I = \frac{V}{R}
Before you get worried that I’m going to bust out some math on you (as if I could), this simple formula is what’s called Ohm’s law. Rather than even attempting to go into a super deep scientific explanation of this law, I’m going to give you the abbreviated version for the sake of our time. I want to briefly acknowledge that the idea for this teaching came from our friends at 3dm at http://www.weare3dm.com/.
In Ohm’s law the basic idea is that VOLTAGE divided by RESISTANCE equals CURRENT (not sure why current is represented by an I in the formula). For the sake of our discussion, I’m going to use CURRENT and POWER interchangeably.
Voltage divided by resistance equals power. The way that this was explained to me by a mentor in my life was related to the working of light bulbs. Flowing through your house and the power lines around your house is a lot of voltage. The power of electricity is staggering. You don’t need that much power for the bedside lamp so there has to be a way to utilize that power around your house without using all of it. This is where resistance comes into play. A certain amount of resistance is applied to give you the overall amount of power or current that you need.
So what? Well, as it pertains to the life of a Christ-follower I believe there is a lot we can learn here. Scripture teaches that the Spirit of the Living God dwells inside believers which means we have all the electricity or voltage that we need coursing through our veins. That being said, when you look at the life of the average Christian…why don’t you see more power being displayed? Resistance. Resistance to the moving and working of the Holy Spirit accounts for the small amount of power that is on display in the lives of most Christians.
We resist God. This may seem like an uncomfortable truth but it is the reality. God has so much miracle-working power that he wants to be made manifest in our lives but he’s eagerly searching for willing or non-resistant vessels. So the simple idea is that if we will decrease the amount of resistance in our lives, we will see more power flow out.
Decreasing resistance is much easier said than done. If you don’t believe me, just try to do what I’m saying here and you’ll find that you’re a lot more stubborn than you think. I still believe however, that this is a helpful challenge for all of us. We say that we want to see God move. We say that we want to see heaven on earth. Well….this day and everyday we have the opportunity to show the strength of our resolve by minimizing resistance so that we can be mighty conduits for the power and working of God.
Where is the resistance in your life? What do you need to do to minimize it?