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Man desiring to be powerful, looking to God for help.

Be Powerful Without Being Self-absorbed

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Reading time: 4 minutes

The quickest way to be powerful is to develop healthy doses of humility and confidence. If you lean too far in one direction then life becomes unbalanced and can lead to a world of hurt and trouble. But, healthy humility and confidence result in joy.

How does joy related to power? To answer this, I first want you to consider the following four possible combinations of humility and confidence:

  • Self-loathing: a false humility without much if any confidence means harmfully low self-worth. This person actively rejects the truth about who God is and who He made them to be.
  • Self-deprecating: a helpful amount of humility without enough confidence leads to questionable self-worth. This person is healthy when they have a lighthearted ability to laugh at their mistakes. However, their negative self-expression can also come from a poisoned self-image.
  • Self-confident: a helpful dose of humility and confidence means self-care without arrogance. This person lets God be God while also feeling good about who they are.
  • Self-absorbed: too little humility with too much confidence results in an inflated sense of importance. This person becomes overcompensates for their low self-worth by focusing too much on trying to feel powerful. Increasing focus on self becomes a dead-end at self-loathing. An unhealthy preoccupation with self misses out on what God has to offer.

People become self-absorbed when they look only within themselves to heal their brokenness. In futility, people try to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. But, the power that originates anywhere except from God promises only the illusion of confidence.

For example, if self becomes everything and God is minimized, then God isn’t in His rightful position in our lives. We’re not really going to succeed – maybe we’ll succeed with financially or something – but overall for God’s kingdom and his purposes we won’t be succeeding.

Be Humble So You Can Be Powerful

The world says you must be strong and independent to be powerful. But an “I can do it all by myself” attitude fails to activate God’s power.

Do you want to be full of your own power or full of God's power? You can be humble, confident, and full of God's power. Why settle for only what you can muster without God? Share on X

God says to be powerful, you must be weak enough to accept His help. A healthy weakness is a vulnerable dependence. Depending upon God activates His power.

Each time he said, “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me.

2 Corinthians 12:9 NLT

Be Confident So You Can Be Powerful

If you focus too much on God, if that’s possible, and minimize yourself then you can develop self-loathing where you don’t feel like you’re much of anything. Self-loathing is simply another form of arrogance that blocks God out of your life.

God’s power isn’t going to shine through you then. You need to have a right view of yourself so that God’s power will rest on you and work through you.

Be Joyful So You Can Be Powerful

The joy of the Lord is your strength (Nehemiah 8:10). How can you experience joy if you carry the heavy load of bitterness toward your own spirit?

Passively waiting for God to make you powerful doesn’t work. To be full of power, you must actively allow God to fill you, which also means keeping yourself empty of substitute fillings. Being filled with the Spirit means having great joy in God.

So be very careful how you live, not being like those with no understanding, but live honorably with true wisdom, for we are living in evil times. Take full advantage of every day as you spend your life for his purposes. And don’t live foolishly for then you will have discernment to fully understand God’s will. And don’t get drunk with wine, which is rebellion; instead be filled with the fullness of the Holy Spirit.

Ephesians 5:15-18 TPT

How Can We Be Powerful And Not Self-absorbed? How Can We Be Confident While Also Humble?

If we want to be powerful, we must be joyful. If we want to be joyful, we can’t live rebelliously independent from God. We must stop living with the habits of self-deprecation and self-absorption. The antidote for poisoning shame is to look to God for help.

Those who look to him for help will be radiant with joy; no shadow of shame will darken their faces.

Psalm 34:5 NLT

So we should go for everything. We should do all that we can – shoot from the moon so to speak – but also keep that in check by accepting whatever God provides or doesn’t provide in our lives.

He may have a different plan than the one on our minds, and it may take some time to figure out what that is, but it doesn’t mean we should just be sidelined and sitting back and waiting for something to happen either.

We should take the truths in the Bible that God has given us and run with them as best as we can. But ultimately it is up to God to author our success.

The inspiration for this post came from a conversation I had with Kidron Tirey.

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Supercharge Your Living With A Prayer Journal

Supercharge Your Living With A Prayer Journal

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Reading time: 3 minutes

A healthy prayer life allows you to connect with God so you can receive the spiritual nutrition you crave. In a world that drains your energy, God’s living water is essential.

“but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

John 4:14 ESV

God’s well never runs dry. But as your imperfect body ages, it wears out. Hearing from God always refreshes your spirit and boosts your energy levels. Even Jesus, being human, relied on prayer.

…the report of [Jesus’s] power spread even faster, and vast crowds came to hear him preach and to be healed of their diseases. But Jesus often withdrew to the wilderness for prayer.

Luke 5:15-16 NLT

Have you heard the saying, “It’s not the years, it’s the mileage?” When you abuse or misuse your body, it’s going to wear out faster. If you take care of your belongings, they usually last longer.

If you have a new car, it becomes used the moment you drive it off the lot. From then on you have to perform regular maintenance to keep it from breaking down prematurely.

Balance Supercharges Your Life

Without maintenance, your car’s tires don’t wear evenly. Your steering becomes misaligned. Small errors become significantly larger if given enough time. The same is true for your spiritual life.

A life out of balance will usually function less efficiently than one in balance. Imagine if you exercised your left leg ten times as much as your right leg. You would probably be better off if you hadn’t exercised at all. That’s fairly easy to see. But the same is true for the broad functional areas of your life as well. If you keep yourself mentally fit but ignore your physical and emotional health, you’re going to suffer.

Here is a basic list of areas to keep in balance.

  • Career
  • Physical Health
  • Emotional Health
  • Finances
  • Recreation
  • Spiritual Growth
  • Romantic Relationship
  • Family
  • Friends
  • Church
  • Rest
  • Creative Work
  • Service to Others
  • Adventure

The list isn’t comprehensive and isn’t in any particular order, so you can add, remove, or prioritize areas to fit your lifestyle. Focusing on one area at a time can be beneficial. If you identify an area of weakness, you can bring it up to par with the other areas. The categories above are broad, so you can add more detailed areas if you want. For example, for career, you could add specific disciplines that will help make your work healthier.

Prayer Supercharges Your Life

A prayer journal is a written record of your prayer requests and answers. A life balance worksheet helps you evaluate and improve the quality of your living. When you put the two together, you get a comprehensive prayer plan.

What if you rated each of your life balance areas on a regular basis? When I do that, it helps me see where I need to focus. On a scale of 0 to 10, how are you doing in each area? But you don’t have to stop there.

What if for each area you wrote out what is going well and what needs improvement? It’s easier for me to dwell on the negatives, so this helps me be thankful for the positives. But you don’t have to stop there.

What if you wrote a short prayer for each area? Thank God for what is going well and petition Him in areas that need improvement. That’s one way you can perform regular spiritual maintenance.

If you haven’t figured it out already, this is a great tool to use when you feel discouraged, directionless, or disconnected. When you feel a strong negative emotion, chances are, someone area of your life is out of balance.

Read more about journaling.
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Are You Addicted to God?

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Reading time: 3 minutes

What is your ‘why’ that drives you out of bed every morning? If you’re relying on something other than God and His calling, you’re missing out on God’s best.

I spent the first twenty years of my life on the outside looking for some sense of meaning. I was desperate to find something more powerful than the emptiness of day-to-day life. When I became a Christian at twenty, I finally found my answer.

You can do better than what the world has to offer. You can start each day with motivation that originates from deep within you.

You can do better than caffeine

Caffeine stimulates, but it doesn’t connect you to your Creator.

Everyone has a purpose. Some people are aware of their calling. But too few invest the continuous effort required to reject the lies the world offers and grow into their God-given identity. Play the long game.

Playing the long game means looking at life with long-range vision. What is happening today is never the end, but only the beginning. Each day has its purpose but also builds towards a bigger plan tomorrow.

You can do better than boring

Life is boring without God. But God’s plan unfolds in new ways every second of the day.

God didn’t waste a second of Jesus’s life. He had a purpose and a strategy for everything He accomplished. Jesus lived up to His identity and fulfilled His deepest longing. Now He calls you to find your passion and advance God’s kingdom.

To advance God’s kingdom, you must be connected to Jesus. Apart from Him, you can’t accomplish anything of spiritual worth (John 15:5). When you are enlightened by God’s Spirit, you have the power to advance God’s purposes.

You can do better than random

Life is mysterious. God doesn’t reveal everything about His plans, but He wants you to seek and find spiritual insight.

God knew you before you were born. You have a destiny to pursue. Your identity doesn’t change, but how you see yourself changes over your lifetime. Pursue your identity and enjoy abundant life.

Abundant life comes from participating with God in His work. You can’t have life to the fullest without participating in spiritual growth. God’s plan for your life involves your spiritual growth and helping others with their spiritual growth.

You can do better than worrying

Short-term solutions provide a false hope. Then, you’re back to worrying about where to find your next fix.

God is the perfect fit for the receptors in your brain. He’s better than drugs or medicine. When you’re connected to Him, you experience a transcendent peace. God wired you to connect with Him.

Don’t be afraid to ask God to speak encouragement to you. I don’t always feel great about life. There are plenty of distractions. When you feel discouraged, that’s a perfect time to revisit your ‘why’. Ask God why you should continue when life isn’t going the way you hoped it would.

You can have passion for living and become unstoppable

Being addicted to God means you have at least tasted that God is good (Psalm 34:8). Life can be challenging. You won’t be able to do everything right all the time. But in your heart you know you can return to God’s goodness. Once you’ve tasted God, you realize nothing else comes close to satisfying like He does.

Are you waking up to who God is? Can you see His reality?

You are unstoppable because you have access to God at all times. God’s kingdom is real and your participation counts.

Tomorrow morning when you wake up, think about what motivates you to keep doing what you need to do. Can you sense what is at stake if you give up?

Many things satisfy earthy desires. These aren’t necessarily wrong. But…

You can do better.

God, awaken our spiritual senses to You. Reveal more of who you are. Help us not forget there’s more to this life than we can see.

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Never Give Up

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Reading time: 3 minutes

Have you ever been tempted to give up? Maybe you’ve encountered failure after failure or disappointment after disappointment. No matter what you do or how hard you try, your efforts don’t bring the results you hope for.

But guess what? Past results don’t predict future results with any certainty – not when God is involved. Abraham and Sarah were too old to have a child, but God made it happen according to His promise.

Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt but they didn’t reach the promised land for 40 years. God fulfilled His promise when Joshua took over after Moses passed away. Yet, consider that the Israelites were enslaved for 400 years prior to God starting the delivery process. That’s multiple generations of suffering. That’s plenty of time to give up and some of them did grumble and give up, but you don’t have to.

Giving up is pretty much the same as giving in to the enemy. When Christians are tired and discouraged we can easily stop fighting for what is good.

God is never too late. What hasn’t happened yet, isn’t yet required. God holds every decision in His control.

Are you questioning whether God will allow your dream to be fulfilled? If your dream is godly, then I have a better question for you. How will you pass the time until God ordains your dream to bear fruit? What is the least amount of fear you can live with while you wait? Are you under crushing fear because you doubt God knows how to run the universe (or your life).

When negative events come out of nowhere, it’s easy to anticipate more negatives. Why? Because no one likes surprise losses. If you expect something negative, then you have some semblance of control over it. But if a negative occurs unpredictably, you no longer feel safe. If a negative event happens randomly, what will prevent another one from happening again, and then again?

The problem with this line of thinking is it leaves God out of the equation completely. Just because God doesn’t prevent something bad the first time, doesn’t mean He will continue to let you suffer (1 Peter 5:10).

If you lose heart, you’ve lost everything. You can always recover, but to do so requires that you reignite your faith. You may not have realized your dream in your expected timeframe, but God has the power to complete the impossible. What is impossible for man, is yet possible for God.

What can we conclude then? God’s timing is more important than our timing. When we are believers, we know God cares for us, so we also know whatever happens, no matter how difficult, we can never lose a dream that God can’t find and restore.

Our lives are significant, so we must always work for, and ask for, good things. However, we must also be prepared to accept delays and setbacks. As we grow in faith, we grow in acceptance of what God provides. He provides the right amount – not too much and not too little.*

Your efforts count. Never give up. You can make a difference in other’s lives that has eternal significance. Don’t give up doing good.

And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.

Galatians 6:9

No matter what happens, never forget that you and God are on the same team. God and you ultimately have the same goal. You perform good works that will advance God’s kingdom (Ephesians 2:10).

* If you would like to explore this idea further, read my book, To Identity and Beyond.
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Are You Interpreting the Bible Correctly?

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Reading time: 3 minutes

A casual reading of the Bible can lead you in the wrong direction. Sometimes the consequences can be trivial, but at other times they can be severe.

Any contemporary Bible version is a translation from the original text (usually in Hebrew or Greek). A translator must interpret the source language to determine what is the best word choice in the destination language.

To better understand a passage, it’s helpful to read multiple versions of a passage in context. Ask, “what meaning did the original author intend?” Sometimes, it’s not so obvious. But we have the Holy Spirit to help us gain the best meaning. We also have each other as believers to help with understanding.

Proverbs 18:2 isn’t too complicated, so it’s an easy place to start. Consider how the meaning becomes more clear by reading multiple versions.

Fools find no pleasure in understanding
    but delight in airing their own opinions.

NIV (Proverbs 18:2)

Fools have no desire to learn;
    they would much rather
    give their own opinion.

CEV (Proverbs 18:2)

So far we can see that “understanding” and “to learn” can be substituted for each other. That’s not too profound, but let’s look at two more.

A fool does not care whether he understands a thing or not; all he wants to do is show how smart he is.

GNT

Senseless people find no pleasure in acquiring true wisdom,
for all they want to do is impress you with what they know.

TPT (Proverbs 18:2)

With these next two, we get a couple of new phrases. I like how the GNT shows the idea of not caring about understanding which allows hasty actions and a lack of patience. We also learn that a fool is senseless.

A rebel doesn’t care about the facts. All he wants to do is yell.

TLB (Proverbs 18:2)

The last one (TLB) is more of a paraphrase translation. But can’t you just picture someone airing their opinions by yelling? You can imagine the fool in action. This gives me a picture of someone who doesn’t necessarily make sense, but who probably believes that whoever is louder is more right. Verse 1 supports that idea.

People who do not get along with others are interested only in themselves; they will disagree with what everyone else knows is right.

GNT (Proverbs 18:1)

So, fools will stick to their folly even in the face of mounting evidence against them (see also Proverbs 23:9 and 26:4).

Proverbs 18:1 is more complicated than verse 2. In fact, based on some commentary I read on BibleHub.com and BibleGateway.com, it’s possible to interpret verse 1 as encouragement to separate from others.

And, if you believe or know by the Holy Spirit that you have found the truth, then you should stubbornly hold to your convictions, even in the face of many dissenters (see Romans 16:17-18).

However, the positive interpretation is wrong if you stubbornly hold to a false belief. A fool will place his own opinion above the truth. A fool doesn’t really care about truth. Most commentaries agree that Proverbs 18:1 is interpreted correctly as a warning to not find yourself in the wrong camp, rather than (in this context) as an encouragement to defend your opinions.

You need discernment to understand what the Bible says. Without a connection with God, you could end up misinterpreting and misapplying a verse. Ask, what do I know to be true? Ask, what have I already learned? Ask, what do other parts of the Bible say? Ask, what situation is in front of me (someone who is behaving well, or someone who is senseless)?

Next week, I’ll continue to explore this idea with verses 3 and 4.

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Is Control Healthy or Unhealthy?

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Reading time: 3 minutes

Do you think of control as a positive or negative? Your answer probably depends on who is in control. Is it you, someone else, or God?

All else equal I’d prefer to be in control. But I’m probably better off when I trust God because He is both good and in control.

When Control is Unhealthy

There are many different ways control plays out in our lives. Are you in-control, out-of-control, God-controlled, or self-controlled? Any of these could be positive or negative, depending on the perspective you choose.

Control is unhealthy when you force or manipulate from a place of fear. Relying on your own ingenuity apart from God doesn’t usually work well. Doubting God but acting anyway didn’t turn out well for Moses (Numbers 20:10-13).

This kind of control is unhealthy in at least these two situations:

  1. When you hold onto something too hard
  2. When you hold onto something too long

Holding Too Hard

Some things in life are delicate. A death grip doesn’t work. If you turn to something or someone in desperation, you might cling too quickly or too intensely. Your relationship with God or others will probably suffer.

Don’t make anything, including your own way of doing things, more important than God intended. Using food, alcohol, sex, grades, status, money, people – anything really – beyond God’s intended use is destructive. You might harm the thing, the other person, or yourself.

Holding Too Long

Some things in life are temporary. A permanent grip doesn’t work. Some things you can’t control; you have to let them go. You can try to force something temporary to be permanent, but that’s probably going to destroy it. You’ll suffer a loss either way.

You have to know when to cut your losses. Accept what you’ve already lost. Move forward to the next good thing to come into your life. Recognize the good things you already have.

When Control is Healthy

God is in control, so control can’t be all bad. Control is healthy when motivation to act comes from love and faith.

There are certainly situations when a lack of control is unhealthy. Control in this context is acting when it is the right thing to do. Passivity would be sinful (James 4:17). Control is healthy in at least these two situations:

  1. When you act like God
  2. When you cling to what is good

Act Like God

Some things in life are forever. Protect what is valuable. Step into the situation and be responsible. Have the discipline (self-control) to do what is right. Self-control is the same as letting God be in control and aligning yourself with what He wants (Ephesians 5:1-2).

When God’s Spirit is in control, the law doesn’t apply.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

Galatians 5:22-23 NIV

Cling to What is Good

Some things in life are worthy. A wimpy grip doesn’t do them justice. Pursue and lay hold of whatever is good. Consider for example: wisdom, a wife, and a mature faith (Proverbs 4:7; 18:22, Philippians 3:12).

Your faith is valuable; don’t trade it for anything. To increase healthy control you must also decrease unhealthy control.

Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good.

Romans 12:9 NIV

Control can be understood as either right action or wrong action. The next time you have the opportunity to act, check yourself: Am I acting in love and faith? Is what I’m about to do helpful or harmful?

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