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It Is Written

John Bradshaw

Power

Let's pray as we take the Bible, open the Bible, Let God speak to our hearts.

Our Father in heaven, in the name of Jesus, we come to you.

Thank you for giving us peace in a troubled world.

Let your word be powerful in our experience now and always.

I can tell you exactly how long ago it was.

I remember that vividly because my wife was great with child, expecting our daughter, who is now Shannon.

Our son was 2 and a half years old, or very close to it, and we were living in the Tar Heel State, in the great state of North Carolina.

In North Carolina, the weather in December can do just about anything.

I have worn short sleeves a week before Christmas in North Carolina, but then again, it can be like it was in 2002.

There was an ice storm and the temperatures were just frigid.

Now, if you've never lived through an ice storm, you need to know they can be a lot of fun.

To start with, freezing rain falls and then ice forms on everything.

When the sun shines, it's as pretty as a picture.

But after a while, all that ice starts weighing things down.

Trees will eventually crash to the ground.

And life without power, when it is 22 degrees outside and will be for who knows how long, can rapidly get interesting.

Now, at that time, we had neighbors across the road.

They had gas heat in their home, gas hot water.

We did not, and so therefore, we were not.

As the temperature dropped, we put on more and more clothes, And we put more and more blankets on the bed, and we lit candles for light.

Our little boy thought it was a great adventure, and it was for a matter of some hours.

But man, it didn't take long, and we wanted the power to be restored.

I think we toughed it out for about 3 days, but you can only last so long without power in the winter before you freeze to death.

So we accepted the offer of some kind friends and we went and spent the night in their home because without power we were in real trouble.

Now as it happened the power actually came back on less than an hour after we left our house for our friend's place.

But we didn't know that until the next day.

You know without power it doesn't matter how nice your dishwasher is, doesn't matter how new your clothes dryer is, does not matter how good your oven is, or how pretty your light fixtures are, because without power, ain't nothing gonna happen.

I wonder if you've ever been without power.

Can't cook, can't heat your home, can't do much of anything.

Now when I was a child we would have power cuts with some frequency And I don't know if it was because I was especially gullible or simply because you get into a groove, you know.

I remember my father saying to me, and by the way, the reason there were power cuts with frequency, it's not that we were living in the wilds.

It's just that That's the way it was, you know.

When I say some frequency, I remember them to this day.

My dad would say, well, John, why don't you get up and put the water on and boil ice water for a cup of tea?

I'd jump up and run over to get, ah, it got me.

Or dad might say, John, you know, there's nothing to do.

You know, while it's 1 thing to be without power in your house, It's a whole lot more serious when you are without power in your life.

What happens when temptation comes and you are powerless to do anything to resist it?

What happens when you are in a situation that calls for a certain moral or ethical decision to be made, but you don't seem to have the ability to make that decision?

What happens when you need some backbone and you're like a jellyfish, an invertebrate all of a sudden?

What happens in a person's life spiritually when there's no power?

The question is, where and how do you get the power?

Politicians talk a lot about where we're going to get our power from.

Great big windmills dotting the countryside, harnessing the power of nature, air, to generate power.

In Europe, you'll see these things in the sea, catching the energy of the wind, turning it into power.

They're not so popular anymore because we are concerned now, in general, as a society, about some of the, well, some of the pollution aspects of coal-fired power stations.

I grew up on a river, and I mean 565 feet from the river bank.

And that river was dammed up here and here and here with hydroelectric power stations and so the force of the rushing water was used to generate power.

There was 1 not far from where I was raised and it used the heat from under the ground and the steam coming up out the ground to generate power.

And then there's nuclear power as you know.

It's very efficient, but it does come with a little downside called nuclear waste and Chernobyl and Fukushima and 3 Mile Island have shown us that There are some hazards involved with nuclear power.

I talked recently to a guy, family, well, when I say family on my wife's side, I think it's fair that I point that out.

He used to drive a taxi and he powered it for some time with used cooking oil.

He said, 1 good thing about running the taxi on used cooking oil was that the taxi smelled like fried food.

And so it was common for a passenger to get into the taxi, asked to be taken home, sit there for a couple of minutes, smelling that fried food smell.

And then he'd asked the taxi driver, stop so I can buy some fast food.

Taxi driver would get another $5 or $10 out of the fare because of all of the extra time that it took.

I don't know if you want to get so creative.

In Bridgeport, Vermont, A dairy farmer figured out he could extract methane gas from cow manure and use it to power a generator.

I don't know what the passengers there think of the smell.

But in your life, what do you do for power in your life?

Romans 1 and verse 16 says this, this is Paul speaking, I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to all who believe." And my expectation is that you've heard this said many, many times, the Greek word used there and rendered as power in English is the word dunamis, which is where Mr.

Nobel, who invented dynamite, got the word for dynamite from that Greek word for power, dunamis.

So when Paul said, the gospel is the power of God unto salvation, Now we're taking a little license with this if you like, but he is saying this, this is the dynamite.

Power

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