Yesterday I shared the story about how I started to learn to trust God in radical ways. Fast forward 17 years and I'm still learning how to depend on Jesus. My spiritual legs are still shaky. But I now understand that there's just one way to learn to depend on him more, and that is by practicing depending on him. It sounds basic - surely there must be a more complicated way, perhaps involving a seminary course, to grow in faith.

So many of us who are learning to walk in the spiritual realm are clinging to the safety of spiritual furniture, thinking we'll learn to depend on God more thru another Bible study or sermon. That was my life for 30 years. I believed the doctrine of impotence and spiritual excuses that had me sidelined and ineffective in far too many spiritual battles.

Meanwhile, the enemy was nipping at my heels and loved the fact that I was numb and oblivious to his designs to steal, kill, and destroy.

It took a raw, face-to-face confrontation with evil to shock me into a state of wakefulness and show me how anemic my faith was. And it took me years after that to learn to depend on Jesus and the authority he's given me.

It's time many of us woke up like this. Don't wait till you're 30 to begin to really probe the limits of the authority you have. My advice is to find some people in your world who desperately need the power of God. Ask God what he wants to do in that situation, and then, relying on his power as opposed to your own skills, go do it.