Entitlement or Empowerment

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day;

teach a man to fish and you feed him for life"

"You can give a person a handout or a hand up"

We have entered 2009 - yeah! There is something about a new beginning, a fresh start. Our president elect has promoted/promised change and many are anxiously awaiting his inauguration. Yet what are we expecting? Entitlement? Empowerment? One creates dependency the other independence.

The entitlement mentality is one where we look to someone else and expect them to supply us with what we are lacking. Is an attitude that what I need is owed to me and I am not the one responsible for it. This mentality creates an individual that will never live up to their potential. They will never discover what lies hidden with in them.

It is unfortunate, many times this attitude creeps into our spiritual lives. We present ourselves at church on Sunday expecting to be chilled and thrilled with a spiritual show and hold back our involvement until we have been sufficiently "moved". Our relationship with Jesus is one that we expect him to be our doctor, lawyer, banker, grocer or magic genie. We search the word of God as a cookbook, looking for that right recipe that will fix our current dilemma.

Now please do not get me wrong here - I am not saying that Jesus does not, at various times, work in our behalf to alleviate traumatic situations of our lives

What I am getting at is that this entitlement mentality fails to acknowledge the giftings and power that He has placed in us to use for His Kingdom. It is when we see the truth of His word and how it applies to our lives that we can become empowered to reveal His nature where it counts - in a hurting world.

Empowerment is living out, or expressing that divine DNA that has been placed in us with our born again experience.

• We are told that we would receive power with the Spirit infilling, then we are to GO and do something with it - make disciples.
• We are instructed to cleans ourselves from the filthiness of the flesh and spirit.
• We are able to excessively above all we can ask or think - if we use the power that dwells with in us.
• We have been given authority over the power of our enemy and we are to walk on the things he throws against us.
• We are to lay hands on sick and expect them to recover.

It is when we stop expecting entitlements and choose to express His power that we will begin to see the miraculous in our lives. As we walk in His empowerment we will produce fruit which will result in a life that is lived to it's fullest potential.

till next time-
martin