We may even adopt principles and procedures, and find them useful, since they explain the dynamics already at work in the complexities of the natural order God has created. We become proud of our accomplishments, even Confessing our own wondrous part in their discovery. We apply our reason to these truths and attempt to make sense of them as we bring them into another structure of a building we’ve erected from the ground upward. I’m afraid any approach to reasoning out God’s plan from the bottom up over against from the top down may prove mostly useless. When I am empowered by the inward dynamics of Christ, it is not that I have discovered a truth or detected a secret to apply to my world. It is that I have learned that I can become empowered by a relationship from out of another world. By the power MENO • 47 of that person, Christ and the Spirit of God, I can then be more vital in relationship with another like myself. Also, I am empowered to love God more deeply through abiding oneness. The Shema (see Deuteronomy 6:4–5) helps us see this truth begun for those under the Old Covenant. We may look back and discover the roots of a system God taught His people concerning loving Him with their all. As God continues His lessons, we learn from His Son that the Shema also includes loving our neighbor as ourselves (Matthew 22:37–40; compare also with Leviticus 19:18). Empowering seems to be a wonderful, supernatural phenomenon that has its purposes out of us and toward God and then toward others. The blood of Christ empowers us from out of ourselves supernaturally and into others, and the matter must be understood in continuity from the top downward and not so much from our perspective of placing these truths within the structures of the building we’ve erected from the ground upward. God does not need to wait for us to understand the dynamics of ministry power. Downward power is always available for ministry, whether we understand its spiritual process or not. By faith we have acted on saving blood and God accomplishes the thing from then on. Understanding the building we erect, as outlined in this book, will only sustain, and add more power to this working structure as we become closer to God and learn to listen at His feet. God created you and me to work well because of the blood applied to our hearts, to our inner parts, and not so well when blood is absent. God planned us to want a relationship with His Son. When He contemplated His creation, our human form in His image, He knew we would be imperfect creatures without His Son’s empowering sacrifice. We have all heard that God has 48 • The Tabernacle placed a vacuum in each human, a sort of inward desire that only His Son can fulfill. It should be clear to our understanding that our hearts contain this vacuum, and the Creator has always known that its filling would require the shedding of His Son’s Holy blood—that has always been His plan. Empowering dynamics and the blood of Christ must be understood as elements created especially for their usefulness in our lives that have become spiritually awakened. By God’s Spirit, Christians can understand where Christ Jesus is staying and where He abides and, by trusting in this understanding, can become more empowered. Why, where, when, and how these dynamics apply to the spiritual life is closely tied to loving God. Loving God first—a first things principle—empowers the second thing, loving your neighbor as yourself.