It’s a certainty: Trials will come, tight deadlines will have to be met, you’ll have to smile through pain and God will ask you to take on a seemingly impossible task.
And you can do it all (and so much more)! That’s because the same Holy Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead, empowered the early church to fulfill Christ’s commission and kept Paul content in his calling will undoubtedly strengthen you to do what you never thought you could.
Don’t know where to begin? These three life-tested steps bring God’s supernatural strength for obedience and victory to any circumstance.
Step 1 – Surrender striving. There is no other choice: You must give up trying to make everything happen on your own. Your strength is a limited resource; it runs out. So rip off your Superman or Wonder Woman cape! You were not created to be all things to all people, nor to do all things on your own. No, you were created to be dependent on God’s Spirit, who is an unlimited source of power.
The first step of supernatural strength is to lift your hands in surrender and admit, “God, I can’t do this on my own! I need your strength.” Now immediately proceed to step 2.
Step 2 – Ask for a fresh filling of Holy Spirit. Though the Holy Spirit enters you at the moment of your salvation, subsequently the Spirit’s power can fill you on a continual basis. In fact, the Bible models this as a source of the disciples’ ongoing strength: “And the disciples were continually filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 13:52, NASB).
As the disciples did, you and I should seek the ongoing, fresh infilling of God’s Spirit to strengthen us. To do this, I encourage you to awaken each morning with a simple prayer: “Father, I ask for a fresh filling of Your Holy Spirit. Saturate me with Your presence. Fill me with Your power. Strengthen me to do what I need to do today.”
Step 3 – Wait in expectation for God’s power to manifest. At His ascension, Jesus instructed His disciples to wait for the power of the Holy Spirit, who would come to enable them to fulfill Christ’s commission. Still, they had no idea when this would happen or what this would look like. So, they had to wait with expectation and trust.
In just a matter of days, the apostles received just what Jesus promised—a supernatural strength not of themselves, to do what they could never do on their own. The prophet Isaiah spoke of this same principle many years before: “But those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint” (Isa. 40:31, NSRV).
What a promise! God doesn’t say you might find new strength; He promises you will! Like the disciples, all you have to do is wait in expectation of it. Be assured: Real breakthrough happens when you stop depending on what you can do and start trusting in what God will do in spite of you.
(Want to discover how to activate God’s power to transform every area of your life? Join me on a journey through 16 of God’s top promises in my book, Activating the Power of God’s Word, from which this article was adapted.) {eoa}
Kyle Winkler (kylewinkler.org) is the creator of the popular Shut Up, Devil! mobile app. His latest book is Activating the Power of God’s Word: 16 Strategic Declarations to Transform Your Life. Kyle holds a Master of Divinity in biblical studies from Regent University. Connect with him on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
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