Faith Foundations: Living for What Matters MostSample

Supernatural Power

For too long, professing Christians have downplayed the transformative power of the good news of Jesus. We have faith in Jesus, sure, but we’re pretty casual about it. We reckon once we’ve committed our lives to Jesus and secured forgiveness, we can coast through life (attending church now and then) towards heaven. But what the gospel of Jesus Christ actually offers us is so much more profound and reality-altering: it assures not only forgiveness but also the indwelling of God’s Spirit. And the Holy Spirit isn’t some abstract theological concept. He’s the very Spirit of God, the third person of the Trinity, and he’s supernaturally empowering us to realize God’s ultimate purpose: knowing God and making God known throughout the world. The Spirit’s power working in us equips us to make our lives count in this world and the next.

Think about Jesus as the perfect example of a purposeful life. His existence epitomized the pursuit of what truly matters: he delighted in God and worked towards exalting God among all nations. If we as believers want to emulate this kind of life, we need to the Spirit of Jesus in us to shape us daily into His likeness. Paul talks about this transformative work of the Holy Spirit in 2 Corinthians 3:17–18, emphasizing that wherever the Spirit is, there is freedom. This freedom isn’t a license to indulge in sin; it’s a liberation from sin and self, which sets us up for a continuous pursuit of enjoying and exalting God, the way Jesus did.

To understand how God transforms us by his Spirit, picture some concentric circles. The inner circle represents your heart. It symbolizes the profound change that happens when you place your faith in Jesus (Ezekiel 36:26–27). The next circle is your mind, the next your affections, and the next your will. In his ongoing work of transformation, God’s Spirit gradually changes your thoughts, your feelings, and your actions. This beautiful, incremental realignment of your desires with God’s will is the astonishing, inside-out power of the gospel, and it challenges the false idea that Christianity is a checklist of religious to-dos.

The incredible thing is that these concentric circles keep rippling out, extending to relationships within in the Christian community and beyond, because the Holy Spirit grows love in our lives (Galatians 5:22–23), which is an outpouring of the forgiveness and selfless sacrifice we’ve received from God. The final circle encompasses life’s purpose: Jesus’ directive to make disciples of all nations. This purpose transcends self-centered pursuits; it involves exalting God globally even while we bask in his perpetual presence with us personally.

Think about your life with the image of these concentric circles in mind. Which areas of your life do you need God to transform? Ask the Holy Spirit to align your heart, mind, affections, will, and relationships with his purposes as you continue to grow in likeness to Jesus. God has so much more for you than a superficial kind of Christianity that ends with a one-time decision. Let’s embrace a life of ongoing transformation: a total revolution of the heart and mind fueled by the power of God’s Holy Spirit in us.