Some thoughts on power

I have noticed that we often ask God to fill us with his power when we pray but I have a growing suspicion that we might be asking for the wrong thing. I can't think of a single occasion where Jesus asked God to be filled with power, although I could be wrong. He certainly asked for courage to be obedient to his Father's will, but power? Maybe it is a semantic thing, but is this pursuit of power - even God's power - not open to abuse? The recent fall of those in charge of seemingly 'powerful' ministries would seem to suggest this is the case.

Perhaps we would be better to ask God to fil us with His powerlessness, as this is the form that his power so often takes. In Jesus' life we see that God chooses to reveal himself more often than not in powerlessness. If you don't agree take a look at the cross! Yes, there are great miracles and works of power but even they are often done in the secret place. Even the resurrection, the greatest single event of power in history, is done in secret and only after the humiliation of the cross.

When Jesus receives the Spirit of His Father during his baptism (Mark 1.9ff), he is sent into the desert place to work out what this event means. He is tempted by the devil (Matt 4) and in this temptation he is offered ultimate power over the world. Three times he chooses powerlessness over power. This surely is a foretaste of the ultimate choice of powerlessness which leads him to the cross three years later and is also the perfect contrast to Peter's threefold denial.

As a brief aside, I mentioned this to my dad who said that it was interesting that in the acts of the apostles the disciples never asked for power but instead for boldness. Why was this? Was it not that they already knew that they had received God's power so they didn't need more, just the boldness to lean back onto what they already had.

Finally, Paul surely sums it all up for us in 2 Corinthians 12.10;

"That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong."

Or to put that last line another way, "when I am weak, then I AM is strong."