God’s power and authority come from God’s character

If Jesus promised power, why do so few Christians have it?

The pages of scripture are full of the miraculous power of God being poured out upon and through believers throughout history. How is it possible that there are so many professed Christians today with so little of God’s power in their lives? God has not changed, but those who claim to believe in him have.¹

God’s power is based on belief, faith, and goodness. The corrupted versions of these principles as practiced by common Christians are insufficient to fulfill the conditions of God’s promised power.

The power of God comes through belief. Belief in God is not a question of what you think about him, how you feel about him, or what you say about him. Your belief in God is a question of how closely your life actually aligns with how you believe he would live in your place. To believe in Jesus is to model and live according to his character. If you do not labor to learn more about Jesus and live up to what you learn, you do not believe in him. Jesus proclaimed that those who believe in him would do what he did.² Consequently, anyone who claims to believe in Jesus without doing what he did is using a definition of belief different than Jesus would.

The power of God comes through faith.³ Whenever there is faith, God will send his power, including miracles.⁴ Consequently, a life without the power of God lacks faith as God defines it.⁵ Faith is a willingness to improve,⁶ quantified by your effort in searching for and living according to what is better than what you already have. If you aren’t improving, you aren’t exercising faith.⁷ God is the source and destination of all improvement. Faith yields outcomes beyond what would otherwise occur through new or better beliefs—new actions based on new or stronger desires, more accurate understanding, and superior reasoning. If you aren’t living the best way you know how to, you do not have faith, and until you live up to the best way you know, you will not receive more power from God. The lack of faith in people who profess to be Christians is deeply troubling, because it is by the same faith that miracles are performed and salvation is obtained. The lack of the one indicates the lack of the other.⁸

The power of God comes through goodness. Because all good comes from and leads to God, the power of God that flows through his goodness comes according to one’s similitude to God. Most Christians fail to acquire or experience much of God’s power because they treat the gospel as a means to feel less guilty in doing less than their best rather than the way to become their best. Common Christians have replaced goodness with religion, losing sight of the fact that the gospel is about facilitating improvement, not recitation of scripture, religious rites, and celebratory worship.⁹ These things have no utility outside of the improvement they are intended to foster in practitioners. All power from God comes from and through God’s goodness. Without exerting effort to learn about and live like he is, you cannot have his power, and if you do not have his power, it is because you aren’t learning about and living like he is.¹⁰

What is power?

Power is the ability to achieve, obtain, and retain what you desire. God has all power because he achieves,¹¹ obtains,¹² and retains¹³ what he desires.

Modern people misdefine the concept of power. They presume it means the ability to dictate the actions or seize the property of others through force and chicanery. Those who use such an evil definition of power can only seek more of it through violence and dishonesty, and will always see those with the ability to resist them as their enemies, erecting considerable barriers between themselves and God or any of his servants. Those who believe that power can only be gained and exercised through force or deceit can only grow in power through becoming more violent or dishonest than those more violent or dishonest than them.

Evil power spreads like a cancer throughout any society where it is permitted to be practiced.¹⁴ Power through force catalyzes a race to destruction as contenders vie to exert the greatest tyranny, and as increasing numbers of those increasingly subjugated by it do the minimum required to avoid punishment rather than their best. The spiral downward continues until a critical mass is reached, where the problems presented overwhelm society’s ability to overcome them.¹⁵

Godly power differs from evil power in its essence and effects. Godly power leverages persuasion and merit rather than manipulation and force. Godly power functions through hard work, courage, and wisdom. Godly power can come through increases in any virtue that contributes to your ability to obtain what you seek,¹⁶ that modifies what you seek, or changes the degree of desire with which you seek it. Those who seek godly power do not destroy people or things, but improve themselves and others.

Godly power is distinguished from the power of evil by its independence from the choices of others. The power of evil relies upon people to manipulate and subjugate, but godly power functions and grows whether others yield to it or not.¹⁷ The dependence of the power of evil on those who yield to it is one reason why good always eventually triumphs over evil. Any power dependent on others is unavoidably transitory, as it can only endure for as long as they choose to fulfill your desires. A person can have the support of the majority only to find the majority turn against them, turn against itself, or face its demise at the hand of a greater superior force.¹⁸

The Lord’s life demonstrated the power of good. Jesus’ perfect emulation of the character of the Father gave him power over death, in spite of the fact that the masses rejected and killed him. In resurrecting himself from death into immortality, he established himself as the unique possessor of what no other person could obtain without him. Jesus learned and lived the character of the Father independent of—and in spite of—the decisions of any other person. We can learn about and live the character of the Son independent of the decisions of others. Jesus obtained all power through maintaining adherence to the character of the Father, and we maximally acquire and access that power through maximal adherence to the character of the Son.

God’s character is the source of God’s power

God’s power comes from his character. It is the embodiment of his characteristics of wisdom, mercy, truth, justice, and judgment that make him God. These attributes, coupled with his knowledge of all things, are what enables him to have all power.

The great power of God seems to be a significant difference between him and us. The Lord’s ability to endure difficulty or perform miracles is not the source of our differences, but an effect stemming from them. The root of the differences between us and God lies in our character, as it is our character that is the source of strength and power in him and in us. There is an unbroken path of steps to attaining his character, no matter how different from him you are. God has more strength and power than you do because he:

• Knows more than you do.
• Understands better than you do.
• Has faith to pursue longer-term benefits and endure greater hardships than you.
• Is more honest than you are.
• Is more just than you are.
• Is more willing to suffer for others than you are.

As you acquire his intelligence, desires, and love, you will also grow in his strength and power.¹⁹

The power of God comes through obtaining the character of God.²⁰ Before the world was created, Jesus Christ was with the Father,²¹ and had acquired his character.²² The Lord made all things in accordance with the power and purpose of the Father,²³ both of which came through his knowledge of and adherence to the character of the Father.²⁴ Just as the Son gained his power through obtaining the character of the Father,²⁵ you can gain the power of the Son through obtaining the character of the Son.²⁶

You have to actually become like God to have power like God. It is through learning and living the character of God that you increasingly obtain God’s power. Power from God is a question of similitude to God. The “powers of heaven cannot be controlled nor handled only upon the principles of righteousness.” (D&C 121:36) Righteousness means similitude with God. Priesthood doesn’t just require righteousness—it is righteousness. Those who desire to serve God must build and exercise faith, hope, charity, and love, uniquely focusing on learning and living God’s purpose with all their heart, might, mind, and strength.²⁷

To obtain the outcomes of Jesus, you have to adopt the character of Jesus. Only by possessing his attributes can you be more like he is, and only by being more like he is in quality can you be more like he is in outcome. All of the Lord’s outcomes are tied to all of his attributes. The only ones who will obtain the fullness of God’s outcomes are those who have become indistinguishable from Christ, and no one will receive any of God’s outcomes except to the degree they have become like Christ.²⁸

God does not act contrary to his character, and you will not enjoy his power while you act contrary to his character.²⁹ Your ability to call down miracles from heaven is directly proportional to the completeness of your reconciliation to God.³⁰ You can’t work “...a miracle in the name of Jesus save [you are] cleansed every whit from [your] iniquity.” (3 Nephi 8:1) “Every whit” means in totality. If elements of your life are contrary to his will, as you understand it, you will not have his power in your life, and you will suffer unnecessarily.

God’s power is not a binary attribute. God’s power is obtained and held by degrees, because God is known and obeyed by degrees. The more of his character you learn and live up to, the more of God’s power you will have.³¹ The more accurately your desires, thoughts, and actions approximate God’s, the more his power will flow³² in and through you in every aspect of your life.³³

God’s power and authority are inseparable

A great deal of artificial distinction has been made between the words “power” and “authority” in the New Testament that does not exist among the Greek words they are translated from, all of which show that a person’s ability to accomplish what they desire stems from their character qualities. The word exousia (Strong’s Greek 1849), which means “that which arises out of being,” is arbitrarily translated as “authority” or “power,” while other mentions of “power” come from dunamai and dunamis (Strong’s Greek 1410 and 1411), which mean the ability to achieve something due to how a person is or what they do. As with anyone else, then, God’s power and authority are inseparable.

Modern churches conveniently claim that they somehow possess the authority of God without demonstrating the power of God.³⁴ Devoid of God’s power, modern churches rely on the same false tokens of authority that apostate churches always have, claiming that they perform no miracles because God doesn’t do them anymore, and claiming that God doesn’t speak because he expects you to listen to them instead.³⁵

The ancient Jews also made the mistake of separating power and authority. Instead of interpreting Jesus’ ability to do what none of them could as evidence that he had more of God’s authority than they did, they constantly denied, explained away, or ignored his miracles. They asked the Lord: “By what authority doest thou these things? and who gave this authority to do these things?” (Mark 11:28) They did not understand that his ability to do what he did was the authority— because it could only come from God.

The authority Jesus wielded during his ministry should serve as the ideal. The authority of Jesus did not come from his titles, or even his parentage, but from what he did, how he did it, and why he did it. The outwardly demonstrated bona fides of Jesus were that he taught with wisdom that exceeded anyone else’s and worked miracles beyond what anyone else could do. The Lord’s statement that “all power is given unto me in heaven and in earth” (Matthew 28:18) was not a declaration of authority in the modern sense of the word. Instead, the Lord was saying that he had attained the ideal character by learning and living exactly as the Father would in his place, inheriting a fullness of the Father’s capabilities through acquiring a fullness of his qualities.³⁶

Valid authority is a question of what you can do and have done, not who you claim to be or what you claim to be able to do.³⁷ Valid authority is a question of who you actually are, as demonstrated by your actual qualities and demonstrated abilities, not titles you claim for yourself or which others bestow upon you. The value of a person is in what they actually do,³⁸ not in what they claim to be. A wise man with a proven track record is better than any number of self-proclaimed prophets with nothing to show for all their credentials.³⁹ All of the preceding statements apply equally to institutions. A social club that provides recognizable value is greater than any church that claims unique authority yet fails to enable its members any better than they were before.

The greatest power is the hardest to see. Jesus had power to forgive sins and wielded greater wisdom than any man before or since, but few were able to perceive or willing to receive that power. He worked many miracles, but these did not compare to the much greater gifts he gave in the ideas he taught.⁴⁰ Through the beliefs he held, Jesus possessed and imparted to others the ability to endure heavier burdens than they otherwise could, to love others more than they previously imagined possible, to overcome challenges that previously overcame them, and to know God better and become more like him than anyone they knew. Today’s false teachers do the opposite of what Jesus did. They claim to have the greater power to save and condemn the souls of men while they lack the lesser power to achieve even the smallest physical miracles. They claim to be capable of leading you to eternal life when they can’t even figure out daily life.⁴¹ They claim to understand the mysteries of heaven without even demonstrating basic common sense.

You cannot separate God’s power and authority; where one is, the other always is: “...the rights of the priesthood are inseparably connected with the powers of heaven...” (D&C 121:36) A person or organization that lacks God’s power likewise lacks God’s authority.

Authority and merit are inseparable

People are quick to claim the effects of being like Jesus, but slow to choose to live as he would in their place. It is dishonest to desire the effects of being like Jesus without first desiring to adopt the attributes that cause them.

The authority and power of Christ comes from his character attributes. While you refuse to take up his character attributes, he will refuse to give you his authority and power.⁴²

If you believe it is impossible to live as Jesus would in your place when it comes to preferring service over selfishness and obedience over indulgence, honesty compels you to similarly believe that it is impossible to perform miracles, receive revelation, and lead other disciples of Christ.

The Lord said that his authority over the world would be detectable through the improvements it provides over what the world offers.⁴³ What is from God is what is better than what you already have, and what is better than what you already have is from God. The world provides a different definition of authority—one where authority is intrinsic and detached from actual merit.

Modern religious, government, and research institutions have all committed the same cardinal mistake of separating authority from merit. In such institutions, actual merit has been replaced by institutional ranking. Authority does not come from titles. Though authority can co-occur with titles, it is increasingly the opposite of what you find in practice. Jesus was devoid of any earthly religious credentials. Bestowal of titles and honors independent of competence and contribution assures disaster when problems arise.

The idea that institutions have inherent value is, of course, tantalizing to institutions. Imagine how tempting it would be to receive all the proceeds due to a valid institution without the need of providing any value! There is no such thing as inherent value, nor any such thing as inherent authority. Authority is inseparable from merit. If an institution claims that its authority is its merit, it has neither.

Valid authority comes through and cannot be separated from actual merit. When authority is taken beyond the merit provided, we call it apostasy in religion,⁴⁴ tyranny in government,⁴⁵ and scientism in research.⁴⁶ In all cases, dominion is exercised beyond the limits of virtue, and the costs to the people exceed the benefit provided.

Authority does not come through shallow mimicry of those with the power.⁴⁷ The Pharisees pretended to revere Moses, and claimed to hold authority from him, yet didn’t obey the commandments he gave!⁴⁸ Many Christians repeat this mistake, pretending to revere an individual they claim authority through without even bothering to become familiar with their teachings, let alone obeying them.⁴⁹ Empty reverence for those who had power does not reproduce power⁵⁰ replication of their works⁵¹ and motive⁵² does.

God’s authority is never present without evidence of it. Instead of working in concert with individuals’ God-given ability to reason, providing logical arguments and visible evidence for their truth claims, false messengers simply say: “I have God’s authority, listen to me.” Instead of making the case for each idea they present, they pretend that the task is for you to figure out if they are “from God,” so that you will automatically and unthinkingly accept everything they say. Beliefs should never be separated from the reasons for them. Claims of authority do not take the place of actual evidence. Self-claimed titles are not valid substitutes for actual evidence. It is through the accumulation of evidence via successive validation of ideas that a true messenger gains someone’s confidence—not through feelings in response to prayer.

Tokens of true messengers are obvious,⁵³ but rare. They provide evidence that the putative messenger knows more about God and lives more like him than you do.⁵⁴ True messengers have repented of all their sins. They live what they teach and they teach what they live.⁵⁵ They help others become more like Jesus. They are able to answer questions and solve problems. They are efficacious.⁵⁶ They are offensive to those who do not love improvement, because they say and do what needs to be said and done—what actually works, even if it is often perceived as uncomfortable or discouraging.⁵⁷

Desirable proportions of God’s power come from undesirable aspects of God’s character

Common Christians imagine the qualities of Jesus as those the world considers to be good. They do not realize that the sensibilities of the natural man find actual righteousness repugnant. They ignore the many scripture accounts where Jesus demonstrates qualities they find offensive. Jesus wasn’t crucified for being a nice guy, but for pointing out that a lot of what people thought was good was actually evil, and at least some of what people thought was evil was actually good. The problem is that God’s character cannot be subdivided, and the undesirable portions are at least as necessary to obtain as the desirable portions. All of God’s power is completely coupled to all of God’s character. To obtain and exercise his power in ways that normal people find attractive, you must also obtain and exercise his power in ways that normal people find repulsive.

When God’s power is spoken of, it is typically in the context of working miracles. The kinds of miracles you expect—healing, prophecy, and so on—are performed in conjunction with and as a result of the kind of miracles you probably wouldn’t even count as such, let alone desire. The power of God includes the power to:

• Love those who hate you.
• Rejoice in suffering for the benefit of others.
• Stare into the darkest abyss for as long as it takes to see the light
• Overcome evil with good.
• Forgive those who spitefully use you and persecute you
• Bless those who curse you.
• Limit yourself to actions that are God’s will.
• Endure all intensities and duration of suffering
• Maintain the Lord’s principles in spite of all opposition
• Overcome all things that would otherwise control you
• Do what you say.
• Say what you do.

If you aren’t interested in developing the power to do these things, you will never develop the power to perform miracles such as healing the sick, commanding the elements, or raising the dead.

God’s power is found in God’s purpose, and those who only pursue the parts of his purpose that are pleasant will find very little of his power. Only those who are as willing to advance God’s purpose when it hurts them as they are when it helps them will possess more than minimal power with God.⁵⁸

God’s power is found in his will, not yours

Most Christians make deals with God in prayer, begging for the worldly outcomes they desire with no thought of the eternal will or character of God.⁵⁹ The purpose of living the gospel is to become more like God, not to bargain with God for goodies. God is not a pagan god. He is not arbitrary or fickle. He does not want token favors or pretended piety. He wants us to be like him. God’s power is not a reward for what you do; it comes from who you become.

Power is the ability to achieve, obtain, and retain what you want. God’s power is the ability to achieve, obtain, and retain what he wants. The connection between God's power and God’s purpose is illustrated by the way the High Priest’s ephod was tied to his breastplate with a symbolic blue cord.⁶⁰ While the breastplate provided the wearer with the ability to seek and receive revelation from God through the urim and thummim it held, the priest’s access to it was determined by his willingness to bind himself to and maintain his connection with God.

If you want God’s power, you need to learn what he wants and shift your own desires to align with his.⁶¹ When the crowds saw the miracles that Jesus did, they asked “what shall we do, that we might work the works of God?” (John 6:28) Jesus responded: “This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.” (John 6:29) He explained that God’s power comes to those who live as he would, and is exclusively for doing what he would in your place. Like most people, they were only interested in using God’s power to pursue their own desires,⁶² and “from that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him.” (John 6:66) This was not the only occasion where Jesus explained that divine power comes only to those who seek God’s will above their own.⁶³

You may be surprised to learn how often your requests to God actually oppose his purpose. For example, many people seek miracles to reduce suffering, assuming that this is always good. God’s blessings are not for the purpose of reducing suffering, but for increasing improvement. It is rarely the case that these two ends overlap.

The Lord’s power is for advancing the Lord’s purpose.⁶⁴ The more you seek the will of God, the more often you will find the power to accomplish what you desire.⁶⁵ God’s purposes cannot be frustrated,⁶⁶ and to the extent you make his purposes your own, neither can yours.⁶⁷

God’s power cannot be exercised by guesswork

What God would do in your place is not meant to be an educated guess.⁶⁸ You need to know God’s will in order to exercise God’s power. You can’t have faith when you ask for something that is contrary to God’s will, but you also can’t have faith if you aren’t confident that your desire matches what God wants.

The secret to gaining more of God’s power is not just in learning more of what he knows, but also in perfectly aligning your actions to what you have high confidence is his will. If you do not have extreme confidence in what you ask of God, you should focus your requests on learning more about the situation rather than asking him to intervene.

Those who receive great priesthood power learn how to restrict their requests to what they have high confidence is the will of God. When the Lord proclaimed that Nephi would be given whatever he asked, he said the reason was that Nephi would not ask anything contrary to his will.⁶⁹ He did not mean that Nephi knew everything God did, but that Nephi would refrain from asking anything from God that was not perfectly in alignment with his sincere, best understanding of God’s will. Nephi only desired what he had sufficient reason to believe was God’s will.

God’s will is always what is best, and his power is found in pursuing that

Learning God’s will in a particular situation is the same as learning what is best in that situation. God’s will is not arbitrary. His will is the best that can be done.⁷⁰ You cannot find out what he wants in a particular situation without learning more about what is best. As you learn what is best, you learn what his will is.

God knows what is best because he knows what outcomes are available and the cost and benefit of each. In order to better ascertain his will, you will have to learn these things, too.

God’s power can’t be separated from God’s knowledge of things as they are and could be. He knows all possible outcomes and the path to realize them. The universe operates according to certain inviolable relationships of cause and effect.⁷¹ Every outcome has a cause, regardless of whether or not we yet know or understand it. God’s power derives from his knowledge of and adherence to these relationships.⁷² God is how he is because of the laws he lives.⁷³ The source of his power is knowing the relationship of cause and effect in all things to a greater extent than we do. God knows⁷⁴ and understands⁷⁵ all things. He sees what we are ignorant of, and he understands relationships we do not know.

A principle reason for creation is to provide each of us with the opportunity to obtain a greater measure of God’s power through the acquisition of a greater portion of God’s knowledge. To the extent that you lack the knowledge of God, you lack God’s power. In order to encounter greater manifestations of God’s power in your life, you must not only reconcile yourself to your present awareness of reality, but increase it. It is impossible to learn more about God’s character without learning more about his creation, or more about his creation without learning more about his character.⁷⁶

The more you learn about reality, and more effectively you use your knowledge to bring to pass better outcomes than would otherwise occur, the more of God’s power you will experience. Those who possess a little of God’s awareness will, when reconciled to it, experience a little of God’s power. To have all power, you need to know all things.⁷⁷

You gain power with God by using what you already have for his purposes

God’s power is frequently seen as a mechanism to make you stronger than you would otherwise be. The truth is that obtaining God’s power requires you to become stronger than you have ever been, and that the power you exercise and the power you obtain are much more symbiotic than they may otherwise seem. The acquisition of God’s power is an incremental process where each step begins with doing all you presently can and ends when you obtain greater power than you had before.⁷⁸ Your present power comes from living up to all you know about Jesus, and your future power comes from learning and living something more about him than you did before.

God’s power comes from knowing God’s will and being willing to do all you can to accomplish it.⁷⁹ Many would claim that they can’t do what God would do in their place because they don’t have the power to do so, but the truth is that they don’t have more of God’s power because they don’t do what God would do in their place with the power they already have. Why would you expect God to endow you with his power beyond your present capacity while you continue to use the power you already have to rebel against him by doing less or worse than you could? If you aren’t doing all you can to advance God’s purposes right now, why would he give you more power, when doing so would only increase your condemnation?⁸⁰ How can he give you more power when you refuse the next incremental step toward it?

Don’t ask God to do for you what you are unwilling to do yourself.

You shouldn’t seek God to miraculously intervene in situations where

you have not yet done all you can. Before asking God to give you power to move mountains, buy yourself a shovel and start digging.⁸¹

God uses your imperfect understanding of how he is to promulgate blessings to the world

God does not want anyone to hesitate to act in his name when they confidently believe that their desires match his, even though they will frequently be wrong.⁸²

God’s power flows to and through people by degrees, according to their similitude to him. While dissimilarity from God impedes the flow of his power,⁸³ it does not stop it. The presence of God’s power indicates that the person wielding it is acting according to the sincere belief that their actions are accordant with the will of God, not that their actions perfectly match what God would do in their place. Any limitation in the person’s understanding of God will cause differences.

It is precisely through our imperfection in understanding that God’s perfect work is accomplished, forming a stepwise chain connecting everyone’s sincere idea of what is best to what is actually best through men of increasingly more godly understanding.

What is priesthood?

When people think of priesthood, they think of either the authority of God, the power of God, or both. None of these definitions are adequate. The authority of God does not exist independent of his power. Meanwhile, the power of God is an inadequate definition of priesthood because it does not address where that power comes from or how it is to be used.

Priesthood is any information that extends one’s understanding of how God is, how he would live in your situation, the benefits of doing so, and the consequences of failing to. The priesthood is therefore a conduit of information through which people who have adopted God’s character are linked. This information conduit provides the power to do, feel, and think as God would in your place, as far as you choose to. This information provides the key to becoming more like God.⁸⁴ Without learning about and living the character of God, there is no real priesthood, no matter how much authority or unseen power is claimed.

Priesthood doesn’t exist outside of merit

Too many believe that God’s power and authority can be conferred via ordination, independent of a person’s similitude to Jesus. The idea that God magically bestows merit to previously unworthy individuals is false, as can be readily seen by the fact that no such individual claiming his authority has ever demonstrated power equal to their claims. Ordination is not a workaround to personal righteousness.

Priesthood is not a permission slip that entitles the holder to God’s power or authority independent of their informed understanding of his will. Priesthood is not an alternative pipeline of power outside of learning about and adopting God’s character. Ordination to the priesthood does not empower the recipient to use God’s power in any way other than that which God has ordained. Ordination does not make you any more like God than you were before. Priesthood is not a dispensation of power to man independent of God.⁸⁵ If you fail to live up to your understanding of how God would think, feel, or act in your place, you will decrease in the power of God you wield, no matter what authority someone has ordained you with.⁸⁶

Ordination is not meant to be an invitation to achieve greater similitude to God, but the outward acknowledgment that such a change has already occurred.⁸⁷ God does not look lightly on those who make priests out of people who are nothing like him.⁸⁸ Only those who are actually after (or like) the Son of God are actually priests “after the order of the Son of God.”⁸⁹

Ordination is meant to be the continuation of the process of becoming more like God, not the beginning of it. Melchizedek performed mighty miracles in the Lord’s name before his ordination, earned the approbation of God, and continued exercising greater measures of God’s power as he continued learning more about him.⁹⁰ As part of his progressive receipt of priesthood, Abraham received greater peace, happiness, rest, knowledge, and righteousness.⁹¹ None of these attributes were new to him; rather, he received the next increment of each having consummately lived up to what God had already given him. He had dedicated his life to serving all as God would in his place as far as he already knew him to be, attracting, instructing, and retaining hundreds of people into his family.

Greater similitude to God can only come through a lengthy process of choosing to learn more about and continuously live like the Lord. Priesthood progression includes the receipt of additional power from heaven, but it comes through what you enact on earth. As you live up to what you understand God would think, feel, and do in your place, he will continue to reveal more about himself. Power from God comes from knowledge about God, which comes in response to your fidelity to and fulfillment of what he has already taught you about himself.

The mistake of assuming that God’s power can only come as a gift

God has always provided the world with sufficient reasons to believe in him. A crucial element of such evidence consists of continuous demonstrations of his power throughout time. The most effective way God has to help his children to believe he exists, know what he is like, and persuade them to be like him is to send to earth those who are more like him than those they are sent to minister to. The more like God one of his messengers is, the more they will be able to demonstrate his character qualities to the people with sufficient demonstrations of his power to prove that they are his emissaries. Unfortunately, the more like God a person is, the more they are rejected and persecuted. God is extremely merciful, and in times of great wickedness,⁹² he still makes his power known through giving his power not through merit but as a gift.⁹³ Because the righteous are so rare and the wicked so abundant, most examples of God’s power are in the form of a gift.

Miracles performed through God’s gifts are usually held up as the epitome of faith, when in actuality they are the result of a lack thereof. The gifts of God are so minuscule in the share of God’s goodness, purpose, and power that it is not appropriate to speak about them in the same frame as God’s power through merit.

God’s power through gifts is a form of palliative care—a limited lesser blessing given to those who refuse the improvement necessary to continuously perceive, receive, and value greater blessings. While God is able to demonstrate more of his power to the wicked through gifts than he can through merit, this mechanism makes it more difficult for the people who witness the gift to understand his character and less likely that they will make the changes needed to become more like him. During his mortal life, the Lord ministered to a people primed to think of God’s blessings as gifts detached from merit, whose promises came from the worthiness of distant ancestors. He continuously struggled to persuade them to seek their own righteousness rather than the rewards earned by others, but the Jews’ desires for gifts from God far exceeded their desire to become like him.⁹⁴

God’s gifts are very limited in their ability to show how God is, because they can only show the outcome of his power, not its source. Because gifts come independent of the worthiness of the individual receiving them,⁹⁵ they offer no evidence of the merit of the character of the person possessing them. The generative version of God’s power not only shows that God exists and has power, but also certifies the virtue of the person wielding it, as generative power is an outward indication of how much the character of a person aligns with the character of God. The generative power of God cannot be shown without also showing how to obtain it via the demonstration of the character of the person who has it. For example, while the gift of healing can reduce suffering and may perhaps demonstrate something about God in the process, the generative power of God will provide all of these benefits along with a demonstration of God’s character in the form of the person performing the miracle. The purpose of miracles isn’t to reduce suffering; it is to increase godliness. Generative miracles do this much better than miracles by gift. While the gifts of God provide fruits of his power plucked from the vine, the generative power of God provides continuous access to the vine that produces them.

The most common reaction to demonstrations of God’s power is to set up the demonstrated power as an idol—something sought after or worshiped apart from God who gave it. When people worship miracles instead of God, they tend to set up fake mechanisms for transmitting God’s power. While this never works, it doesn’t seem to stop it from happening. Institutions following this pattern respond to the lack of real miracles by inflating common occurrences to the status of miracles and claiming that God’s authority can be transmitted separate from God’s power. God’s gifts cannot be transmitted through those who possess them because they do not know and do not possess the character qualities that generate the power organically, including the power to give it as a gift. Someone who has generative power from God also knows something about his character, and can impart power to anyone who is willing to become as he is.

Gaining God’s power through adopting his character

Why do common Christians fail to obtain and experience the power of God in their lives? Because they desire to receive the fruits of how he is without becoming that way themselves.⁹⁶ All those who truly desire the power of God will also truly desire to be as he is. Those that truly desire the power of God will only desire to use it to pursue his purposes. Those that truly desire the power of God will desire to know what he knows and to live according to that knowledge no matter the cost.

The attainment of God‘s power is inseparable from the attainment of his character. Those that emulate and obtain his character, who do their best in all things, seeking to make all things as good as they can be, will have the power, authority, and priesthood of God in all that they endeavor to do to further his will and his work.⁹⁷

Women and the priesthood

God’s power is found in God’s purpose. Too many members of both sexes incorrectly view extrinsic religious service as a way to attract attention, gain clout, accomplish their own desires, or otherwise serve one’s own purposes.

The differences between men and women mean that each is best suited to advance the purpose of God in different ways. The primary way all people serve God is through learning what he is like and becoming like him. The secondary way all people serve God is through helping people do the same. The most effective way anyone can help others learn about and become more like God is through becoming a righteous father or mother.⁹⁸ Service to those outside the home can be considered once you reach the point where you are doing everything that could possibly be done to assist your spouse, children, and grandchildren to learn about and live more like Christ, and still have surplus resources. Because of differences between the roles and capacities of men and women, men will reach this point more often than women, although very few men do.

No one should fall for the trap of seeking supposed service to God outside of the home in order to avoid what they would rather not do in the home. No one should fall for the trap of believing that they will encounter God’s power outside the home while neglecting their service to him within the home. A servant of God joyfully serves where assigned, and men and women each have assignments within the home.