Heart Thoughts - Super Heroes

"O God, let me proclaim Your power to this new generation, Your mighty miracles to all who come after me." Psalm 71:18...."We are seeing a demon-stration of the powers of darkness these days. We need a demonstration of God in human lives. Too many of us are showing what we can do. The Psalmist wanted to show what God could do." Vance Havner...."It is impossible for Jesus to be anywhere without something happening, and now Jesus is here by the Holy Spirit in believers. Therefore there ought to be nothing neutral about any Christian." T. Austin-Sparks

It is so easy to decry the darkness and depravity that is everywhere in our culture. We can wring our hands over it, get angry about it, look for political and social action in response to it, or....we can be the Presence of Jesus Christ in the midst of it. For these, and I don't know that they are many, the question is, how are we to be that Presence?

I once read the words spoken by a man whose people had been led to Christ by a missionary who had just gone home to His Lord. He said of his people's spiritual state, "Before he came, there was no light. As he leaves, there is now no darkness." This is to be the testimony of God's people. We are to be those, wherever we are and wherever we go, who bring His light into the world's darkness. We do this through good works, but even more, we do this through the power of His Life and Light shining through us. The world has no lack of the demon-stration of satan and his evil. The only counter to that is the active display of Christ's life through those who are His. There was nothing neutral about the effect of Christ upon those He encountered. When He encountered death, in all of its forms, He injected life. When He encountered disease, including the disease of sin, He brought healing and cleansing. To fear, He brought courage. To anxiety, peace. To hopelessness, hope. To despair, joy. We encounter these same things today. What do you and I bring to them?

Our culture is awash now with "Superhero movies," and people fill theaters to see them. John Bevere said that there was such a presence of Christ and the power of His Life upon the early church, that the surrounding culture thought they were "superheroes," as we see in Acts with the Greeks reaction to Paul and Barnabas. Do you and I really realize that that same Life and Presence is available to us? That we can walk in such a witness and testimony? Unlike the big-screen characters, we don't go about destroying things. Instead, we walk and live in the "power of a life that cannot be destroyed." Lives so ablaze with His Light, that all the power of the darkness is helpless to extinguish it. Where we are, He is. Where we go, so does He. In truth, He goes before us. So, something must happen....unless we somehow believe that His Presence is only found in the buildings we meet in. We tend to be Superman there. We revert to Clark Kent once we step outside.

Someone once said that they wished to live so deeply in Him and for Him as to be a great thorn in the side of the devil. A friend recently said that we should be so clothed in Christ that each morning the enemy ought to exclaim, "Oh no, they're awake again." People of the Light. People of His Life. We may not topple buildings, but in Him, we can move mountains. We can engage in a spiritual combat that has no need of Hollywood's special effects. In Him, we crush the darkness because He has already placed the prince of darkness under His feet...and because we are His, under ours as well.

Chris Tiegreen wrote, "A message without the power of God is a message that will ultimately fail." Though we may have the willingness to proclaim the message, the deep question is, can we proclaim it with the power of God? The pop culture "superheroes" often found their "power" through various, often spectacular means. For the believer in Christ, such power is found only at His cross. At the cross, the greatest "super-villain" of all, Death, has been defeated. The culture is desperate for a new generation of heroes of the faith. He has offered us Life that overcomes all the power and darkness of the world. Have we received it? Do we walk in it? Superman stepped into a phone booth but came out mighty. We step into our churches every week. But what are we when we come out?

Blessings,
Pastor O