Power Made Perfect
Have you ever been taunted by the enemy? Bombarded with relentless thoughts that what you are doing, what you are believing for is never going to happen? You aren’t going to get healed, fulfill your destiny or ever be truly free from the cycles of death that seem to circle endlessly in your life.
For me these kind of attacks have increased exponentially ever since we committed ourselves to walk this journey with God to see the restoration and release of our generation, Gen X. And it’s not like the enemy doesn’t have a lot of good material with which to work. In the natural, the situation looks pretty grim. We aren’t exactly at our prime time for mobilization. Knee-deep in kids, careers, and mortgages, youthful dreams of spiritual quests have been all but replaced by more immediate challenges – like trying to figure out where all the cordless phones went – again - or how to convince the kids to stay in bed that extra precious ½ hour on a Saturday morning. And if the busyness and cares of life weren’t challenging enough, half of the Gen Xers and almost no one in the other generations even know who we are. Many Xers in the Church wrestle with hope deferred and disillusionment, while even more of our generation, who genuinely love God won’t even darken the door of a church.
It seems pretty hopeless – until you realize that activating demoralized, disenfranchised, discouraged, and in-debt people is not, in fact, outside the Lord’s experiential sphere. Take David, hiding out in a cave, on the run from the spear-wielding, priest-killing King Saul, having “all those who were in distress or in debt or discontented gathered around him”. (I Samuel 22:2). Those guys? They became the mighty men.
Or how about Gideon?
The angel of the Lord came and sat down under the oak in Ophrah that belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, where his son Gideon was threshing wheat in a winepress to keep it from the Midianites. When the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon, he said, “The Lord is with you, mighty warrior.”
“Pardon me, my lord,” Gideon replied, “but if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us? Where are all his wonders that our ancestors told us about when they said, ‘Did not the Lord bring us up out of Egypt?’ But now the Lord has abandoned us and given us into the hand of Midian.”
The Lord turned to him and said, “Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian’s hand. Am I not sending you?”
“Pardon me, my lord,” Gideon replied, “but how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family.”
The Lord answered, “I will be with you, and you will strike down all the Midianites, leaving none alive.” Judges 6:11-15
I just love Gideon’s candor. An angel appears before him, makes some amazing pronouncements and how does he respond? "Excuse me, but uh… where exactly IS God these days? And what do mean, save Israel, clearly you have the wrong address. I’m nobody.”
And yet God is incredibly patient walking Gideon through his self-doubt. One fleece at a time.
Finally Gideon manages to muster up 32000 men to fight the Midianites. Things are looking up.
God’ response? “Nah, too many men, let’s cut this down, let all the fearful ones go. Hmmm, still 10000 hey? Nope, still too many. Let’s see who will lap water like a dog versus get on his knees. 300? Yeah, I can work with 300. At least now, there will be no question when the enemy is defeated before your eyes that it was Me and not your own strength that really saved you."
As Xers, we are at perhaps the weakest place in our lives. Yet, God is speaking to us that He wants to mobilize us into a great army. It seems ridiculous. Most of us are still stuck at the Gideon- excuse-me-God-WHERE-exactly-have-You-been-let’s-say-for-the-last-two-decades stage. Surely He has the wrong people…
And yet, remarkably, He doesn’t. He sees who we are even if we can’t anymore. And yes, it’s true, right now we are a small, scattered remnant, lacking in any real influence, at least as most people would see it.
But that’s not our problem – our problem is we’ve believed a lie that our weakness, our brokenness has somehow disqualified us. When in fact we’re exactly where God wants us to be.
But He said to me “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. 2 Corinthians 12:9-10
If we really want to close the old doors of the past over our lives and our generation, I think this is the first one that has to close. We have to accept that as hard and confusing as things might have been, as much as we may have suffered, in it all God was and is sovereign and He always knew what He was doing with our lives and our generation. We aren’t late, we haven’t missed it and despite how it may look, we are not hopeless.
And we don’t need to try to “fix ourselves” to be strong enough or good enough or wise enough for God to do what He wants to do with us. We just need to embrace the weakness, fully, unashamedly.
When we were younger, we used to talk about being a “nameless, faceless” generation who would take none of the glory from God.
And that’s exactly who He has prepared us to be. And when God, by His own Hand and by His own power, does through Gen X what He has promised and has written it in eternity, it will be a sign and a wonder. And He will be seen as the glorious King that He is and nobody will ever be able to take that glory away from Him.
If this resonates with your heart, please join in this prayer. “Father the longing of my heart is that You would be exalted and seen as the King that You are, through my life and through our generation. Today, as Gen X, we want to close an old door through which the enemy has spoken many lies. We acknowledge that You are sovereign and faithful and perfect in all Your ways and timings. You have not forgotten us nor has anything we have suffered or experienced been without purpose. We choose today to embrace our weakness and to glory in it, believing that Your grace is more than sufficient and that Your power is made perfect in our weakness.. In Jesus name, Amen.
As we worship together with this song, You Must Increase, may this declaration of His Lordship ring out over our cities and nation!
Love
Steph
On behalf of the Awaken Team
You Must Increase - Tracy Rahn (click link to listen – a window will open in your internet browser. To download the mp3 simply right click on the browser and select “save source as”)
We lift You high
And bow down low
How high can You be?
How low can we go?
Higher and higher
Above all else
Above anything else
You are above all
You are above everything
You are above
You are the highest
You’re the Name above all names
You’re the God above all gods
You’re the King above all kings
You’re the Lord above all lords
You’re the Lord, You’re the Lord! (repeat)
You’re our God, You’re our God, You’re our King!
We exalt the Lord!
You are Alpha Omega, Beginning and End
You’re my Saviour, Messiah, Redeemer and Friend
The Name above all names
The God above all gods
The King above all kings
The Lord above all lords
Our desire is to hear what God is saying for the August meeting and more broadly what He is revealing concerning Gen X in this hour through as wide a representation of the Body as possible. If you have something you feel to share, please email us at share@awakenthedream.org.
