TABERNACLE HOME
Unpacking proximity to God (Empowerment)
POWER
Authority
Strength
Meno: Abiding oneness
Most of us try to understand the things of God’s kingdom,
and their occurrences intellectually, while we depend less and
less upon the Holy Spirit showing us truth. We evaluate most
circumstances scientifically as our understanding and knowledge
of life increase. 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
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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
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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.