Power of a Praying Woman 10/17/06 9:02 AM Page 16
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The Power of a Praying Woman
working in us, we can’t be liberated from everything that keeps us from moving into all God has for us. We don’t want to spend our lives waiting to be delivered from all that limits us and separates us from God’s best. We want to be set free now. But that can’t happen if we refuse to acknowledge the Holy Spirit’s power. When we deny the Holy Spirit’s attributes we become like those people the Bible speaks of who live “having a form of godliness but denying its power” (2 Timothy 3:5). We become professional Christians who talk “Christianese” with such a slick veneer of super?ciality that it makes us untouchable and keeps us untouched. We become all show and no heart. All correctness and no love. All judgment and no mercy. All self-assurance and no humility. All talk and no tears. We live powerless and meaningless lives without any hope for real transformation. And without transformation, how can we ever rise above our limitations and be God’s instrument to reach the world around us? And that is what life is all about. God wants us to understand “what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe” (Ephesians 1:19). He wants us to know this power that raised Jesus “from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named” (Ephesians 1:20-21). He wants us to understand that Jesus is not weak toward us, but mighty in us (2 Corinthians 13:3). He wants us to understand that “though He was cruci?ed in weakness, yet He lives by the power of God,” and even though we are also weak, we live by the power of God too (2 Corinthians 13:4). God wants us to see that “we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from