(Further reflections on “Empowerment”—Sunday 10-Jan-2021)
Empowerment is possibly God’s idea. He created the world and placed human in the center of creation. He breathed into them and empowered them with a free will to either take His instructions seriously or lightly. The former is life. The latter is death (first spiritual and then physical). God could have stopped Eve and Adam from disobeying Him, but He did not show up at the moment that Eve succumbed to Satan’s lie and Adam blindly obeyed Eve. He neither wants to be the Persecutor nor the Hero. His word is already an empowerment. But twisted word by the Deceiver/Satan disempowered Adam and Eve. God did not jump in to do a quick fix. He thoroughly dealt with their sins, their descendants’ rebellion, and continued to journey with them from the Fall to the Crucifixion, Resurrection, Ascension, the endowment of the Holy Spirit, and the returning of Jesus Christ.
Sinners who are saved by God’s grace through faith in Jesus are no longer victims of their own or others’ sins (or at least they should not be thinking that way). They do not need to be stuck in the “Drama Triangle.” They do not have to become a hero to someone else, by being a rescuer who provide temporal relief without coaching his/her toward long term spiritual growth. They also need not be a “blamer” of life nor “persecutor” of anyone. Now if/when believers are convicted, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me (Galatians 2:20),” they will refuse to play the role of a victim or hero/rescuer or villain/persecutor. Instead, (1) when they face trials/temptations, they will drop their “victim mentality” (‘oh poor little me’ or ‘no body cares of me’, etc.) and begin to worship the Lord; (2) when someone plays “victim,” they need to learn to resist the temptation of acting like a hero/rescuer to and begin to coach/train/sojourn with that individual; and (3) when they find themselves blaming/persecuting others/themselves for whatever reasons, they need to remember that blaming or shifting blames will never be helpful but simply repeating “Adam’s sin” and begin to look at the Cross where they will see that guilt/shame/fear was nailed there and Jesus is no longer in the tomb but have gone before us to prepare for us the final home, and so following Him is the only way. In other words, followers of Jesus are not blamers of life or persecutors of anything/anyone. They are worshippers of God and not victims of man. They are fellow coaches/trainers/sojourners who share struggles living in this life as they continue to walk by faith in Jesus, not by sight on favorable/unfavorable life circumstances. They are more than “conquerors,” because they follow the Victor, Jesus Christ. They are being empowered by the Word, the Cross, and the Holy Spirit.
Now if we ever forget that, one last vivid picture of God’s creation hopefully could remind them, that is, there is “power" packed in the seed. It is being empowered with God-given-genetic-makeup, it just needs to first die to its flesh and to be sown into the ground (dirt/worms/insects/all surrounding challenges) and to be watered, and then we are on the way to growth and to bear fruits.
May the implanted Word (James 1:19-27) of the Lord be rooted deeply and widely in your life-in-Christ.
Amen.
—
Pastor Lap
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