Clothed in Power

Luke 24:49

And behold, I am sending forth the promise of My Father upon you; but you are to stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.

Right there in the church pew today I was led to the verse after, but the word clothed jumps off the page at me these days.

Clothed in power! What power? Where do we go to buy these clothes?

The power is the Holy Spirit, sent by God to us. Not for us to own, but for Him to cover us. They were told, as are we, to stay put and do nothing for God until we have this power...or we are either dressed in dirty clothes that need to be changed, or naked and in need of these clothes to be able to go out into the world and speak on God's behalf, His Word spoken in His Power. Not ours. His clothing of us, not our fashion sense.

Jesus promised that when He left that He would not leave us naked and alone. The disciples saw and heard so much from Jesus. They had traveled with Him for 3 years, though much of the time they didn't know what He was really saying and doing...and then watched Him died and thought all was lost...and then He came back to them and trained them for a few more weeks. Then He says He is off to heaven until the End of Days, when He will come again...

They had to believe that they were being left to a task far greater than they could even think about, having seen what happened to Jesus. They were going to be left on their own...11 or 12 guys and a few hundred part-timers, given the job of telling the whole world, starting in the city and going out to the ends of the earth, to preach the gospel to every creature. And that He would be with them always...but He was leaving...again, a lot of what He said, they did not understand. But they could easily understand a few words...DO NOT LEAVE THE CITY UNTIL...you are clothed.

The Kingeth Jameth Bible says “endued”, and the New Living says “fills you with”, but the New American Standard doesn't say anything but CLOTHED. To endue is to provide or endow, to put on or assume...which shows an option of receiving, but the other definition is to clothe. If God clothes us, we have it on whether we choose it or not. Someone can provide you clothes, but you don't have to put them on...you can assume the role of having been given something or being something, but that doesn't mean anyone is going to see us dressed in it. The soldier may have the uniform, but he doesn't wear it all of the time...but we are clothed with POWER from ON HIGH. This is put on and gives us something on our exterior that was not original equipment in us. The Spirit would come to live in us, and that is good. But the power would show on the exterior if He was on the interior...and both came from God, not from ourselves.

Power clothing in our day and age is a business suit or a tux or litergical garments. They are clothes that reflect a position of influence, prestige, and wealth. We have those as children of God, but the power here is the power of God in our lives to live for Him. Jesus had this power to make God known, and it took that power being place on the disciples and believers for them to understand and use the Word of God in the lives of those around them. Clothed with the power from on High is to be clothed from God with God through God. We are now identified as His, with the garment of Him. And that power is something we can not find at any store or have made by any tailor. It is God's design and His fashioning. We have no idea what it looks like to even knock it off. We have to wait and be clothed by Him, and then we can leave the place where we are. No shopping from store to store, no selection of fashion or fabric. We wait and He brings is to us and covers us with it. They had no idea what to expect, but it had to be good. Unlike Adam and Eve covering with leaves, the disciples let God give them the appropriate clothing that would allow us to serve and show God to the world.

That is truly being Clothed.