Projecting God's Power Wherever You Are

"And it came about one day that He was teaching; and there were some Pharisees and teachers of the law sitting there, who had come from every village of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem; and the power of the Lord was present for Him to perform healing" (Luke 5:17)

Have you ever thought about what kind of environment you project as a Christian, beloved? Are you aware that we each do so wherever we are whether we know it or not?

Note closely the circumstances in which Jesus found Himself in His beloved Capernaum, His home base for ministry in Galilee. He was likely staying at the home of Simon Peter and, as always, was surrounded by a vast multitude of people. The 19th verse lets us know that the throng of people pressed about Him so tightly that those who had brought a paralyzed man for Jesus to heal had to climb up the outside stairway to the roof and let the man down through the roof tiles just to reach the feet of Jesus.

And I'm sure you know just why the Pharisees and scribes had traveled from every compass point to be there! Let Him slip up once, speak one false word, make one outrageous claim, and they were waiting like vultures on a tree branch to discredit both His teaching and His ministry.

But it is the closing statement of this 17th verse that should really grab our attention, beloved - "the power of the Lord was present for Him to perform healing." How prone we are in the face of such claims to dismiss them by saying, "But that's Jesus. The power of God was present wherever He went." And you would be absolutely correct if you were thinking that. But the power of God was not present because this was God the Son, but rather because this was Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of Man, filled with the Spirit of God. And that reality places an entirely different light on what Luke meant by these words.

If Jesus in His earthly ministry projected the power of God wherever He went, then you and I as His followers, ourselves to be continually filled with that same Holy Spirit, should project the divine power of God as well. When you sit at your desk at work or stand in your place of service, whatever it might be, you should be projecting the power of God. There should be an air about you, an influence that those who come into your presence can sense when they are with you. The power of God ought to flow through your words and actions and should even be sensed through the attitudes that you project to others. That is what it means to be a Christian in 2009, beloved, and nothing less!

So how about it? What do people who know you sense when they are in your presence? Is the power of God being projected into the lives of people with whom you have daily contact? Does the love of God flow from you and touch those around you? Can others sense Jesus' presence as if they were with Him back in Simon Peter's house in Capernaum? Is there anything of the divine in what you think and say and do? There should be...in your life and in mine!

Ron