What is the purpose of God for your life? Only when you align your life with His purpose can you expect the power to flow. God is not going to empower you to pursue your own private agenda, no matter how noble you may think it is. It is only when you align your life with the purpose of God – the salvation of the lost – that you can expect the power to flow.
God’s power is not intended to entertain, to give you goose bumps or to deliver you from whatever your introverted need may be. That may shock you! He loves us as a heavenly Father. He wants us to be healed and provided for, but that is not the purpose of His power in our lives!
In Acts 1:8, we see very clearly what the purpose is:
"But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and all Judea and Samaria, and the end of the earth."
God’s power and purpose are forever linked together. He does not say, "You shall receive power after the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be healed, delivered, set free, prosperous and able to retire early…." No.
You will receive power after the Holy Spirit has come on you to evangelize the world, beginning in your own neighborhood and working outward into the uttermost parts of the earth.
If the power of God is conspicuously absent in your life, the first thing you might want to ask yourself is this: "Is my life turned outward? Am I concerned about other people? Do I use my life’s resource of time and money to get people saved or to influence this world for God in a way that will prepare them for salvation?"
Ask yourself those questions. Regardless of the call of God on our lives, we all share this mandate. If that is not the way you see life, then you have another agenda, and that is why the power is not going to operate.
Source: The Last Millennium by Mac Hammond
Excerpt permission granted by Harrison House Publishers
Mac Hammond is the senior pastor of Living Word, a large and growing church in Brooklyn Park (a suburb of Minneapolis), Minnesota. He is the host of the Winner’s Minute, which is seen locally in the Minneapolis area on KMSP Channel 9 at 6:44 a.m. and 11:11 a.m. He is also the host of the Winner's Way broadcast and author of several internationally distributed books. Mac is broadly acclaimed for his ability to apply the principles of the Bible to practical situations and the challenges of daily living.
