DOES THE CHURCH HAVE SUPERHERO POWER? IF NOT, WHY NOT?

 

“Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men." Matthew 4:19.

Hello Friends:

     Welcome to the Soulwinnersr.us website. I’m doing another brief interlude to my normal posts. This post is something I thought about with my last Evangelism Question post. It’s entitled “Does the Church Have Superhero Power? If Not, Why Not?” I’ve touched on this theme before, but I think it’s a very important topic to consider again and again.
     I think that Christianity gets a bad rap because many, many people, especially our younger generation, think of the church to a large degree, as being wimpy and boring. They don’t see Christians as having any real power, and if you get right down to it, any real joy. I will own up to my own part that I play in that.
     Young people, and even many older people, are almost addicted to action games and movies where they live vicariously through the online or movie heroes that save the world, or at least their part of the world, against an evil villain. I love westerns and am amazed how drawn into the Old West action I get, and I will even say Old West violence. After all, the heroes are justified in using violence to save innocent people. Right? But that’s a debate for another day.
     Where’s the church losing out? What can we do to instill a sense of action and adventure into our Christian faith? I don’t advocate for us to drum up false excitement and adventure, or to renew our somewhat failed seeker sensitive strategies. But just like the goal of my Soulwinnersr.us website was to instill the focus for myself, and perhaps others, toward evangelism . . . I think that we should perhaps have focus groups or if you will, think tanks, to figure out how to instill the sense of adventure and great joy back into our Christian faith. We’re failing, and it’s critical to look at why we’re failing.
     We’re not failing because of a wimpy and boring story. The Bible is packed full of adventure, intrigue, action, and power. After all, God, His son Jesus, and His Holy Spirit are the most powerful superheroes ever, right? Let’s look at the term “power” in the Bible. Through the wonder of the internet, I counted how many times the term power, powerful, powered, etc. was mentioned in the Bible.

• 385 times
• 264 times in the Old Testament
• 121 times in the New Testament

     For the sake of time, I’m only going to look at just a few New Testament references to the term power:

1. John the Baptist referred to Jesus in Matthew 3:11 as “more powerful than I.”
2. Jesus’ hometown people of Nazareth were “astonished” at His miraculous powers in Matthew 13:54.
3. Jesus said in Matthew 24:30 about his return to earth “on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.”
4. The angel Gabriel in Luke 1:35 told Mary, the mother of Jesus, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.”
5. Luke referenced Jesus in Luke 4:14 as going to Galilee “in the power of the spirit”, where the “news about him spread throughout the entire vicinity.” In other words, Jesus went viral. 
6. Luke referenced one of the Bible’s many instances of Jesus’ power to heal in Luke 6:19, where it says, “The whole crowd was trying to touch him, because power was coming out from him and healing them all.” 
7. Jesus gave out His power to others for the first time in Luke 9:1 where he summoned his disciples, and “he gave them power and authority over all the demons and to heal diseases.” 
8. Jesus in Acts 1:8 told his disciples before he ascended to heaven on a cloud that they would receive Holy Spirit “power” to be witnesses everywhere they went. 
9. Paul referred to Jesus in Romans 1:4 as “the powerful Son of God”, and in Romans 1:16 that Jesus demonstrated “the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.” 
10. Paul wrote in Romans 15:13 that he wanted the Romans to “overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

     I could go on and on a couple hours about references to power in the New Testament alone. Ephesians 1:19 refers to ‘the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the mighty working of his strength”. Don’t you and I usually feel wimpy and insignificant. So, it’s difficult to think of the limitless power that we have in God and His Son Jesus!
     We talked earlier about the power of superheroes to save the world from evil villains. The evilest villain in the entire history of mankind is Satan. Satan’s plan is not only to kill people, but to make them suffer unbearably in the process.
     Only God’s plan can thwart Satan’s diabolical scheme. Acts 10:38 reported that Jesus healed “all who were under the tyranny of the devil.” Where have we heard of the tyranny of a dictator recently? 

     Ephesians 6:12 says that we struggle against “the cosmic powers of this darkness, against evil, spiritual forces in the heavens.” The definition of cosmic according to Merriam Webster is the following: “Of or relating to the cosmos, the extraterrestrial vastness”. Then Merriam Webster further defines cosmic as the following: “Characterized by greatness especially in extent, intensity, or comprehensiveness.” In other words, our struggle against the devil and evil is so big the human mind can’t comprehend it. Talk about the need for superhero power!
     Many young people and older people alike are transfixed by stories of cosmic implications like the Marvel movies, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Star Trek, and many others. How can we instill in them, and us, the cosmic implications and need for church superhero power . . . before it’s too late?

See you next time,
Arlen