To Preach. And Heal?

I've been thinking about power and church lately. It seems so often like the church is structured for power struggles- struggling from youth pastor to assistant pastor to lead pastor, but I don't think that is the kind of power we want to be characterized by as Christians. We don't want to be known for our power-hungry, corrupting desires; but for power from on high. Don't be fooled - people are really into supernatural power nowadays- who wouldn't want to know their future, or be healed of cancer. So many time we go out and preach at people- but they don't see any power being displayed. At that's not our fault- right- I mean it is God's power, not ours... Right - but we need to seek God, to be close enough to Him that his hand is upon our lives at all times. That we cannot do anything but out of God's power- that would be a great problem I wish I could inflict on our postmodern churches...

Luke 9
1When Jesus had called the Twelve together, he gave them power and authority to drive out all demons and to cure diseases, 2and he sent them out to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick. 6So they set out and went from village to village, preaching the gospel and healing people everywhere.

See- we shouldn't be basing our church on other churches around us- we shouldn't care what is or is not happening at their services or outreach events. We should always use the Bible as our standard. And in the Bible the disciples left, as soon as they got instructions, and went out preaching the good news of Jesus, and healing people. Why are we always saying that the second half was for them, in their times, but not for us now?

I think we're too afraid, too afraid that we'll be exposed as the fake seekers that we actually are. The path is narrow- not many walk on it- but we want to make it seem as if we're a Christian nation. Well, we're not, we aren't striving to seek God through trial and temptation, we aren't reaching out to the downtrodden as individuals- sure we have welfare and food stamps and stuff that we fund, but how personal is that? Not very. How much are we doing as individuals to seek God? We can't always rely on surviving off of one meal a week. We have to eat every day- three times a day... What if people read their Bibles and prayed three times a day? And did not forget what they read, but DID it? Oh, you don't have time? I understand, do you have time to eat lunch? Yes? Hmmmm, what about not feeding our physical bodies until we are fed spiritually? Yes, we could very well starve, but I think if we have to skip a couple meals we would soon learn to put God FIRST- as in before everything... Maybe if we do this God will give us the power and authority to drive out all demons and to cure diseases AND send us to preach the kingdom of God, maybe He will give us the strength and power for these things if we show Him we actually want it.

That we would desire it more than our food or sleep or reputation or amusement... That we would stop thinking of life as increments of "our" time, and realizing that we need to make this His time.