Spiritual Power

Air travelers heading east for the holiday season had another thing to be thankful for ... the jet stream. According to CNN meteorologist Sara Tonks, the jet stream, the air current about five miles above the earth’s surface, is stronger than usual. She attributes the difference to a burst of cold air, which has increased the difference in temperature between the colder United States and the warmer Atlantic Ocean. “This increase in the temperature gradient is amplifying the speed of the jet stream, which is driven by temperature differences.”

The jet stream has always been a boon to travelers heading west-to-east, but its recent trend has allowed planes to travel at speeds approaching the speed of sound, estimated at about 761 mph.

It's important to note that these planes don’t actually break the sound barrier, because of the differences between airspeed (the speed of something traveling through air, which itself is also moving) and groundspeed (the speed of an object relative to a fixed point on the ground).

Still, these recent flights have resulted in several impressive flight times. For example, an American Airlines flight from JFK in New York to Heathrow in London touched down almost an hour early.

In 2019, a Virgin Atlantic plane from Los Angeles to London achieved a speed of 801 mph while flying over the state of Pennsylvania. Afterward, Virgin founder Richard Branson described it as flying “faster than any other commercial non-supersonic plane in history.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Like a runner or cyclist with the wind at their back, the Spirit of God can refresh us, give us energy, and multiply the efficacy of our work so that through him we can accomplish so much more than we could on our own.

In an episode of NBC’s sitcom, The Office, Michael Scott offers a humorously self-serving accounting of his weaknesses as a boss: “I work too hard, I care too much, and sometimes I can be too invested in my job.” Asked to list his strengths, he replies, “Well, my weaknesses are actually strengths.”

Call it the Michael Scott paradox. In telling stories about our lives, we have a habit of casting ourselves as the hero. Every day is a new chapter confirming that we alone are truly empathetic, courageous, and reasonable. Our strengths are obvious (or at least they should be). And our weaknesses are really strengths.

This penchant for valorizing our choices and motivations speaks to the fundamental fallenness of our nature. It tempts us to misremember, misconstrue, and misunderstand not only ourselves but those around us.

Possible Preaching Angles:

There are at least two possible ways to approach this illustration. 1) Ego; Pride; Self-Deception - The obvious lesson is that ego, pride, and a fallen nature can lead a person to overlook their weaknesses and fail to humble themselves and grow; 2) Humility; Identity in Christ; Power, spiritual - We might actually agree with Michael Scott if we realize that in Christ, our weaknesses are really our strengths “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly in my weaknesses” when his “power is perfected in weakness” (1 Cor. 1:26-31; 2 Cor. 12:5-10).

Molly Lee was a passenger on a flight from Charlotte to New York when another passenger made it clear she was not comfortable. She said it was at that point the woman began crying. One of the flight attendants overheard the woman and immediately went to comfort her and help her overcome the anxiety she was experiencing.

Lee said, “He just was so reassuring, so calming and said, ‘You know what? I got you.’ 'I'm gonna be there for you, just anything you need to let me know.’ With every little noise, she'd be like, 'What's that?' He's like, 'That's okay. That's just the jet bridge pulling away' or whatever the case may be. And that really helped her. He didn't have to do that, you know, and to just see someone extend their heart in that way to a stranger was just beautiful to me, and I wanted to capture it.”

Lee said the flight attendant, Floyd Dean-Shannon, sat next to the woman for nearly 10-minutes just holding her hand and reassuring her that she was safe. She captured the moment in a photo and posted it to her Facebook. The post has since been shared more than 11,000 times.

Possible Preaching Angles:

1) Experiencing God; Presence of God – Jesus told us never to fear because the Father’s full attention is on us, even to numbering the hairs of our head (Matt. 10:29-30); 2) Comforter; Holy Spirit - The disciples were full of fear to hear that Jesus would be leaving them. But he reassured them by saying, “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever” (John 14:16; John 16:7)

When we think of strength in God’s creation, we might think of elephants but rarely would we think of an octopus. After all, an octopus doesn’t even have any bones, so how could it be very strong? Sy Montgomery writes in The Soul of an Octopus:

Here is an animal with venom like a snake, a beak like a parrot, and ink like an old-fashioned pen. It can weigh as much as a man and stretch as long as a car, yet it can pour its baggy, boneless body through an opening the size of an orange. It can change color and shape. It can taste with its skin.

Yet the octopus is strong, very strong. An octopus’s muscles have both radial and longitudinal fibers, thereby resembling our tongues more than our biceps, but they’re strong enough to turn their arms to rigid rods—or shorten them in length by 50 to 70 percent. An octopus’s arm muscles, by one calculation, can resist a pull one hundred times the octopus’s own weight.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Our creative, powerful God gives gifts of strength throughout his creation even in the most unlikely of places. So how surprising should it be that God gives us strength when we need it to serve him and to resist temptation?

Muscular dystrophy, spinal injury, and other medical issues can cause progressive weakness and loss of muscle mass in a patient’s arms. Over time, muscle weakness decreases mobility, making everyday tasks difficult. But, a pioneering set of “wearable muscles” with a profile like a shoulder sling, could increase mobility and strength in the arms of people who have lost it. As algorithmic intelligence advances, engineers are attempting to design prosthetics to replace lost mobility, but many are large, bulky, or extremely expensive.

Michael Hagmann has a rare form of muscular dystrophy called Bethlem myopathy, but his muscular output was increased 61% thanks to a kind of exo-tendon called “Myoshirt.” Smart algorithms detect the user’s movements and the assistance remains always in tune with them. The mechanical movements can be tailored to their individual preferences, and the user is always in control and can override the device at any time.

The Myoshirt is a soft, wearable exo-muscle for the arms and shoulders. It is a kind of vest with cuffs for the upper arms accompanied by a small box containing all the computer technology. At the moment, the box containing the motor and computer parts weighs close to 9 pounds. So, the team’s first priority is to develop a full prototype with an even more discreet profile to allow people to use it in day-to-day life.

Possible Preaching Angle:

In the spiritual realm, believers have a disabling weakness due to the “disease” of sin and often do not have the strength they need to do the will of God. However, God’s strength can provide all the spiritual power we need to obey and serve him. “He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak … but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength …” (Isa. 40:29-31).

One key discovery is that self-control is an exhaustible but buildable resource. A psychologist demonstrated this with a clever experiment. He had college students skip a meal, so that they felt hungry, and then sit at a table. The table had freshly baked chocolate chip cookies, candy, and radishes.

The first group of students—the lucky ones—could eat whatever they wanted. Of course, they only ate the sweets. The second group had the same food in front of them, but they were told to leave the sweets alone, and they could only eat the radishes. The third group had no food in front of them at all. (It was the control group.)

After the students sat at their tables for a while, they were given a complex geometry problem to solve. The trick was that the problem was unsolvable; what mattered was how long they worked on it before giving up. The students in Groups 1 and 3 worked for about 20 minutes. But, the students in Group 2 worked only about 8 minutes. Why such a big difference? The students in Group 2 had already used up a lot of self-control resisting the sweets, so they had less energy left over for working on the geometry problem. Researchers call this ego depletion.

Does this mean that self-control, once it’s used, is gone forever? Not at all. It recharges with rest. In fact, the more often self-control is used, the stronger it gets. Self-control is like a muscle. It weakens immediately after use but strengthens with frequent use.

Possible Preaching Angle:

The strategy is simply being aware of our capacity for self-control and willpower throughout the day. Keep an eye on the gas gauge. Knowing our willpower level tells us when it might be a good time to take on new challenges, or when we should stop and refill. It lets us know when we are most vulnerable to moral failure.

The American Sleep Apnea Association estimates that 22 million of us suffer from some form of sleep apnea. This is a potentially serious disorder in which we repeatedly stop breathing in our sleep. The long-term effects of sleep apnea include high blood pressure, stroke, heart attacks, and is a risk factor for dementia.

CPAP machines are the most widely used device for treating moderate and severe sleep apnea. Through a mask and tube the CPAP machine pumps a continuous stream of oxygenated air allowing you to breathe continuously while you sleep. When you first start using a CPAP machine, the pressure of the rushing air can feel suffocating, but you eventually get used to it.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Two of the most common words translated as "spirit" in the Bible can also be translated "air." In Ephesians 5:18 the present passive imperative verb translated "be filled" tells us that we are commanded to be continuously filled with the Holy Spirit. Unfortunately, Christians suffer from Spirit apnea, a serious disorder in which we repeatedly stop breathing in the life-giving Spirit of God. It's a congenital defect borne out of our spiritual depravity. Spirit apnea, like sleep apnea, can have a grave effect on our hearts, minds, and actions.

Spiritual disciplines are like CPAP machines. They supply us with a continuous flow of God's life-sustaining Spirit. Some of these disciplines include prayer, fasting, Bible reading/meditation, worship, giving, and evangelism. At first these disciplines can seem overwhelming. Over time though, you get used to them and begin to notice the effects.

Like many sheep ranchers in the West, Lexy Fowler has tried just about everything to stop crafty coyotes from killing her sheep. She has used odor sprays, electric fences, and “scare-coyotes.” She has slept with her lambs during the summer and has placed battery-operated radios near them. She has corralled them at night, herded them during the day. But the southern Montana rancher has lost scores of lambs--fifty last year alone.

Then she discovered the llama--the aggressive, funny-looking, afraid-of-nothing llama. Fowler said, “Llamas don’t appear to be afraid of anything. When they see something, they put their head up and walk straight toward it. That is aggressive behavior as far as the coyote is concerned, and they won’t have anything to do with that. Coyotes are opportunists, and llamas take that opportunity away.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

The author of temptation is much like the coyote--he is an opportunist. But if we are firm in our faith in God to give us the strength we need to resist temptation, then he can be beaten. “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you” (James 4:7-8).

Pastor David Hansen writes of our need to rely on the Holy Spirit:

I live near a river. Fish live in it, and the willowy river bottom is home to mice and mountain lions. From my kitchen window I watch bald eagles, ospreys, golden eagles, and hawks. These birds of prey ride the wind. It doesn't take much energy on their part. However, when geese fly, they must (expend energy by) flapping their wings, but birds of prey soar by catching currents.

Birds of prey seek thermals; columns of warm air that rise from the earth filled with energy. The birds glide on the heated currents of air. A good thermal can lift them high into the sky without so much as a single flap of their wings. From their higher place they can see more ground and can fly longer and farther, and when the time comes to dive on their prey, they can plummet with great speed.

As I watch these birds, I think of pastoral ministry. I too seek thermals. The Spirit lifts, gives vision, direction, and power. Ministry is riding on the free winds of the Spirit that lift us to heights we cannot climb on our own. We can't stay in the air very long on our own strength, but we can seek thermals. Our soul-wings are made large that we might catch the Spirit.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Although this passage is written to pastors, the illustration itself can easily be directed toward our church members encouraging them to seek the filling of the Holy Spirit through prayer.

The last thing a police officer trying to chase down a suspect in a high-speed pursuit needs to see is a warning that their patrol car is running low on gas—or on battery juice. But that’s how it went down one night in Fremont, California. The police officer pursuing a suspect while driving the department’s Tesla Model S patrol car noticed it was running out of battery power.

The pursuit of a “felony vehicle” started in Fremont and reached peak speeds of about 120 miles per hour on the highway. The officer driving the Tesla radioed in to dispatch that he might not be able to continue the chase he was leading. Officer Jesse Hartman said, “I am down to six miles of battery on the Tesla so I may lose it here in a sec.”

However, shortly after Hartman called, the person the police were chasing began driving on the shoulder of the highway as traffic was thickening. This prompted police to call off the chase at that moment for safety. The vehicle being chased was found a short time later after it crashed into bushes, but the driver had fled the scene and was not found. Officer Hartman eventually found a charger in San Jose to juice up his car.

A police department spokesperson said, “We have no written policy regarding charging, but the general guideline is that it should at least be half full at the beginning of the shift.” Apparently, the Tesla had not been recharged after the previous shift before Hartman took it out, so the battery level was lower than it should have been. A spokesperson couldn’t provide details on why it wasn’t charged.

Possible Preaching Angles:

Endurance; Holy Spirit; Power; Spiritual Warfare: Christians may also be running on empty unless they connect daily to the power of the Spirit. Only then will they have endurance in the struggle against temptation and the ability to do God’s will.

Andrew Wilson writes in an article for Christianity Today:

When you’re sailing, is “being filled with the wind” an experience or a habit? Both. Catching the wind on a sailboat is clearly an experience. I vividly remember that first feeling of being seized and carried forward by a mighty power from elsewhere. But it is also a habit. If you don’t put the sails up, pull the mainsheet fast, or adjust the jib, you won’t go anywhere, even if the wind is blowing powerfully.

Sailing, in that sense, is the art of attentive responsiveness to an external power. You rely entirely on the external power to get you anywhere. Sailors never imagine themselves to be powering the boat by their own strength. But you also have to respond attentively to whatever the wind is doing, which comes through cultivating awareness, skill, and good habits.

Being filled with the Spirit involves the same both-and. We pursue the experience of the Holy Spirit - Paul uses the language of filling and drenching, drinking and pouring. We rely entirely on the Spirit’s immeasurable power, rather than our own strength, to get us anywhere. But we also develop habits. We respond attentively to what he is doing in and through us, a capacity that comes through awareness, skill, and practice. Paul mentions four such habits in subsequent verses: teaching one another, singing, giving thanks, and submitting to one another (Eph. 5:18–21).

Larry Parsley convincingly writes on the need to recognize our limitations:

Henry Worsley, a former British army commando and then Arctic explorer, was obsessed with his leadership hero, the Arctic explorer Earnest Shackleton. Worsley (who once spent the night sleeping near his hero's grave) adopted Shackleton's creed: "By endurance we conquer."

But despite his fame and heroism, Shackleton was in many ways a broken man. He emerged physically broken after Captain Robert Scott's 1902 retreat from his polar expedition. In 1906, Shackleton led his own valiant yet unsuccessful journey toward the South Pole, eventually ordering a retreat to save the lives of his men.

Worsley's obsession with endurance pushed him beyond his previous milestones. He had internalized a line from a James Elroy Flecker poem: "always a little further … a little further." And so, at the age of 55, Worsley set off for what he hoped would be an 80-day solo journey. He endured temps of minus-40 degrees Fahrenheit, was often disoriented, windblown, dodging deadly crevasses, all the while pulling a sled nearly double his own weight. After covering over 900 miles in a little over two months, Worsley's body became battered by various illnesses, dehydration, and sheer exhaustion. Just 30 miles from his goal, a defeated Worsley radioed for an airlift. Sadly, his body was by then too far gone, and he passed away from organ failure before his wife Joanna could see him.

It is easy to lionize Worsley, who seemed to have near superhuman discipline, but a recent article about Worsley in the New Yorker magazine observes:

In his diary, he [Worsley] had written, "Never, ever give in." It echoed a lesson from one of the Shackleton self-help books, which Worsley had once posted on his Web site: "Never give up—there's always another move."

But maybe that was wrong. Hadn't Shackleton survived because he had realized that, at a certain point, he had no more moves and turned back? Unlike Scott and others who went to a polar grave, Shackleton reckoned with his own limitations and those of his men. He understood that not everything, least of all the Antarctic, can be conquered. And that within defeat there can still be triumph—the triumph of survival itself.

At some point in our lives the real key is not "always a little further." At some point we need to hear "Come to me all who labor and are heavy laden." Real power lies in surrender, admitting our weakness and limitations and trusting the power of the Holy Spirit.

In his book, Life in the Presence of God, Kenneth Boa compares a soaring eagle to Christians learning to soar through the power of the Holy Spirit:

God seems to like eagles. Thirty-three Bible verses mention them! Eagles are true flying birds, meaning they get off the ground by flapping, but they soar by thermals. Eagles begin flight training around four months old. But even before that, at about two months, they stand up in the nest and spread their wings when they feel gusts of wind. They're training to know the thermals! Thermals are the columns of air formed as heat rises from the ground. Because heat rises, these air columns push up and up, displacing the cold air around them. By staying in the warmth of the thermal, the birds continue to soar. Eagles become experts in this.

In this magnificent aerodynamic action, gravity isn't deactivated—it's still at work—but the higher principle overcomes gravity. Eagles drop down when they step off a branch. Then, they start flapping like crazy. Once they're in the air, though, their wings don't have to work very hard, and while soaring, they use a small fraction of the effort required to rise. They're almost at rest and can just enjoy the pleasure of flight.

When we first begin following Christ (or practicing a spiritual discipline) we're like eagles spreading our wings. Once we start flapping, though, we lift up. Maybe after a few tries we're back down on the ground. But through repeated practice, we finally soar. Also, in Greek, the Holy Spirit is called pnuema, which means "current of air." Think about what this means for us! We flap and flap, but eventually we catch the current of air, and we soar. This is how the Holy Spirit works with our training. He's not only our coach; he's the power behind everything we do.

Someone (J.D. Grear) has said that many of us think that the Holy Spirit is like our pituitary gland. You know it's there, you're glad you've got it, and you don't want to lose it, but you're not exactly sure what it does. Well, the Holy Spirit does a lot. For our purposes here, the Holy Spirit is our teacher, reminder, and enabler.

A number of years ago I suffered from a hip problem. For over a year I walked with a cane. Every time I leaned on one side, I felt an excruciating pain. As long as I was leaning on the other side, sitting, or in bed, there was no problem and no pain. But turn the wrong way and "Ouch!!" That pain was a teacher. I learned to be very careful about the way I walked, how I turned, and the steps I climbed. The pain was also a reminder: "Hey, be careful. Don't lean on that side." But when I did, there was always a kind soul who became my enabler, and would grab my arm and make sure I didn't fall.

The Holy Spirit is like that.

In the classic French film Jean de Florette, townspeople in a small village in Provence, France conspire against a local landowner named Jean who has just inherited a plot of land. They want to force Jeans's little farm to fail so they can possess the land. The land receives only scant rainfall so they sneak on to his property and plug a healthy stream, cementing it shut and covering it with dirt.

Jean does not know about the nearby spring, but he knows of another, more distant water supply over a mile away. He initially makes progress, but eventually getting the water and dragging it from the distant spring becomes a backbreaking experience. Sadly, he never discovers that he already has an inexhaustible supply of water underground but nearby.

Possible Preaching Angles: Holy Spirit; God, power of—In the same way, Christians have an inexhaustible supply of power—the Holy Spirit—living within us. Sadly, some of us are like Jean in this film—you spend our lives in backbreaking effort trying to haul another supply.

In 1957 a graduate student at Columbia University named Gordon Gould had been working with "pumping" atoms to higher energy states so they would emit light. As Gould elaborated his ideas and speculated about all the things that could be done with a concentrated beam of light, he realized he was onto something. In his notebook he confidently named the yet-to-be-invented device a LASER (Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation).

Nearly seventy years later, we are still seeing the impact of this remarkable tool. Very recently, Lockheed Martin boasted about their new laser, a ground-based prototype system that burned through an entire car engine in seconds. From a mile away. The company called this laser system the most "efficient and lethal" version on the planet.

From a spiritual perspective the laser represents the ultimate expression of the impact we can have in a world in need of light. If we are able to understand the stunning power of unity expressed in a laser beam and translate it into our own lives, we might have a greater impact on those around us than ever before.

The architect Frank Gehry, well-known for designing the Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, believes that constraints are the building blocks of great work. The strict standards for acoustics at Disney Hall led to a unique design of the interior space. And that, in turn, led to the soaring, graceful steel exterior that surrounds it. Gehry spoke of how lost he once felt when he was asked to design a house with zero constraints. "I had a horrible time with it," he said. "I had to look in the mirror a lot. Who am I? Why am I doing this? What is this all about?" It's better to have some problem to work on, Gehry explained. "I think we turn those constraints into action."

Gehry is saying, that constraints actually give us some building blocks to work with, a starting point. And without that, nothing happens. If you're ever tempted to feel limited by the constraints of your life, remember how few elements it takes to make something great. Every color in nature comes from just red, yellow, and blue together in millions of combinations. Every pop song, symphony, jingle, ditty, and aria in the Western World started with just twelve notes in the chromatic scale. Everything on the planet, including us, is made up of just 118 known chemical elements. And six regular eight-stud Lego bricks can be put together in more than 900,000,000 different ways. How's that for possibilities?

Possible Preaching Angles: God's Power; Help from God—This can also be used to illustrate the power of God. In other words, if human beings can find possibilities in limitations, how much more so is it true for the God of the Universe? How much more can God create possibilities out of our limitations?

In 1935, Blasio Kugosi, a schoolteacher in Rwanda, Central Africa, was deeply discouraged by the lack of life in the church and the powerlessness of his own experience. He followed the example of the first Christians and closed himself in for a week of prayer and fasting in his little cottage. He emerged a changed man. He confessed his sins to those he had wronged, including his wife and children. He proclaimed the gospel in the school where he taught, and revival broke out there, resulting in students and teachers being saved. They were called abaka, meaning “people on fire.”

Shortly after that, Blasio was invited to Uganda to share with the Anglican Church there. As he called the leaders to repentance, the fire of the Spirit descended again on the place, with similar results as in Rwanda. Several days later, Blasio died of fever. His ministry lasted only a few weeks, but the revival fires sparked through his ministry swept throughout East Africa and continue to the present. Hundreds of thousands of lives have been transformed over the decades through this mighty East African revival. It all began with a discouraged Christian setting himself apart to seek the fullness of God's Spirit.