integral part of the mystical and miraculous process of confession, repentance and acceptance by faith of underserved forgiveness that every “born again” believer has experienced. Before any of that happens, the Holy Spirit brings a conviction to each of us - one that we must agree with in our hearts, minds and wills - a conviction that I cannot save myself. I cannot fix my sin problem.  I cannot be good enough, I cannot keep the rules perfectly, or try hard enough through my own efforts to make myself acceptable to God. I cannot, in any way, earn my salvation, deserve my salvation, or pay for my salvation. I am indeed powerless in my sin before a holy God. All of us were born in sin, morally bankrupt and hopelessly mired in spiritual poverty – not a pretty picture. But good news! Jesus said, in the very first line of his most famous sermon, “Blessed are the poor in Spirit!”  Why would he say that?

Think about all the encounters Jesus had with the Pharisees. Those encounters often ended with Jesus railing against their spiritual pride and self-righteousness – their unwavering insistence that they had achieved right-standing before God based on their good works and legalistic observance of the law.

On the other hand, consider the kinds of people Jesus typically connected with: drunks, tax-collecting swindlers, demon-possessed prostitutes, lepers, outcasts…. those who absolutely knew they needed a savior, those who knew they were powerless.

When we finally arrive at “powerless,” we are ready to accept grace. Until we do, we won’t… and there is nothing more powerless that a dead man.  The true meaning of words like, “take up your cross”, “deny self” or even “come and die” can easily get lost in translation from the “Christian-eese” context they are usually spoken in. But “powerless” is hard to escape. It’s the “real rubber meets the road” moment for both our initial salvation and our on-going transformation and liberation. Recognizing my powerlessness forces me away from self-reliance and towards Jesus. As believers, we embraced powerlessness at salvation, but we all, like the “foolish Galatians” Paul addressed, have a propensity to begin with grace then quickly run back to works.

“You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh?”  Gal. 3:1-3

When Jesus told his disciples, “If you are going to come after me, you will have to take up your cross daily, deny yourself and follow me,” he was outlining a habit of “coming and dying” – of continually embracing our own powerlessness.  It is so necessary to our freedom that God, in his great love for us, will actually cause or allow tough circumstances to appear and sometimes remain in our lives to remind us of it.

Paul wrestled with this truth when he speaks of his “thorn” in 2Corinthians 12:

“Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me.  Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.  That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” 2 Cor. 12:7-10

God, who could have instantly delivered the apostle from it, allows Paul to continually battle something – to fight an on-going spiritual battle. Why? According to his testimony here, it was to “keep him from becoming conceited” – to keep him squarely in the powerless camp! God knew that Paul, and all of us, can very easily slide into self-reliance and self-righteousness. Whenever I begin to think, “I can handle this,” that’s when I get in trouble.

Solomon said it this way,

“Pride leads to destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall!”  Proverbs 16:18

Centuries later, Paul echoes his words,

“So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall! 

But then he adds this comforting promise,

“No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind.  And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.” 1Cor. 10:11-13

God warns us that self-reliance never works but promises that God-reliance always does! That’s what Paul was saying when he wrote that seemingly non-sensical statement, “For when I am weak, then I am strong!”

Embracing Powerlessness is a well-established Biblical principle: God waits till Abraham and Sarah are well past child-making age – in the words of Hebrews, “as good as dead!” – to miraculously enable them to conceive; Jacob, hours before he thought he would be fighting the battle of his life, wrestles with God all night and ends up with a dislocated hip, then, when he is utterly powerless, God blesses him and delivers him; Moses, a man of some power in Pharoah’s court, is stripped of his royal privileges and becomes a lowly nomadic sheep-herding fugitive before God appears and calls him to be Israel’s deliverer; God whittles Gideon’s army down from 32,000 to 300, (a massive reduction of 99.4%!)  before giving them a great victory over the Midianites. It’s clear that God chooses to move in His mighty power when his children realize they are powerless.

Let’s look again at Paul’s paradoxical power statement: “When I am weak then I am strong!” 

There is movement in that statement, it begins with weakness and ends with strength.  But what moves? What’s the change-agent that transforms weakness into strength? It’s the same invisible power that lifts the eagle - the same spirit that raised Christ from the dead – the resurrection power that comes through the grace of God demonstrated at the cross. Paul tells us what changes weakness to strength: 

“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” 

It’s almost as if God has hidden the key to freedom under a table where it can only be found when we kneel in humility.  “God opposes the proud,” (seemingly strong) “but gives grace to the humble,” (acknowledgers of weakness). “He has chosen the weak to shame the strong!”

I know that it’s true, but I don’t like it. None of us do. We all learn very early that to succeed in this world we must at least appear strong, so we constantly work to cover-up any weakness.  But it in our attempts to cover up, we lose the humility that is necessary to find freedom, healing and wholeness. Until we realize we can’t, we will never seek the God who CAN! Why would we?

Have you ever seen a toddler stretching up on his tip-toes to get a drink from an unreachable water fountain towering over him? His loving father stands behind offering to lift him up, but the child defiantly shouts “No! I can do it myself!” Finally, after many failed attempts, in exasperation the toddler surrenders his stubborn will and receives his father’s strong arms and the lift he needed. You’d think we would learn! But we don’t. Apart from Christ we can’t.

Over and over, we see this scene played out in scripture between the Heavenly Father and the nation he metaphorically calls “his son,” Israel. God would graciously offer his strength, but they would turn from Him and “do it themselves,” adopting the worship and ways of the nations around them. Eventually that “apart from God” path would lead where it always leads, to slavery and bondage. The bitterness of bondage would sometimes turn them back to God as they would “hit bottom” and cry out to Him.

Like the Israelites, and thirsty toddlers, we were all born stubbornly addicted to sin, and we are all stubbornly addicted to covering up. Jesus came to set the captives free and the first step of that deliverance is admitting that I am powerless over my addiction.

“People are slaves to whatever has mastered them” 2 Peter 2:19

“The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so.  Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God.” Romans 8:7-8

Maybe something inside you is bristling against the idea that you might be a powerless “addict.” But when we really get honest with ourself, we see that our flesh, our humanness, is absolutely addicted to seeking our own ways – “I can do it myself!”  We are addicted to appearing strong and covering up our weakness, we are slaves to what has mastered us. Paul said it this way,

“ I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.  And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me.  For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.  For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.  Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.” Romans 7:15-20

As non-sensical and paradoxical as it sounds… the first step towards life is death. So, to lead us into life, a loving, life-giving Savior bids us, “Come and die!”  What comes next is turning to an all-powerful God who himself died to give us life and set us free!