Tap Into God’s Power

Ordinary believers should see God’s power demonstrated regularly in their lives. Here’s how to make sure you do.

Once when my children, Daniel and Madison, were small, our family visited Los Angeles. Both the kids were acting their age, poking each other in the back seat of our rental car and making accusations such as “Mom, he looked at me!” and “Mom, she breathed on me!”

I pulled into a service station to fill the car with gas before returning it to the car rental agency. As I did, a young man approached—he was wearing a bandana, had a bucket in his hand and started washing my front window. My first reaction was not very spiritual. I was about to tell him to go away when the Holy Spirit intervened.

Praying that Daniel and Madison would behave, I leaped out of the car and approached the disheveled window washer. “Excuse me, but God told me that you have just gotten out of jail,” I explained. “When you were a young boy, you were called of God to preach the gospel and you have been running from the call. You need to go back home and preach the gospel!”

Instantly, the window washer dropped his bucket and rag, turned and started to flee. I figured he thought I was a lunatic. But because I knew the message had been from God, I yelled after him, “Wait a minute, where are you going?”

He turned back and said: “Lady, you are right, I just got out of prison. I was called of God to preach in my grandfather’s church and I have been running from God for years. I am going back home to tell everyone what happened, and I am going to preach the gospel.”

What happened at the gas station that day is called prophetic evangelism—one means through which God’s ordinary people express the supernatural in their lives.

Many Christians see very little, if any, of God’s supernatural power. Others see it manifest regularly in their lives. What sets apart those who see the power from those who do not?

Though God works in different ways through different people, most often people who live supernatural lives have had what can be called an Acts 1:8 experience with the Holy Spirit. They become empowered to do kingdom work by inviting Him to come and fill them.

The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Godhead (God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit). He is in charge of the supernatural here in the earthly realm. All a believer has to do is ask, and He will come.

After the disciples believed in Christ and were born again, the Lord told them He was going to send them the Holy Spirit. The experience they all had in the upper room—which some call “being baptized in the Holy Spirit” and others call “receiving the fullness of the Holy Spirit”—completely changed their lives.

Jesus prophesied to them ahead of time that they would be empowered by the experience: “’But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of earth’” (Acts 1:8, NKJV, emphasis added).