Empowered!
Scripture:
References:
Theme: Empowered By the Holy Spirit
Object Lesson:
Strengthened from Within
In his book Fearfully and Wonderfully Made, Dr. Paul Brand (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1980) tells the story of the white corpuscles, the guardians and watchdogs of the body, the armed forces of your inner workings which are always on guard against foreign invasions. He writes:
They look exactly like amoebae: amorphous blobs of turgid liquid with darkened nuclei, they roam through the body by extending a finger-like projection and humping along to follow it. Sometimes they creep along the walls of the veins; sometimes they let go and free-float in the bloodstream. To navigate the smaller capillaries, bulky white cells must elongate their shapes, while impatient red blood cells jostle in line behind them.
Watching the white cells, one can’t help thinking them sluggish and ineffective at patrolling territory, much less repelling an attack. Until the attack occurs, that is. When damage occurs to anything in the blood stream, an alarm seems to sound. As if they have a sense of smell (we still don’t know how they “sense” danger), nearby white cells abruptly halt their aimless wandering. Like beagles on the scent of a rabbit, they home in from all directions to the point of attack. Using their unique shape-changing qualities, they ooze between overlapping cells of capillary walls and hurry through tissue via the most direct route. When they arrive, the battle begins.
The shapeless white cell, resembling science fiction’s creature “The Blob,” lumbers toward a cluster of luminous green bacterial spheres. Like a blanket pulled over a corpse, the white blood cell assumes the shape of the bacteria; for awhile the bacteria still glow eerily inside the white cell. But the white cell contains granules of chemical explosives, and as soon as the bacteria are absorbed the granules detonate, destroying the invaders. In thirty seconds to a minute only the white cell remains.
When the body is attacked, its inner forces resist, the body’s normal functioning is reinforced in a manner that protects it from the danger. It is strengthened from within. This gives us a very accurate analogy to the Christian life. The believer in Christ is attacked continually from the forces of the world in which we live, and from the spiritual forces of evil who would destroy us, as well as our own inner magnetism which draws us to sin. And when we are under attack, we must resist, we must be reinforced in our counter attack, we must be strengthened from within. The biblical way of dealing with life’s problems is to deal with our own spiritual state. The Christian method is to build up our resistance in our inner man, by the Spirit.
That is why the apostle Paul prays that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being (3:16). Whatever the attack may be, the resistance can be so strengthened that we will be made more than conquerors. This is the essential biblical teaching as to how to live in a world such as this, how to keep coping in it, and how to be “more than conquerors” in spite of everything that happens in it. The Bible challenges us not to figure out a way to eliminate our problems but rather to be strengthened by God in such a way as to live above them, not without pain and suffering, but in spite of pain and suffering.
V. PRAYER
Our Heavenly Father, grant to us that we might be strengthened with power in the inner man, that Christ might completely be at home in our hearts, that we might know the love of God which surpasses knowledge, that we might be filled up to all your fullness. Amen.
