True power
We love to see raw power. Volcanoes, h-bombs, explosions earthquakes, tsunami - we dedicate movies and shows to them. Our superheroes may be good and merciful but in the end they normally win through a show of raw power, righteous violence.
Our God doesn't work that way. He has power that will make the wildest imaginings of hollywood look like nothing. His words alone create reality, call universes into being. The tiniest showing of his presence undoes us completely. Evil is so weak in comparison to Him that in the end He will utterly crush it just by showing up. Yet that is not how he delights to show Himself.
When God showed himself to Elijah in Kings 19 he was not in the wind that shattered rocks or the earthquake or the fire but in the quiet whisper. Our fictional heroes use all their strength to win because their strength is limited, if they didn't they would lose. Our God is so powerful that He doesn't need to use His strength and does not delight in showing off his raw power, He feels no need to show off, even though I for one often wish He did a bit more.
Instead God loves to show His power in this - redeeming. Sin and Satan screw up life after life, throwing the crumpled remains in God's face, and shouting at us that we are worthless and beyond help or hope. Our God who could crush the enemy with no effort at all instead stoops and gently picks up the crumpled mess of another ruined life and says "I can use this."
And gently with love so great no poetry could even begin to describe it he transforms the mess into a new son or a new daughter, and not some crippled child forever marred by the assaults of their own sin and the sins of others, but a strong shining beacon of the love and mercy of God. Not a victim but a warrior. And so God takes the enemy's victories, the worst he can do and turns them into the very weapons that will dismantle the enemy's kingdom stone by stone.
God shows His power in turning the weak into His strength, because even his power is saturated with His core nature - love. We will not see the full truth of this in this world but one day we shall see that in the end God's greatest and final victory in the history of this universe will be this; not only did the enemy not win the war he never even won a battle.
Our God doesn't work that way. He has power that will make the wildest imaginings of hollywood look like nothing. His words alone create reality, call universes into being. The tiniest showing of his presence undoes us completely. Evil is so weak in comparison to Him that in the end He will utterly crush it just by showing up. Yet that is not how he delights to show Himself.
When God showed himself to Elijah in Kings 19 he was not in the wind that shattered rocks or the earthquake or the fire but in the quiet whisper. Our fictional heroes use all their strength to win because their strength is limited, if they didn't they would lose. Our God is so powerful that He doesn't need to use His strength and does not delight in showing off his raw power, He feels no need to show off, even though I for one often wish He did a bit more.
Instead God loves to show His power in this - redeeming. Sin and Satan screw up life after life, throwing the crumpled remains in God's face, and shouting at us that we are worthless and beyond help or hope. Our God who could crush the enemy with no effort at all instead stoops and gently picks up the crumpled mess of another ruined life and says "I can use this."
And gently with love so great no poetry could even begin to describe it he transforms the mess into a new son or a new daughter, and not some crippled child forever marred by the assaults of their own sin and the sins of others, but a strong shining beacon of the love and mercy of God. Not a victim but a warrior. And so God takes the enemy's victories, the worst he can do and turns them into the very weapons that will dismantle the enemy's kingdom stone by stone.
God shows His power in turning the weak into His strength, because even his power is saturated with His core nature - love. We will not see the full truth of this in this world but one day we shall see that in the end God's greatest and final victory in the history of this universe will be this; not only did the enemy not win the war he never even won a battle.
posted by Dannie @ 9:31 PM
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