The Empowerment Pivot How God Is Redefining Our View of Normal

Word Alive Press, 2020. 192 pages. $19.99 (e-book $9.99, audio $17)

Calgary author Doug Balzer has an urgent message for the Church – our heavenly Father has much more for us. Balzer is a retreat facilitator, pastor with The Alliance and host of the reKindle podcast.

In this book he asserts the Church has “unmoored herself from her supernatural origins and distanced herself from the more mysterious, transformational elements of the Christian faith.” The result? A faith that is less experiential than cognitive, and gospel mission heavily dependent on preaching (and rightly so) but wanting in power.

Jesus promised His followers, “Whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works” (John 14:12 ESV). So why is most Christian ministry void of the healing and deliverance that characterized the ministries of Jesus and the early Church?

For Balzer it’s due to faulty Christology. He challenges the traditional notion that the power undergirding the miracles of Jesus flowed out of His essence as the Son of God. Instead Balzer argues from the Gospels that every act and word of Jesus flowed from a place of dependence on His heavenly Father.

“Jesus modelled for us how to live and how to listen,” Balzer writes. “Any divine knowledge he possessed came not through his divine nature but through his intimate relationship with his Father. This was his core operating system, and it is meant to be ours as well.”

Balzer posits seven fundamental shifts believers must make in our view of God and accordingly in our approach to ministry. He stresses the importance of inner transformation and learning to hear Jesus’ voice. There’s important reading here for any gospel ambassador who hungers for the greater works Jesus spoke of.

“Any divine knowledge [Jesus] possessed came not through his divine nature but through his intimate relationship with his Father.”