Did you go to church yesterday? I did. I really enjoyed myself. Living in Columbus, GA, home of one of the largest military post, fosters such an eclectic group of people that attend the church I go to. Yesterday, for the first time I heard the youth pastor preach. He is Mexican. He was fabulous. He wasn’t the best speaker I have ever heard. He wasn’t the most charismatic I have witnessed. He wasn’t the most gifted I have observed. But what he did better than anyone I have seen in a long is, get his message across without leaving any bases uncovered or any grey areas left to question.

He used a prop. He used a flashlight. He kept saying, this is a simple illustration and it was. A flashlight. He showed us how a flashlight was a flashlight but could not do what it was created to do without having batteries in it. He told us we were created by God but could not do what we were specifically designed to do by God with having Him in us. He stopped to put batteries in. You know the metal coiled spring inside? It gave him a little problem. He had a little fight with it. He got the top half way on and the flashlight didn’t work. Then he got the batteries in it and it still didn’t work. Why? There were two possible reasons: #1. He could have been using the wrong batteries (power source) or #2. He didn’t have them in the right way!

He knew eventually the flashlight would work. He knew eventually the flashlight would do what it was designed to do. He knew eventually the flashlight would have POWER! And it did! But not until he put in the right batteries and not until he put them in the right way! That is what we have to do! We have to put the right thing into our souls and spirit in order to have the power we were each customized to have! There is a plan and method to what God instructs us to do and empowers us to do! Once we follow that plan and have sought the power only He can bestow upon us, we will work!

Just like the flashlight, there are many things in our lives and in our core spirit that work against getting that power instilled within us. We might have family, friends, jobs, co-workers, husbands, wives, children, addictions, preoccupations, etc. that are like that spring in the flashlight! Things that won’t allow easy insertion of the device needed to make the flashlight function properly. Identically we have things that fight and hinder a quick and easy infilling of the holy-spirit into our vessel. The outside part of the flashlight we hold in our hand and see with our eyes is only a pretty case. Nothing on the outside is capable of enabling power. Nothing we do to that flashlight on the outside can make it work and bring light into darkness without the necessary power within! With us, no matter how good we think we are and how well we look or are put together on the outside, until we have the proper mechanism (Jesus) on the inside, we have no power! We have no power! We have no power!

The flashlight is one of the most powerful things you can have in the house when the electricity goes out and everything around you is pitch black. But what happens if you don’t periodically check the power/batteries? What happens if you don’t occasionally change the power/batteries? What happens if you don’t continually use the power/batteries? Acid/ugliness builds up! The light/witness goes dim! And eventually the flashlight no longer works/you are backslidden!

Once you get your flashlight to work/once we have the power within, just like the flashlight, we have got to renew, refresh, maintain and give due diligence to our power within, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!

I don’t know about you, but I enjoyed myself at church yesterday, did you?

Holla back!