This morning I want to have a little meditation on a big topic: Power. How should we think about it? Where does it come from? What mindset should Christians have towards it? Think along with me as we ponder a few passages from Scripture.
Consider our calling.
1 Corinthians 1:26-29, “For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.”
Ponder what we are supposed to boast in.
2 Corinthians 12:9-10, “But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the powerof Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
Think about the example of Jesus.
In Philippians 2:5-9, “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name.”
And reflect on how God sees earthy power.
Isaiah 40:15, “Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket.”
It is the world that seeks power, not the Christian. The more power we think we hold in our hands, the more delusional we become because we start defining ourselves by what we have and not by whose we are. One of the few guarantees for Christians in Scripture is that persecution will come. Jesus tells us in Matthew 10, “Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” Also that “a disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master.” As maybe the most politically powerful Christians in history, we can forget or disbelieve the words of Christ. This has led many of us to be as harmful as serpents and as foolish as doves. Our hearts need to be shocked by a spiritual defibrillator so that they will again beat with the rhythm of Jesus’s heart of humility. It has never been our strength that has confounded and changed the world; it has been God’s strength in our weakness.
-Joel Bacon