By the Power Vested in Me

(click to listen)

I’m Doug Apple...and my heart is on fire.  (Luke 24:32)

“And God I forgive everyone for everything, past…present…and future…”

That’s my daily prayer.  I pray through the Lord’s Prayer and when I come to the part about “…as we forgive those…” I stop and say, “God, right now, I forgive everyone for everything, past, present, and future.  I preemptively forgive everyone for everything they might do or say, so that I’m free to love them like You want me to love them, with the power of the Holy Spirit flowing through me.”

Yes, we know we are supposed to forgive people, but it doesn’t end there.  The big goal is to love people.  Forgiveness gets all the offenses out of the equation which sets us free to love people.

I often say this.  I forgive people so that I’m free to love people the way God wants me to love them, to want God’s best for them, and to even rejoice over them!

My friend said, “Well, I’m not going to rejoice over the man that just murdered my daughter.”  No, his daughter wasn’t murdered.  He was just making a point.  And I get the point.  But nonetheless, Jesus told us to love our neighbor, and our enemy.

I’m not sure you can properly love someone you haven’t forgiven.  And what’s this idea of rejoicing over them?  

The Bible talks about God rejoicing over His people.  Zephaniah 3:17 says, “He will rejoice over you with gladness…He will rejoice over you with singing.”

That was a prophetic word for the future, because at the moment God’s people were rebellious and disobedient.  God was certainly not rejoicing over their sin, and we don’t rejoice over other people’s sin.  So what are we rejoicing over?

We rejoice over the potential in people!  God really does have beautiful plans and possibilities for people who will turn their lives over to Him, and for that, we rejoice over them!  And we love them toward their destiny in God.

And yet it is so hard to love people, right?  For the most part it seems impossible to love everyone.  So how can we do it?

“By the power vested in me…”

I love that little phrase.  You often hear it at weddings.  “By the power vested in me, I now pronounce you man and wife.”

Well we, as Christian believers, have the Holy Spirit inside of us, and listen to what Second Timothy 1:7 says about that Spirit.  It says, “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.”

By the power vested in me, the power of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of power and love and a sound mind, I can love everyone God brings into my path.  

Galatians 5:22 says “…the fruit of the Spirit is love…”

God has given us a spirit of love!  And of power.  He’s given us the power to love!

And to clear room for that power to work, we have to get all offenses off the table and out of the equation by forgiving everyone for everything…past…present…and future.

May God bless you today.

I’m Doug Apple.