10 Keys to Sharing Your Faith With Supernatural Power
Have you ever started a project but didn’t know where to begin? When my wife, Stefanie, and I were first married, we bought a coffee table from Ikea. I opened the box, and the table was completely in pieces. I had no idea where to begin. I needed instructions to point me in the right direction.
In the same way, we can set out to share our faith, knowing it’s what we are called to do, but have no idea where to start. The key is to be empowered by the Holy Spirit. When your motivation in life is to love God and others, you will discover that supernatural expressions of His love become a natural part of daily life.
Here, then, are 10 keys to activate you into a lifestyle of demonstrating God’s love and power. If you will prayerfully put these keys into action, by the grace of God your life will be transformed from the inside out and you will bring the supernatural into the lives of others.
Key #1: Start With Identity
Years ago, I weighed around 375 pounds. It was really hard for me to love and talk to others because my identity was so wrapped up in being overweight and rejected. I was very insecure and struggled with loving and accepting myself.
After I gave my life to the Lord, I noticed my identity slowly changing from someone who was rejected and insecure to a new believer and follower of Christ Jesus. However, my disempowering beliefs about myself stunted me in my spiritual growth with the Lord.
Then I attended a service in which a man shared prophetic words from the Lord, and the word he shared with me shook the core of who I was and my beliefs about myself.
He spoke about how God saw me and loved me, and I realized the devil was not my biggest enemy, like many people had tried to convince me. Rather, I had become my biggest enemy through self-hatred and criticism. If I chose to hold on to my past mistakes and rejection as my identity, then I would not be able to fully receive what Christ accomplished for me on the cross. Not only that, but I would also sabotage what God wanted to do in me and through me in the future.
I chose to trade my rejection for my new identity as a child of God—a person who is loved by God and created to love others. I already knew God wanted me to love Him, but that day He began to show me that loving and valuing who He created me to be would empower me to love others.
The truth is, if you are having a hard time stepping out in the power of the Holy Spirit to love others, it might be because you have an identity problem—because your identity is distorted from the truth of who God says you are. There is something great about your life. You were born with purpose, and that purpose will manifest through your God-given identity as one of His children.
Take time today to ask God how He sees you. Ask Him if you are believing a lie that is clouding your identity as a child of God. Ask Him to reveal to you the truth about your identity and to empower you to start to love yourself first so that you can start to love others around you.
Key #2: Partner With the Greatest Evangelist
The Holy Spirit is the greatest evangelist of all time. Over the years, as I have shared the simple gospel message with people, I have personally witnessed over and over how the Holy Spirit begins to work alongside me to testify about Jesus and His saving grace.
One of the best ways to begin the work of evangelism in partnership with the Holy Spirit is simply to ask for His help. Ask the Holy Spirit to begin to mentor you and teach you how to effectively share your testimony with others. Look for opportunities every day to communicate the love of God with power.
Key #3: Know Who Is With You
An important key to seeing God’s love and power demonstrated through you is having an awareness of His presence. Throughout your day, focus on growing your awareness of the Spirit of God. He is always with you, but He also wants to “rest on” you as He did Jesus (Matt. 3:16, ESV).
Practice turning your heart’s affection toward the Holy Spirit. You can do this in a number of ways, such as praying in the Spirit or taking time to reflect on His goodness or His character.
As you do this, you will find that when you are with friends and family, the atmosphere changes into one of faith because you are aware of the Spirit of God with you. All things are possible—especially the supernatural—when you know this to be true.
Key #4: Be Aware of Opportunities
As you start your day, ask the Holy Spirit to show you the opportunities He has for you to demonstrate His love and power that day. Then expect something to happen. Don’t be in a hurry as you go about your business, but be in a prayerful place of peace so you can be aware of the opportunities He wants to present to you and how He wants to work through you.
If you put this concept into practice, you will be amazed at the number of opportunities you have every day to love others and demonstrate God’s power. Look for people whom the Holy Spirit presents to you and whom you do not know. This is one of the ways God wants to use you to impact others with His love and power. Take a step of love and approach them, trusting that the Holy Spirit will give you the right words to share.
Key #5: Give Encouragement
One of the most powerful yet simple things you can do is to look for someone to encourage. We live in a world that is starving for encouragement. Decide today to go out of your way to give someone an encouraging word.
When I do this, I like to give words of affirmation to people I don’t already know. I don’t use heavy Christian language that people outside the faith might not understand. Rather, I talk in a way anyone can understand. I start the conversation by introducing myself, and then I often say, “I just want to encourage you today.” Then I share with them like I would a friend. In that moment, my goal is to be an encourager, not a preacher.
In all my years of doing this, I have rarely had someone say, “I don’t want your encouragement.” Most people usually thank me and say it means a lot to them. Looking to encourage people is a great step toward demonstrating God’s love and power to others while being an unassuming opportunity for the Holy Spirit to penetrate the heart of another.
Key #6: Heal the Sick
Look around you for someone who needs healing in his or her body, and pray for that person. The Bible says believers will lay their hands on the sick and they will recover (Mark 16:18). If you see others in pain or who need healing in their body, you can politely introduce yourself to them, ask their name and then ask if you can pray for healing. Ask permission before touching them if you’re going to lay your hands on them. Then, after you’ve prayed, find out if there is any difference in their condition. Don’t be afraid to pray twice if they’ll let you!
It’s fun to see people receive a miracle right there on the spot. But also keep in mind the difference between a healing and a miracle. A miracle is an instantaneous change in someone’s condition, while a healing can be a progressive work of God that happens over time. No matter what, it is impossible to pray and not have God at work.
Key #7: Look to Love in New Ways
Another way to grow in seeing God’s love and power on display is to look for opportunities to love someone who is not in your pattern of everyday life. For example, I make a point to feed the poor in our community and to help people who are hurting.
When I first began doing this, the miracles of people’s hearts being healed by love were outstanding. I thought to myself many times, “Wow! A meal and a hug caused that man or woman to break down and cry as they gave God thanks.”
If you want to see the Holy Spirit move through you, put yourself in situations outside your comfort zone. Look to love others in new ways. There are people all around you in need of God’s love, and taking a step outside your daily routine is a great way to see His love touch others.
Key #8: Cultivate Gratitude
A thankful heart is a supernatural heart. Learn to have a continual heart of thanksgiving, as this cultivates a heart that seeks the impossible becoming possible. Not only does a thankful heart empower us with greater compassion to reach out to others, but practicing gratitude is also an act of spiritual warfare. Remaining thankful on a daily basis empowers you to stay on the cutting edge of what God wants to do in and through you.
Through thankfulness, you are reminded of what God has done and is doing in the moment, but you are also given the faith to see what He wants to do in the future. Thanksgiving is a choice you can make each day that makes room in your heart for God to do the impossible.
Key #9: Dream
Isaiah 26:3 says, “You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You” (NKJV). The word mind in this verse means “creative imagination,” and the peace that comes to such a mind is shalom, which implies health, happiness and well-being.
When I discovered that God’s peace empowers me to dream, it revolutionized my life. I imagined seeing the sick healed and people coming to Jesus. I would dream about it daily. In my heart, I felt the emotions of stepping out to love others. Daydreaming activated my faith. I was convinced God was going to use me like He said He would in His Word.
What I saw in my heart and mind began to shape my belief system. Expecting something to happen empowered me to take a step of faith and begin to pray for people more.
Start to dream with God about demonstrating His love and power to others, and see what begins to change in your life too.
Key #10: Risk
In order to go where you’ve never been before, it might require doing something you’ve never done before. This means taking a risk.
When I was in Youth With a Mission in 1999, I heard people share stories about how God would lead them and guide them when stepping out to share His love. I told the Lord, “I want to hear Your voice speak to me like that.” After praying, I felt led to go to a certain location in the city to meet people and share God’s love with them. I told some friends, and we headed out to that location.
The problem was, I couldn’t find the location, and I didn’t see anyone. I was devastated, to say the least, but my friends encouraged me by saying I hadn’t failed because most people wouldn’t have even tried. They told me God loved my heart for taking a risk. I learned that if my heart is poised to serve and love the Lord, I can never fail because love never fails.
In the same way, you might be invited to take risks in order to share the love of God with others. How you sense the Holy Spirit leading you might not make sense, and His directions might call you outside your comfort zone. Remember that the results you see aren’t the measuring stick for success, but rather your faithfulness in saying yes is what matters to God. Be brave, and be willing to step out in faith.
You were born to partner with the Holy Spirit through demonstrating His love and power to others. Sharing your faith as you follow His leading can become natural, while God’s love opens the door to the supernatural. Choose today to make the supernatural a lifestyle.
Chris Overstreet serves as outreach pastor at Bethel Church and Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry in Redding, California.
Chris Overstreet gives principles to developing a lifestyle of the miraculous. Visit miraculous.charismamag.com.
Stephen Strang 
Charisma Media Staff 
CBN News 
