by Dan Jones
If you read last week’s blog, you know that I have a definite bias in support of the Kinship Day for Women held this past Saturday.
Having freely admitted such bias, I have to say it was a wonderful day and the LORD God was doing powerful and amazing things. (Possibly more so than you know.)
Jillian Jones’ music was beautiful and inspiring, the food was delicious, Tina Haroldson was hilarious and insightful, and keynote speaker Renee Swope touched and ministered to many hearts.
Early in Swope’s message, she told of cleaning her counter tops and coming across a tiny rubber “thingy.” (Yes, “thingy” is a completely legitimate word. She’s a professional speaker, after all.) Anyway, after throwing the “thingy” away, she realized it was the power button to the remote control and had to go digging through the egg shells and other items in the trash to find it. When she did eventually locate it, she noticed it wasn’t just the “power” button, for inscribed upon it were the words, “ALL POWER.”
And she reminded us how easily we throw away the power God has for us, which is the same power that raised Jesus from the dead.
Now, being a guy, when someone says “power” it catches my attention. It’s a genetic thing.
Power is cool. Power is manly. Power is powerful.
And, since power is a physical quality, it is measurable.
There are various measures of power, all of which quantify work accomplished over time. Mechanical power is often measured in “horsepower” and electrical power is commonly measured in watts or kilowatt hours. (Thousands of watts per hour.)
One watt is a very small amount of power, as it takes about 747 watts to equal one horsepower. Approximately one kilowatt of the power of the sun falls on one square meter of the earth’s surface on a clear day at the equator.
And now we get to God’s power.
Our sun is three hundred thousand times the mass of Earth. It’s a giant nuclear furnace converting 620 million tons of hydrogen into helium every second. The energy output of the sun has been calculated at 384.6 yottawatts (3.846×1026 W), or 9.192×1010 megatons of TNT per second.
Having trouble wrapping your head around that?
Well, when you consider that scientists aren’t even sure how many stars are in our own Milky Way galaxy, (They guess it’s probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 billion) and you multiply that by the estimated 10 trillion galaxies in the universe, that would give us: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars, or a “1” with 24 zeros after it.
So, how much power was involved when God simply spoke all those stars into being?
Just how powerful is our God?
Well, if you multiply the power of our one sun by all those numbers of suns in the universe, your going to come up with something far beyond your ability to comprehend.
The Greek word is hyperbállō and it means to surpass, excel, exceed, transcend.
In Ephesians 1:19, its the word used to describe the surpassing greatness of the power that raised Jesus from the dead and seated Him in the heavenly realms.
In Ephesians 2:7, it’s the word used to describe the richness of the grace expressed in His kindness to us in Christ Jesus.
In Ephesians 3:19 it’s used to describe the love of Christ Jesus that surpasses knowledge.
In 2 Corinthians 3:10 it’s used to describe the surpassing glory that has come to us in Christ Jesus.
And, in 2 Corinthians 9:14, it’s used to describe the surpassing grace of God upon us in Christ Jesus.
God’s power absolutely transcends our ability to understand it and it is expressed in Christ Jesus –in whom and by whom and for whom all things were created.
And, as Swope said, it’s the same power that raised Jesus from the dead–and it is given to us for a reason:
Today’s Praise
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. (Ephesians 3:14-21 ESV , emphasis added.)