“I have strength for everything in
the One who gives me power.”
This is how the Weymouth translation of Philippians 4:13 reads. Pastor Scott Chamberlain spoke on this verse
last weekend, and got me to thinking about “power.” It started as a thought but it soon became a question – on
whom or what do I depend for power? A variety of answers flooded my thinking:
Myself? Training? Skills? Talents?
Experience? Charisma? Savvy?
Personality? God?
In our culture we glorify
self-sufficiency. Frank Sinatra’s song,
“I Did It My Way,” is the unwritten but very real mantra of countless numbers
of people. Out of control egos have
amazing ways to let it be known to others that it is “My way or the
highway.” Narcissism is everywhere. Many people seem to really believe that the
universe actually revolves around them.
On whom or what do we depend? Truth is that in a very real way all of the
above answers are correct at given times.
We are called to lose ourselves in the wonder that is God and to take to
Him what is given us, and trust His faithfulness in everything. In Christ we can trust ourselves, training,
skills, talents, experience, charisma, savvy, and personality. The question is whether or not we are in
Christ, and just who controls who we are. After
all, God made us, and as Ethel Waters used to say, “God don’t make no
junk.”
Trouble arises when we begin to
think more highly of ourselves than we ought to think (See Romans 12:3). When we place ourselves at the center of the
universe calling all the shots, directing the universe as to how to be present
for us, or living with an exaggerated view of our self-importance, the road to
ruin has been entered. Slippery slopes
are everywhere.
Jesus brings a new and different
way of us going about our lives, doing what we are called up on to do, and
living lives that are beyond ourselves.
He calls us to pray and then to living out the implications of the
prayer, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your
will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:9-10, NIV). When people live in the ramifications of this
prayer they testify, “I have strength for everything in the One
who gives me power.”
Having strength for
everything. What an interesting thought.
It is a strength not founded on our own self-sufficiency but on another, Jesus,
“the
One who gives me power.” As
mentioned earlier our culture edifies self-sufficiency. Our heroes are those
who started with nothing and made it big time.
We love underdog stories of those who shouldn’t have made it but
did. Sadly, this narrative seems to be
the only narrative for some. They don’t
need God, they say. God is for weak
people. God is for losers. Winners have all it takes to make it big in
the world, they say. The mantra of those
who would have nothing to do with God is, “I am the master of my fate; I am the
captain of my soul” (from “Invictus” by William Henley; 1849-1903).
The ego of those who say they don’t
need God is just another form of narcissism.
It is interesting to me that many people have a deep need to be head
honcho. If they aren’t given the appreciation they
feel they deserve, they fume and fret.
They see themselves as the center around which everything revolves. Periodically they find ways to let us all
know that we need to adjust our lives to their ways and to tune our lives to the
music of their lives. It is a silly way
to live but many people do find ways to live there.
In the ways and means of God an
interesting reality unfolds. While the
human condition clamors to be like God, Jesus Christ
Who being in very nature God, did
not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being
made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled
himself by becoming obedient to death – even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:6-8, NIV)
While human beings want to be God,
God becomes a man. It is a complete role
reversal. We want to be God and we do
all we can to make sure that the world gives us what we think we deserve. God, on the other hand, steps out of His
surroundings as God “made himself nothing…being made in human likeness…becoming
obedient to death…on a cross.”
What kind of God would do
that? God’s don’t die on crosses. People die on crosses. God’s don’t die for others. Others die for the gods. Just what kind of God do we have in Jesus
Christ? We have a God, the One true God,
who is raised up from the dead so powerfully and sovereignly and eternally that
it is said, “Death has been swallowed up in victory.” Questions are asked, “Where, O death, is your
victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” Proclamations are made, “Thanks be to God! He gives us the
victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (I Corinthians 15:54-56, NIV).
When Paul says of himself something
he invites us to say, too, he says it on the basis of what he knows in
Christ. In a wonderful act of amazing
grace we realize again that we are in the presence of God, God who loves us so
fully and freely that His presence literally changes our lives. “I have strength for everything in the One
who gives me power.” We realize
there is only one God, and that we are not Him.
We realize that God invites us into His life where His power becomes the
strength we need to live and move and have our being in this world.
In his book, With God in The Crucible, Peter Storey who pastored for years in South
Africa, during the days of apartheid, and who is now Professor
Emeritus at Duke University has a wonderful message entitled, Let God Be God! In this message Storey writes,
…the Church must be the
Church. Jesus brought into being an
entirely new, radically different community, offering people a citizenship
transcending the frontiers of nations and contrasting powerfully with the norms
around it. The Church is not simply
another institution in society, nor is it an extension of the traditions of any
one nation….
The Church must be different from, and
often over against and in contradiction to, the ways of all nations. That alternative identity must be cherished
and guarded as the most important characteristic of the Church. The richest gift the Church can give the
world is to be different from it. It
must be a constant irritant that the world doesn’t want, but cannot do
without.” (Abington Press: Nashville, 2002)
Storey then shares a personal word
of experiences in South Africa. He
writes,
When we were cast out of the corridors
of power and disowned and vilified by the state, at first we saw it as a loss
of influence. But in that loss we found
our souls and rediscovered our identity.
We were set free from the false patriotism that worships the nation’s
idols. We found instead a higher
patriotism that determined to hold the nation accountable to the Kingdom of God
and God’s justice before everything else.
I embrace what Storey says, and I
believe that he is on to something rooted and grounded in Scripture, and offers
us a way of being the salt and light of Jesus in the world, in a way that is
uniquely of Jesus. In this world we can
live and truthfully say, “I have strength for everything in the One
who gives me power.” We can live
in the life of God. We can be an
alternative community in a world whose citizens don’t have much room for God. We can be the people who pray, “Our
Father in heaven, hallowed be Your Name, Your kingdom come, Your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.”
Then we can live our lives reflecting what it means to pray such a
prayer and to live for our God whose name is hallowed.
As I walked
away from worship last Sunday in my heart I kept repeating. “Don’t focus on “I.”
Don’t focus on “strength.” Don’t focus
on “power.” Focus on “the One.” Focus on Jesus. He is “the way and the truth and and the life”
(John 14:6). Trust Him. Follow Him.
May our mantra be, “Thanks
be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (I
Corinthians 15:54-56).
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