“Do or do not, there is no try.” When Master Yoda uttered these immortal words he gave more insight into faith than many theologians possess. He made this statement when Luke Skywalker told him he would try to use the force and lift his x-wing jet out of the swamp.
Luke then tried to raise the the x-wing from the swamp and failed. After he failed, Yoda raised the x-wing out of the swamp by the power of the force. An astonished Luke looked at Yoda and said, “I don’t believe it.”
Yoda then replied, “This is why you failed!”
If most Christians took the same attitude as Yoda about the promises of God we would walk in a greater degree of victory! Yoda linked belief with seeing the miraculous. He told Luke he needed to unlearn what he had learned so the power of the force could do the impossible in his life. If we as Christians would unlearn much of the doubt, unbelief, and failure way of thinking we have been taught, we would see the power of God in our lives!
For example, many Christians think it’s impossible to live a moral life. They think we are just sinners with a sin nature and we can’t expect to conquer immorality. To quote Yoda, “this is why we fail.”
The truth is when God put the spirit of the resurrected Christ on the inside of us, He expected us to conquer! Failure isn’t in our new nature!
We are supposed to conquer our flesh, the devil, and all of his attacks. We are literally a new creation with a new nature that has the same power that raised Jesus from the dead living on the inside of us. To say we can’t overcome our flesh or believe God to do miracles on an everyday basis is an excuse to justify our unbelief.
This is why 1 John 2:1 says if anyone sins we have an advocate with the Father. It doesn’t say when we sin it says if we sin. The expectation is we live a moral and holy life. If we do fail, praise God for Jesus’s blood that cleanses us, but we should never use that as a copout to believe we really can’t live a moral life.
I’ve said a lot of challenging things in this article about what we should do so I want to close with some wisdom about how to live the Christian life. Living the life God has called us to live isn’t about trying hard. It’s about allowing the Holy Spirit who is in us to flow through us, and totally consume all of us!
The spirit filled life has never been about our great ability; it is about our yieldedness to the Holy Spirit. It’s Him living through us and not us living for Him. If this article has spoken to you I want to encourage you to pray a simple prayer that will help you yield to the Holy Spirit:
“Holy Spirit have all of me! Consume me! I yield all of me to you. Change all of my desires to be what your desire. Have your way in me!”
If you prayed that, I believe the Holy Spirit will come upon you and empower you this week! There will be more to learn, but yielding to the Holy Spirit is the key! If you want to learn more about how to operate in the power of the Holy Spirit, check out this series on Experiencing God in 3-D I taught earlier this year!
I hope you have an absolutely blessed week walking in the power of God!
