"Can anyone of you by working add a single hour to your life?" (Matthew 6:27 NIV)
“To an extent, you have cognitive horsepower in your mind that you have to choose to allocate to worry. but it can’t be allocated to worry and worship at the same time.” (Take Back Your Life, Levi Lusko)
This morning, a couple sentences from Levi Lusko set me to thinking about horsepower. I grew up in a home where horsepower was the priority, if not all-consuming. Between my father and my brother, many meals were spent discussing which cars had the most get up and go and why. My dad obsessively collected antique cars, believing the American automobile had peaked in the sixties and determined to hang on to the trophies. My brother was bit by the same bug at an early age and they each built lives around motors and mechanics.
Just before I got my driver’s license, my Dad gifted me with my first car. He spent $500 on a 1964 Buick LeSabre that he’d found in a field in Nebraska. It didn’t matter that this beast was tri-colored; tan, cream and primer red. He wasn’t concerned about the lack of seatbelts or defrost system; it had horsepower. With a V8 under the hood, the Buick could get me places. And that it did.
When it comes to personal horsepower, our minds and bodies only have so much. It seems we can spend our limited steam on worship or worry, but not both. One is productive, the other is destructive.
Horsepower is meant to take us places and get stuff done. Worry stalls us out and wears us down. Worry left to it’s own devices will run our wheels so hard in the same patch of dirt that we’ll wind up stuck. We might even make a hole so deep that we can’t see over the edges.
Our personal horsepower wasn’t entrusted to us to trap us. Quite the opposite, truly. We were gifted with power to move us forward: further into God’s will, according to His purposes. But what He’s given for our benefit can become a burden when we use it to spin ourselves into a pit.
We waste our resources when we forget they are expendable. You and I only have so much horsepower, so much time and breath and opportunity. How are we going to spend it? Will we keep spinning our wheels and stressing out about things beyond our control? Or will we harness our power and use it to move forward from this moment: recognizing the call of God on our lives and our limited window to gain ground in obedience?
"Man is like a breath; his days are a passing shadow." (Psalm 144:4 ESV)
Our time and power is finite. How will we expend it?
One last thought: over the years, a few of our cars have had turbo. I don’t know the specifics of how turbo works, but I do know that when I’ve needed a little extra go-juice, it’s there. When I tromp on the pedal, the cars with turbo respond pretty quick. There’s a boost available when time is of the essence. As a pentecostal, I believe God has availed similar additional power to His sons and daughters through the Spirit.
"For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline." (2 Timothy 1:7 NIV)
The Holy Spirit gives us turbo: a supernatural boost to get the work of God accomplished. He does not give us this boost to waste it away in worry, but to empower us for witnessing. If we are Spirit-filled, we are Spirit-filled on purpose, so we can spend ourselves for the sake of the Kingdom. Don’t let the enemy drain you of your divinely-appointed power!
Lord, forgive us for all the ways we’ve wasted the gifts You’ve given us. We worry and wear ourselves out over nothing when You’ve called us to participate in something so much greater than ourselves. Today we recognize that our horsepower is limited. From here forward, may we choose to spend it well. May we be about Your purposes instead of stalled out in self-made ruts. Fill us up with Your Spirit to provide that extra boost where we need it. Help us spend all our resources on Your good agenda. Amen.