On this last day of 2022, I am reflecting on my word for this year: POWER. I thought it was going to be about mighty displays of Power as in the book of Acts or in the parting of the Red Sea. But God surprised me with an understanding of something much more powerful…
He is at work in quiet, beautiful ways that actually move things at a much deeper level than flashy acts of power ever could. This year we saw the Lord at work in the midst of conversations, small group, meetings, family, gatherings, and prayer sessions. We had the opportunity over and over again throughout the year to sit back and watch Jesus work through the power of his Holy Spirit in ways, we never could have planned, connecting hearts, and lives and healing hurts. We saw marriages revived. We saw children cry out for more of God. We saw answers to prayer so specific and perfectly timed that could only be God
His Power displayed!!
It is the kind of power seen in the quiet, yet mighty coming of Jesus as a baby in a manger, or in a sleeping Jesus on a boat on stormy seas, or in a prayer prayed in a garden late into the night before the cross. Earth, shaking power that did not flare up in an instant for all to see, and then burn out, but power that was barely seen at all in the moment,
yet changed the course of history for all time.
This is why prayer is so powerful yet so easy to overlook — when you pray, you are connecting to the unseen Power of the Holy Spirit and partnering with the plans and purposes of an unseen God to move things in the earth in ways that will affect the course of history and bring about God-glorifying change in your own heart and life, in the lives of the people around you, and even in nations. But you may not see it right away. You may not see results at all, but His Power IS at work even when we cannot see.
A baby was born in a manger 2,000 years ago. He lived and died a horrible death on a cross. How many prayers did his mother, Mary, pray for him that seemed to go unanswered? It is only in recent history that we can see this life was the single most influential life of all time.
Yet God was working in more powerful ways than we will ever comprehend all along.
On this last day of 2022, I stand in awe of this miracle-working God and how, again, he surprised me with new understanding I did not see coming. His ways are higher than ours and I am so thankful for the unsearchable yet extraordinary way He reveals them to us when we ask.
