Power check

 
My son is an electrical engineer for our local hydroelectric power company. As a techno-ignoramus myself, I have no idea where he got the genes for that. When the power goes out somewhere, he’s one of the go-to guys for figuring out how to sleuth out bad parts and reroute things so that somebody can cook dinner, a factory keep running, and the traffic lights keep sanity on our streets.

 “Power” is a password for our times: Power Point, Power Suit, Power Presentations. But “spiritual power”? We’re told of it in Jesus’ last words before ascending into heaven:

You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. (Acts 1:8)

And it happened, just as He said. After ten days of intense prayer and waiting, the Holy Spirit empowered them in a dramatic way, sending them out to the streets to preach about Jesus (Acts 2). From then on, the New Testament is dotted with accounts and admonitions using words for “power” (dunamis, related to our English word for dynamite; and exousia, related to the idea of authority). The church age came in with divine strength and authority to preach Christ.

But we don’t always live as people of power. I appreciate the insight offered by Ruth Myers in her little book, The Satisfied Heart (Waterbrook, 1999). Her faith led her to a Christian college, where she met and married a great Christian man. They went to the mission field, had two great kids.  Then came a "power crisis." Her husband died of cancer, leaving her with two small children (almost 5 and 6). She saturated herself in Scriptures as she trusted God for the next step, and the next, and the next. In a chapter titled “His Love Liberates Me,” Ruth talked about even born-again Christians becoming aware of bondage to their backgrounds, resentments toward others, unbiblical goals, bad attitudes, wrong desires, emotions and certain ways of thinking. She noted:

But the more we know God and experience His love, the more free we become.  The longer we go to His Word and let His Holy Spirit teach us, the more liberation we experience.  More and more our personality is freed up to become as loving and beautiful as God designed it to be. (p. 166)

In other words, the power flows as it should, in abundance, and with power comes hope. “Hope” isn’t some out-there thing, but a tried-and-true provision of God. Ruth models that in writings that are soaked with scripture, revealing her lifelong, disciplined study of God’s Word. As Paul pointed out in his letter to the Romans: For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. (15:4)

Paul really seemed to push “hope,” as later in that chapter he adds:

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. (15:13)

 So there it is: “hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” We can’t measure it like my son and his co-workers do the “zaps” that flow through our electrical lines. (Yes, I know that’s a primitive explanation, but I’m not a scientist.)  But our spiritual lives go dead without it.