Focus: Power To Do Good

Text: Prov.3:27

"Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to act."

God gave Christ power, and He used it well. He did not misuse or abuse power. He did not use power for personal aggrandizement. He did not use power to suppress or intimidate the ordinary person. He did not use power arbitrarily. He did not corrupt the power of God. Rather Christ used His God-given power to do good. 

Luke tells us, "How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him" (Act.10:38). He used His God-given power to serve and bless humanity. He went everywhere doing good, putting smiles on people's faces, removing their pains and tears, and lifting their spirits.

What power has God given you, and what are you doing with it? Matthew tells us that "when the multitudes saw it, they marvelled, and glorified God, which had given SUCH POWER UNTO MEN" (Mt.9:8). 

God has given power to men, and when we use it to touch lives, people will definitely wonder, worship and glorify God on account of us.

It is good to do good, and apart from doing good, God wants us to be good. Being and doing go together as far as God is concerned. A person can do good and still be good, and no one can be good until He encounters the absolutely good God and becomes spiritually and supernaturally reborn or re-gene-d. You can't be good and not do good. Good people do good works. The psalmist says, "Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it" (Ps.34:14).

What keeps us from doing good is blindness - the blindness of selfishness or self-centered living. William Temple said, "Each of us takes his place in the center of his own world. But I am not the center of the world, or the standard of reference as between good and bad; I am not, and God is. In other words, from the beginning I put myself in God's place. This is my original sin." Man's daily attempt at displacing and replacing God in his life makes him incapable of doing good to his fellow man satisfactorily or wholesomely.

God has given you power to do good; just do it. There's someone waiting for your help. When it is in your power to bail someone out, don't refrain from doing so. As someone who is a partaker of the divine nature, it is in your nature and power to do good to others. Stop hardening your heart from being kind and doing good. I totally buy into this philosophy that says, "Do all the good you can, to all the people you can, in all the places you can, by all the means you can, and for as long as you can, for the sake of Jesus Christ." The power to do good is in your heart and in your hands. Someone is due for your help. Amen!

by Bishop Moses E. Peter