The Most Powerful Man in the Universe

So who would you think is the most powerful man in the universe? Power is measured in lots of ways – politically, economically, militarily. Obviously the most powerful man would have the ability to influence others, even to affect the course of history itself. Certain names would come to mind from the record of human experience – military leaders like Alexander the Great, who conquered the known world of his time in stunning fashion. There are political leaders like the President of the United States, who because of the influence of this nation around the globe is often called “the most powerful man in the world.” One must think of moral and religious leaders like Mahatma Ghandi or Martin Luther King, whose strategies of non-violence brought massive change to oppressive political situations. Then there are economic leaders like Bill Gates, whose brilliance has opened the cyber-world to the masses. There are probably hundreds of individuals over the course of time who would be legitimate nominees for the top-ten list of most powerful people.
Some might caution us to remember that true power has the elements of humility and benevolence in addition to mere strength or brute force. Surely power in its best and highest form would involve more than the simple ability to enforce one’s own will on someone else. There would have to be an element of appeal to the hearts of the people under this person’s influence, a place where the power of this individual was welcomed and embraced. This heart appeal would come as the person in power showed their willingness to use their power to benefit others, to bring liberty, to work for justice and the dignity of mankind. It is at this point that we invariably run into problems with powerful people – they are all flawed, most of them fatally so. And we find ourselves once again faced with that nagging issue: what does it mean to be truly human and have power?
Deep in our hearts we know that power should be exercised in a right way, and when the flaws of our leaders are exposed, we wrestle again with this dilemma. Is there not a leader, a person of power, who will exercise that power in the right way? If there is not such a leader, why do we keep looking for him? If there is one like this, when will he ever show up?
There is in fact a leader like this, although His name seldom if ever appears on any list of the most powerful people. His name is Jesus Christ. There are several reasons for this, I suppose. One is that most people don’t consider Him to be an actual man, a real live person who is vitally interested and unbelievably active in the affairs of men on the earth today. Some would consider Him to be merely a historical figure whose time came and went. Others might acknowledge that He is a man, but that He is distant and unavailable, probably not that interested in the things of earth. Most people would think of Jesus as merely a religious figure, one whose concerns are focused on the spiritual realm, and who is only marginally interested in other matters, if He is interested at all.
The fact is, however, that the Scripture paints a very different picture of this man Christ Jesus and His place of influence in the current situations of life on this planet. He is vitally interested and deeply invested in planet Earth. His full intention is to return to this place, and establish a literal physical kingdom that will bring the reality of Heaven and Earth together in perfect union. Jesus’ goal is not merely to take Christians out of this world to a surreal and ethereal place called “Heaven.” Rather, His goal is to bring Heaven to Earth, to dwell among His people, and to establish an eternal kingdom that will bring the human race to the full realization of our power potential.
Join us again next month as we explore the arenas of Jesus’ power.

Is This 'Drive To Power' Legitimate?

A truth that will surprise many who read these articles is that this drive to power is not a product of our human failings, but a central reality built into us by God Himself at the time of our creation. The Scripture tells us in Genesis 1:28 that God’s very first words to the new humans that stood before Him included the commands to “fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the face of the earth.”

Adam and Eve, two real people who really lived in a place called the Garden of Eden, had a drive to power given to them by God as an integral part of their makeup as human beings. They also had an experience totally unique to the human race until God’s own Son Jesus came to live on the earth. They walked in a relationship of unhindered intimacy with God, speaking with Him face to face on a daily basis. It was from that basis of intimate friendship that they exercised their power to govern the newly created world. God made it clear that His desire was that they have power and authority on the earth. This power would be derived from Him, released to them through intimacy with Him as their loving Father. God took the woman from man’s side, and gave her to him as the “comparable helper,” one who would share in equal measure the joy of intimacy and rulership. They came together and were one flesh, completing one another, and in a most telling phrase, the Scripture says that “they were both naked, the man and his wife, and they were not ashamed” (Genesis 2:25).

What an existence! Two beautiful people living together unhindered in any way, intimate with God and with one another. They were commanded to bear children and fill the earth, created to rule and subdue it with the authority of God Himself. Naked and unashamed! No broken relationships, no hidden agendas, not a shred of envy or competition, and yet the pure exercise of power over the whole creation! We’ve been trying to get back to that pristine reality ever since!

The tragedy of the ages is what happened in chapter three of Genesis, where the record of man’s fall from grace is given to us. It happened like this: one day, the man and his wife went walking in the Garden, only this day the immediate presence of God was not with them. Like a good father withdrawing his hands from a child learning to walk, the Lord was allowing Adam and Eve to face a test on their own, without the overwhelming protection of God’s personal presence. They were allowed to encounter the most beautiful and cunning creature in the Garden, a serpent possessed by the fallen angel Lucifer, whom we also call Satan. The point of the test was to see if they would trust and obey the Lord God, or if they would give in to the temptation to seize power in their own way and time.

It is fascinating that basically Satan tempted the two innocents with power that had already been given to them! He was not promising them something that was not available to them. God had already made it clear that they would have full authority over everything on the earth! When Satan tempted Adam and Eve, he hooked them with doubt that they could really trust God to give them the power that they were created to have.

Satan’s reasoning was that if God really wanted them to have unlimited power, why had He put restrictions on what they could eat? He implied that God was holding out on them, keeping the real power to Himself, not planning to share it with them. In fact, the plan in God’s heart was to test the humans to see if they would remain in a place of obedience and humility. Would they wait for Him to exalt them and give them the fullness of their inheritance at the proper time? Tragically, the first two people believed Satan’s lies more than they believed God’s promise. They snatched the power in their own sense of timing, and thus forfeited their inheritance of power and authority. By doing so they polluted the entire human race that would proceed from their loins.

Here’s the key thing: it was not the desire for power that corrupted them! They desired power because God created them to have power! What corrupted them was the false belief that they could not trust God to give it to them, that they had to seize it for themselves lest their drive to power be thwarted. They shot themselves in the foot in the worst possible way, and set in motion an entire horrible history of humans trying to come to power by their own wits, sheer strength, and manipulative devices.

Keep logging on to this blog to follow my line of thinking. I'd enjoy your comments as well! More next time!

Is This 'Drive To Power' Legitimate?

A truth that will surprise many who read these articles is that this drive to power is not a product of our human failings, but a central reality built into us by God Himself at the time of our creation. The Scripture tells us in Genesis 1:28 that God’s very first words to the new humans that stood before Him included the commands to “fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the face of the earth.”

Adam and Eve, two real people who really lived in a place called the Garden of Eden, had a drive to power given to them by God as an integral part of their makeup as human beings. They also had an experience totally unique to the human race until God’s own Son Jesus came to live on the earth. They walked in a relationship of unhindered intimacy with God, speaking with Him face to face on a daily basis. It was from that basis of intimate friendship that they exercised their power to govern the newly created world. God made it clear that His desire was that they have power and authority on the earth. This power would be derived from Him, released to them through intimacy with Him as their loving Father. God took the woman from man’s side, and gave her to him as the “comparable helper,” one who would share in equal measure the joy of intimacy and rulership. They came together and were one flesh, completing one another, and in a most telling phrase, the Scripture says that “they were both naked, the man and his wife, and they were not ashamed” (Genesis 2:25).

What an existence! Two beautiful people living together unhindered in any way, intimate with God and with one another. They were commanded to bear children and fill the earth, created to rule and subdue it with the authority of God Himself. Naked and unashamed! No broken relationships, no hidden agendas, not a shred of envy or competition, and yet the pure exercise of power over the whole creation! We’ve been trying to get back to that pristine reality ever since!

The tragedy of the ages is what happened in chapter three of Genesis, where the record of man’s fall from grace is given to us. It happened like this: one day, the man and his wife went walking in the Garden, only this day the immediate presence of God was not with them. Like a good father withdrawing his hands from a child learning to walk, the Lord was allowing Adam and Eve to face a test on their own, without the overwhelming protection of God’s personal presence. They were allowed to encounter the most beautiful and cunning creature in the Garden, a serpent possessed by the fallen angel Lucifer, whom we also call Satan. The point of the test was to see if they would trust and obey the Lord God, or if they would give in to the temptation to seize power in their own way and time.

It is fascinating that basically Satan tempted the two innocents with power that had already been given to them! He was not promising them something that was not available to them. God had already made it clear that they would have full authority over everything on the earth! When Satan tempted Adam and Eve, he hooked them with doubt that they could really trust God to give them the power that they were created to have.

Satan’s reasoning was that if God really wanted them to have unlimited power, why had He put restrictions on what they could eat? He implied that God was holding out on them, keeping the real power to Himself, not planning to share it with them. In fact, the plan in God’s heart was to test the humans to see if they would remain in a place of obedience and humility. Would they wait for Him to exalt them and give them the fullness of their inheritance at the proper time? Tragically, the first two people believed Satan’s lies more than they believed God’s promise. They snatched the power in their own sense of timing, and thus forfeited their inheritance of power and authority. By doing so they polluted the entire human race that would proceed from their loins.

Here’s the key thing: it was not the desire for power that corrupted them! They desired power because God created them to have power! What corrupted them was the false belief that they could not trust God to give it to them, that they had to seize it for themselves lest their drive to power be thwarted. They shot themselves in the foot in the worst possible way, and set in motion an entire horrible history of humans trying to come to power by their own wits, sheer strength, and manipulative devices.

Keep logging on to this blog to follow my line of thinking. I'd enjoy your comments as well! More next time!

How To Get What You Really Want, Part 2

Deep within the heart of every human being is the longing for significance, to have a meaningful destiny. It is the yearning to be taken seriously, to make some sort of difference, to have a life that matters somehow. The aching desire in the soul to be deemed important is a dominant factor for most of us. We have an intense motivation to control the environment around us, to influence our circumstances for the better, at least “better” as far as we are concerned. Termed by some students of human nature as “the drive to power,” this desire can be found anywhere from the nursery school to the boardroom, from the playground to the professional sports arena. It’s a desire that pays no attention to gender or age, and gives little heed to personality styles or economic standing.

As obvious as this “drive to power” is in the human soul, it is just as apparent that most people live with this desire frustrated and squelched, at least to some degree. Hemmed in by life situations completely beyond our control, we do the best we can “under the circumstances.” We fight for recognition, striving to be seen as valuable. Many of us have experienced such devastating blows to our identity that any hope of feeling significant or powerful is simply unrealistic. Any hope of significance seems like a wispy dream in the violent storm of real life. Some respond to these cataclysmic blows by setting their body, soul, mind and strength to the pursuit of power, determined to never be hurt again. Others simply roll over and die, with any potential for significance stripped from them and crushed in the trampling of other people’s lusts.

At the same time that we feel this longing to have power and influence, we feel a certain ambivalence about it, a double-mindedness that tells us that such things as “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” It’s as though the human race has this negative condition that is common to everyone, a condition that is so toxic that corruption is the inevitable end to the pursuit of power. Therefore, we try to build all sorts of checks and balances into our systems of control. We strive to protect ourselves against the corruption of the drive to power, only to find ourselves manipulating and evading the very systems we set in place so that we might gain more influence or have more control over our situations.

And it’s not only the politically or economically powerful person who grasps for more power. It’s the pastor who abuses his spiritual authority to raise money. It’s the guy who cheats at golf, or the woman who crosses the line in using her sexuality to gain an advantage over the competition. It’s the road-rage nut who guns the engine to pass everyone he can, and it’s the teen-age girl with an eating disorder resolutely controlling her food intake, even though her strategy for power may eventually kill her. The drive to power is immense within us, and is a reality that must be examined and understood from God’s perspective if we are to deal with it successfully.

Jesus was and is a man who has been given all power and all authority in heaven and earth. Through His life on the earth, He demonstrated the power and authority in every situation that all of us long to experience. In future articles, we will examine His life as the prototype of human existence, and discover how we may receive the same kind of power and authority through becoming like Him. I hope you’ll stay with us!

How To Get What You Really Want, Part 1

How To Get What You Really Want, Part 1

One of the exciting and sometimes exasperating things about being human is this sense of longing that lurks in our subconscious mind, waiting for key moments in which it can explode to the surface and dominate every thought and passion of our lives. In those moments we wrestle with a vague awareness that there ought to be more than we are experiencing – more knowledge than we have comprehended, more adventure than we have dared to engage, more joy than we are feeling, more fulfillment of destiny, more of a sense of significance that our lives really mean something important. Many of us feel a deep void inside, knowing that somehow that void should be filled, but not knowing how to get there from here. So we try to fill it with all sorts of things, all the while trying to avoid the realization that in the process of searching we are becoming more and more used up and damaged.
 
Into this tangled mess steps the man, Jesus Christ. He is so very alive, so dynamic in His joy, so focused in His desire to please His Father, God. He comes to us as the prototypical human being – the true and normal man that we were all created to be like, but whose image we lost somewhere along the way. He comes to call us out of the futile existence we have been stuck in until now, and invites us into the reality of His vibrant relationship with the Father. Jesus promises amazing things that will happen to us if we will embrace His character and His ways. Jesus promises that:

1. The power of His Holy Spirit will enable us to live like He does;


2. If we simply acknowledge how much we need Him we will be given the same authority that He has as God’s Son;


3. If we allow ourselves to feel the sorrow that God feels over our broken lives, He will give us real comfort and release from our issues of grief;


4. If we let Him show us how He sees us and begin to live as though His opinion is true, we will be the recipients of great honor and authority;


5.  If we set our desires fully on reality as He defines it, we will have all our longing satisfied to the fullest;


6. If we show mercy to people around us, we will have mercy shown to us all our days;


7. If we fully set our desire on being like Him, and don’t compromise by playing around with unholy things, God will reveal Himself to us;


8. If we make it our priority to bring other people into a relationship of peace with God, we will have a profound inheritance as God’s own sons;


9. If we endure the resistance that comes from those who hate God, and put up with it gladly, we will be given great authority in God’s Kingdom.

In other words, all the things that make up that place of longing and desire in our hearts – identity, destiny, authority, significance, influence – all those things He promises to give to us if we will simply make it our total focus to become like Jesus. And lest you despair of the possibility of that, He reminds us that He comes to live inside us by the power of the Holy Spirit so that we have the ability to do what He has asked us to do.
 
In a series of articles over the next months, we will explore more of how to get what we really want in each of these areas. I hope you’ll read along.