The Power of the Month is Zeal

Zeal and how it is to be blended with other faculties

From The Twelve Gifts From God by Marilyn K. Richardson

What is Zeal?  Isn’t that when the children are filled with energy and bouncing off the walls, or that neighbor down the street who has just discovered a great truth and is out to make sure everyone else discovers its too – including you? Yes, that is zeal, but it is zeal malfunctioning: it is zeal let loose without Wisdom.  Zeal without Wisdom consumes us and robs our energies.

Zeal is tremendously powerful, for it is God manifesting as energy and we are vehicles through which God manifests that energy. Close your eyes, still yourself, enter the Presence and think about what it means to be filled with the raw energy of God filling your right now! See if you don’t start to feel the energy moving within you… That movement happens because you feel awe, wonder, or amazement that such power should be within you.  That awe or wonder is a form of praise and it is praise that sets zeal into motion.

Do not be dismayed if you didn’t feel anything.  That can happen to any of us at one time or another.  Divine Zeal is always present because God is always present.  Sometimes we simply must look deeper for it.  It will come forth as enthusiasm or it will come welling up as joy.  Sometimes when you seek the enthusiasm and joy of Zeal you may discover it as a sense of peace.  Zeal does not have to be boisterous! 

Zeal is like a wild thing that can be destructive unless you are guided to go into to that Secret Place, where zeal is harnessed with Wisdom.  Once you have harnessed zeal, it adds zest, energy, joy, and enthusiasm to the rest of your Powers.  Add Zeal to faith and feel the power in your “knowing”.  Add Zeal to Love and “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.  It does not insist on its own way…  Love never ends. I Corinthians 13:4 –8.  Add Zeal to Strength and “They who wait upon the Lords shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles” Isaiah 40:31.  Zeal and Wisdom create genius!  Zeal is that charge of energy that transforms the gift of power.  Think what Zeal does with the Power of Life!  Consider all the energy coursing through you!  Zeal interacts with each of your Powers giving it the energy to do its work, giving you the energy to go forward.                                  

The Powers of Zeal will often work together.  Remember how will can be used as Willingness or willfulness?  Just think how Zeal really amplifies either of those traits.  When people are zealously trying to force their ideas to get their own way they are being what is called in the Bible “stiff necked.”  Not only do they feel their idea is the only one, they are unable to hear or see another.   We are all “stiff necked” on occasion.  If we understand it we can do something to correct it.

We all really want to be motivated by our Inner voice and not by the outer which causes us to become “stiff necked.”  A quick “check in” time with God will help us to keep our eyes, ears and heart open.