CHANNELING CREATIVE POWER

Sermon preached by John A. Huffman, Jr.

June 10, 2001

Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth . . .

(Philippians 2:9–10)

This morning we have a bit of family business to do before I open the Bible and preach.

As you know, our denomination has been struggling with a number of issues. Your leadership of St. Andrew’s thanks God for the rich heritage of our Presbyterian tradition. At the same time, we are distressed that matters such as the uniqueness of Jesus Christ, the authority of Scripture, and holiness as it relates to the stewardship of one’s sexuality have become such topics of debate, with some minimizing their importance. Your Session, in a special meeting held after church last week, decided to join “The Confessing Church Movement” that is beginning to grow throughout our denomination. We felt that it was imperative that we join this burgeoning movement, taking our action prior to the Louisville General Assembly which is now in session. Without anymore commentary, let me simply read the resolution, putting the unanimous action of the Session on record, so that you know whatever you read in the newspapers and hear in the press that your church, St. Andrew’s Presbyterian, is unalterably committed to the historic faith we hold so precious.

Session Resolution: The Confessing Church Movement

Enacted June 3, 2001

With great regret that it is necessary in a confessional church to single out particular items from our Book of Confessions and Book of Order for special attention, but because of the failure of some to take seriously their ordination vows in these three specific areas, the session of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Newport Beach, California, meeting this 3^rd day of June 2001, joins faithful believers throughout the Church in confessing:

That Jesus Christ alone is Lord of all and the only way of salvation.
That holy Scripture is the triune God’s revealed Word, the Church’s only infallible rule of faith and life.
That God’s people are called to holiness in all aspects of life. This includes honoring the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman, the only relationship within which sexual activity is appropriate.

We therefore announce our commitment to the Confessing Church Movement and we implore all Presbyterians who share these historic Christian convictions to:

Renew their individual commitments to the above confessions.
Urge their session and presbytery to affirm these confessions and to declare that they will not ordain, install or employ in any ministry position any person who will not affirm them.
Urge the 2001 General Assembly to instruct the General Assembly Council to require that all program personnel uphold these confessions and ensure that these confessions are followed faithfully in all programs and policies of the Presbyterian Church (USA).

John P. Lehman, Clerk of Session

John A. Huffman, Jr., Moderator

Let us pray that God will bring renewal to our church, a fresh sense of the uniqueness of Jesus Christ, an increased respect for the authority of the Bible, and a willingness to uphold the biblical standards of sexuality, while at the same time ministering God’s grace to persons whose lives have been fractured by their abuse and distortion of this God-given gift.

Now for this morning’s message.

Our topic is Channeling Creative Power. Our text is Philippians 2:1–11. I urge you to read that entire passage, for we have here a model of a humble, healthful use of power given by Jesus himself.

Rollo May, in his book Power and Innocence: A Search for the Sources of Violence, analyzes the various kinds of power. He specifically mentions five.

Exploitive power identifies power with force. It is overt. It is what the mob uses when it snuffs out lives that get in its way. It is the way some men deal with women sexually, seeing them as objects to be used for their own satisfaction. It is what is often perceived by children to lie at the heart of a parent’s exhortation to, “Do as I say, or else!”

Manipulative power seeks to limit another person’s choices by covert means. Subtle methods are used to gain domination. The example here is the “con” man rather than the gunman. He may be less immediately destructive, but he is nevertheless interested only in his own good. It is sometimes rationalized as the feminine way of dealing with men. How many subtle games are played by women who know how to make apparently strong, high-ego men dance to their tune like puppets dangling at the ends of strings. Children have such clever ways of manipulating parents. Dr. May notes that the despair and anxiety of men and women living in a time of transition between historical periods make them especially vulnerable to manipulative power as they search for security.

Competitive power is power against another that can take negative as well as positive forms. It can stimulate a person to obtain superior achievement or to discover anew personal resources and capabilities. However, it assumes that if I am to go up you must go down. Only one person may win. There is very little room at the top of the pyramid. Only a few can be winners. Many more end up losers. Many of the losers may very well have been outstanding achievers in their own right. The only thing they did wrong was to, at one moment in time, do slightly less well than the one competing against them.

Tiger Wood’s dominance in the sport of golf is a classic example of what happens when one person gains a competitive edge. There are many great golfers at the present time, but Tiger is just enough better than the rest of the best that they feel like losers.

There will be only one winner that will come out of the National Basketball Association championship series. These teams will play until someone wins.

Dr. May observes that competitive power continually shrinks, although not as drastically as manipulation, the area of human community in which one lives. We end up spending so much time comparing ourselves to another, seeing ourselves in win-lose situations, that healthy community has a difficult time surviving.

Nutrient power is power for the other. It’s what a parent provides for his or her children. It may be health-giving. At the same time, it can be “smother” love which encourages dependency and immaturity. Some people have a strong need to look after others, controlling them, literally robbing them of their God-given right to have the power to look after themselves.

Each of these four kinds of power have some potential, positive dynamics. But one can quickly see the potential for the destructive use of power.

There is a fifth power that we can call integrative which increases another person’s ability to grow mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually. The one who uses this power has an open awareness of others, accepts responsibility, and seeks to gain something for the community rather than just for oneself. This is the creative power about which we are talking this week. This is God’s way of acting toward us in which He gives us the freedom to be fully human. He gives us the privilege to make decisions and live with the consequences. He gives us guidance that doesn’t force us. It is also the creative power that He wants to channel through us to others. This use of power encourages my neighbor’s strengths and does not take advantage of his or her weaknesses.

Question: Just why did Jesus come? Why do we, every Sunday, worship Jesus Christ?

Answer: There are many ways of stating it. The reality is that Jesus came to set you and me free by His creative power from both the ways in which we are held in bondage by destructive power and the ways in which we hold others in bondage by our use of destructive power. Jesus came to channel His creative power through you and me toward others.

Just what impact does the creative power of Jesus Christ have upon you and me if we let it?

First: His creative power breaks the stranglehold of the demonic.

Many times you’ve heard me quote the Scriptures which state that all of us have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Most of us already realize that we are not perfect. Most of us have already experienced some of the wages of sin. Its consequences are painful, aren’t they? So often you’ve heard the Gospel clearly declare that Jesus Christ is God become man, to live among us as we live, tempted as we are tempted, yet without sin. You’ve heard that He came not just to set a good example but to die on the cross, bearing our sins. He rose from the dead in victory over sin. He offers forgiveness and new life. You see, I have just stacked the words up in the right order so they spell out the Gospel in familiar sounds. So it’s easy to yawn, saying to yourself, “I’ve heard that a thousand times.” Never forget, there’s someone here who hasn’t heard it a thousand times and, in fact, may have never heard it at all!

Let me startle you by saying the same thing in a slightly different way. Are you aware that there is a personal Satan who orchestrates demonic power, both microcosmically in our individual lives and macrocosmically within the world order? That gets your attention, doesn’t it? We sophisticated Presbyterians sit up a bit and begin to move beyond the yawns. It is at this point that the room tends to divide between those who really believe in a personal Satan, and the fact that you and I are engaged in spiritual warfare, and those who disbelieve this, for whom this notion is so new that they don’t know how to handle the concept.

In Romans 8:38–39, the Apostle Paul writes: “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

This describes a cosmic struggle, does it not? It describes the power of the demonic in conflict with God’s creative, spiritual power. It is a magnificent statement of God’s positive power over the negative power of Satan.

In this passage Paul is confronting various kinds of spiritual struggle. In specific, he is attacking the occult. When he declares, “ . . . neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord,” Paul is referring to astrology. Do you read your horoscope? I hope not. No Christian should read his or her horoscope. To hear me say that is quite agitating if you are one who sees it as a somewhat innocent practice. You think I’m narrow-minded, trying to censor your reading.

My point is not to dismiss the relevancy of astrology. It is to underline the negative spiritual power which is incorporated in such practices. There is spiritual demonic power in the occult. It has marked the entire course of human history.

If you read your horoscope even playfully and something stated in those Delphic utterances happens on the day for which it was predicted, it will catch your attention, won’t it? And if something predicted the next day happens, and by some strange fluke the next day, pretty soon you are in bondage. The Bible calls this practice an “abomination.”

It has the same thing to say about trying to communicate with the departed spirits. It is not that there is no truth to the occult. There is.

This partially marked the spiritual downfall of Bishop Pike, a prominent Episcopal bishop who some years back tried to communicate with his dead son. He should have read the chapter out of the life of King Saul who went to the medium in direct disobedience to God and had the departed spirit of Samuel conjured up. You see, some of us don’t take this seriously at all. And some of us take it too seriously and allow ourselves to become enslaved by the occult. God wants you to acknowledge its power, but He also wants you to live free from its power. That is why Moses stated so emphatically to the people:

“When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you, do not learn to imitate the detestable ways of the nations there. Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the Lord, and because of these detestable practices the Lord your God will drive out those nations before you. You must be blameless before the Lord your God.

The nations you will dispossess listen to those who practice sorcery or divination. But as for you, the Lord your God has not permitted you to do so.” (Deuteronomy 18:9–14)

The demonic is no joke. I could tell you stories that would make your hair stand up straight of people whom I have counseled who have been under demonic control as a result of reading such persons as Edgar Casey, as a result of going to palmists, as a result of exposing themselves to drug and alcohol abuse. Drugs and alcohol, at the very core, are a false spirituality. Use of them for the purpose of inebriation is to alter one’s state in an effort to achieve a spiritual well-being that is a substitute for godliness, true spirituality.

Any pastor can tell you stories of demon possession in both its most primitive tribal form and its most sophisticated, buttoned-down manifestation.

Jesus Christ came to break the bondage of the demonic, to defeat Satan, and to set you free from his power.

Second: His creative power remakes broken lives.

One of the most joyful experiences I ever have is seeing how Jesus Christ changes lives.

Back in the mid-1980s, just as we were coming to the completion of our massive building program, a couple came to me for premarital counseling. They had been living together for quite a while. They wanted to be married and wanted the ceremony to be by a pastor in a worship sanctuary. I asked them why. They said, “We are burned out. We have experienced everything there is to experience in life—the good, the bad, everything. We watched the new church being built. We decided to come over and see what was going on. We heard you talk about God’s capacity to forgive and remake lives. That’s what we want!” They opened their lives and received Jesus Christ as Savior. Then, with God’s help, they determined that they would live a celibate existence from that moment until the day of their wedding.

A number of weeks later, just before their wedding, they came in to see me. Their eyes were aglow with anticipation for both the ceremony and their honeymoon. They talked about what they were learning from the preaching and teaching of this church. They shared their excitement as well as some of their continuing struggles. There is nothing that brings me greater joy as a pastor than seeing how Jesus Christ not only breaks the power of the demonic but helps put back together a life.

During my thirty-six years of ministry I have counseled a lot of couples.

I have seen some who once were very much in love come to a parting of the ways. Divorce was final in most of these situations. One feels the pain more than the other. Or one continues to hold out hope after the other has declared the marriage is over. I’ve seen men and women, in their broken dreams, come to Jesus and allow Him to transform their lives. I could take a roving microphone today and walk through this sanctuary and introduce you to scores of persons who, through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, have discovered that there is life after divorce, that God forgives, channeling His creative power in a way that enables a new beginning. No one, by their rejection, has a right to destroy you.

At the same time, I’ve seen others, where marriages were in just as desperate straights, who came to Jesus Christ, willing to look objectively at their problems. Together they claimed His help and discovered not only love restored but a deeper quality of love than they had ever experienced before. Once again, I could take this microphone and walk through this sanctuary, singling out couples, having them stand up and tell their story of restored love, deepening relationship, and a maturing understanding of human personality that changes one’s perspective so as to see that the differences two people have in personality, temperament, life experience, can enrich instead of destroy the relationship. If you think you could never love that person again, your feelings have gone numb—don’t give up. Give God an opportunity to do something about it. If your partner has been unfaithful, and you have experienced the ultimate rejection, if that partner is willing to come back in a spirit of repentance, willing to get help with the underlying issues that caused the problem, welcome that one back. God can restore fidelity and deepening love to the relationship.

I’m not trying to make anyone who is already divorced feel bad. I know you’d be the first person to cheer on some couple that is contemplating divorce, to encourage them to do everything to hold that marriage together. The point is not that coming to Jesus is going to immediately make your marriage healthy. The point is that if you, as a human being, are willing to come to the Lord and get the kind of help He is able to give you through adequate counseling, through spiritual growth, through mastering some of the principles of God’s Word that are available to you, God has the power to rebuild your life. And if your partner is willing to have his or her life rebuilt, your marriage can be rebuilt.

There are no two more opposite persons in the world than Anne and myself. We’ve had to deal with some pretty heavy stuff in our thirty-seven years of marriage. We both have had to do some growing up. We both have had to go through some spiritual and psychological therapy—as two individuals, separate from each other, as well as some marital therapy. We are just like you, two Christians with whom God has a lot of work yet to do. But I can bear testimony to the fact that we have a deeper commitment to each other today than we did the day we were married. I can assure you that love, at points which had seemed so remote, almost dead, is more alive and more mature than it has ever been before. And I could give you case history after case history of other persons, who have been willing to allow the power of God to become operative in their lives, who could share similar testimonies.

Jesus Christ’s creative power remakes broken lives and remakes broken relationships.

Third: His creative power enables you to face the specter of death.

I know that in this sanctuary this morning there are several persons who are fighting cancer. You are putting up a noble front. Your doctors give you words of encouragement. Your friends pretend that it is not that serious. It’s amazing how much we want to deny the realities of terminal illness. The fact is that every one of us someday is going to die unless Jesus Christ returns first.

I would like to say that Jesus Christ came to heal all diseases so that if you came to faith in Him and you have cancer you will be instantly, physically healed. The fact is that Jesus does sometimes heal some diseases.

I have told you the remarkable story about my friend Werner Burklin. St. Andrew’s church has supported him as a missionary, now, for almost two decades. He is the one who, for many years, was the director for Youth for Christ in Germany, then worked with the Billy Graham organization in Europe. More recently Werner has headed up international training teams to teach short-term in the Bible schools and seminaries of China. I was on one of those teams, teaching at Nanjing and Beijing seminaries in 1995.

Back in the late 1960s, Werner was diagnosed with cancer. He had a large portion of his stomach removed. The malignancy had spread to other parts of his body. The doctors gave him only a few weeks to live. Werner is alive and well today, over 30 years later. A clear cut testimony to the physical healing power of God.

Yet for every story like this about Werner, I can tell you stories of those with just as much faith, surrounded by just as much prayer, who God has not healed in the same way. Their ultimate physical healing was death. Jesus came for them too and for every one of us who is someday going to die. He came, and He broke the power of death.

What is that power? The sting of death is sin. Jesus cancelled that negative power with His creative power which is much stronger. He has told you that He has gone to prepare a place for you. You are assured that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. You are promised that you will recognize your loved ones in heaven. He tells you that you will have a new body, free from the blemishes of this human body which is yours. Those of us who have lost our loved ones are assured that we need not sorrow with the same kind of sorrow of those who have no hope. The fact is that our tears are for ourselves. Our loved ones who died in Christ have a life better than any life they had on this earth. Someday, we, too, will have that life. In the meantime, we have the comfort of the Holy Spirit who serves as a companion in the most lonely moments. We have the creative power of God channeling through us to heal the open wounds of our bleeding grief.

One of the finest ministries of St. Andrew’s in recent years is that of our grief recovery workshops. Betty Adkinson, who has taken the time and done the hard work of grief after the loss of her adult daughter Cyndy, has gathered a team of leaders who have also gone through their losses. My wife Anne is one of them. Throughout the year, in a careful rotation of these leaders, we offer six-week workshops to anyone experiencing loss. Again, I could walk through this sanctuary singling out person after person who has experienced the loss of a loved one to death and has found the healing power of Jesus Christ. They are honestly confronting that loss, recognizing the pain, and claiming the comfort and strength of the very God of all creation whose name is Jesus Christ and is present in the power of the Holy Spirit, walking with them through the valley of the shadow of death.

In what time remains, let’s look for a few moments at the evidences of whether or not the creative power of Jesus Christ is not only being channeled to you but through you.

The Apostle Paul writes in our text of today:

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. (Philippians 2:5–7)

Here is the best model of all. If Jesus, God become man, lived the life of a servant, how much more are we called to evidence, even if imperfectly, some of these same qualities which marked His life.

Let me mention several.

One, an evidence of spiritual power is love.

Love is power used for the good of others. Jesus lived for others. This is the ideal. It is not easy for you and me to fully emulate this quality. I’ve discovered that the longer I live in personal relationship with Jesus Christ the more loving I become. Driving ambition lessens. Hasty judgments become a little less frequent. I become more and more concerned about the welfare of others than my own selfish desires.

Two, an evidence of spiritual power is humility.

Paul and Barnabas displayed this when on one of their missionary journeys they were referred to as gods. They tore their garments and rushed out among the people crying, “‘We too are only men, human like you. We are bringing you good news, telling you to turn from these worthless things to the living God, who made heaven and earth and sea and everything in them’” (Acts 14:15).

I’ve been privileged through the years to observe, up close, a number of Christian leaders. I’ve noticed that there is a kind of crossroads to which they come as they become better known. Some veer off toward arrogance and a somewhat masked self-centeredness and pride. Others become more and more humble as they see themselves being creative channels of God’s power. I can assure you that it is one who is increasingly humble to whom you and I are drawn. You and I, too, are privileged to stand in awe of what God is doing through us, fearing the day when God’s hand of blessing may be taken from us due to any tendency which we might have to take the glory.

Three, an evidence of spiritual power is self-limitation.

Jesus refused to use power for his own personal benefit. Satan tempted Him to do this. But He would not turn the stones into bread, playing with His power. He would not jump from the pinnacle of the temple, making a display of His awesome capacities.

I know a couple who for some time has been shopping for a bigger house. They can afford it. They look forward to having it. And then they begin to ask themselves the question about why they want a larger house. The more they thought about it, the more they realized that this was a want, not a need. Instead, they have decided to stay where they are and put on an addition. They concluded they didn’t have to have everything they wanted.

I have a friend whose wife had a complete emotional breakdown. For ten years he stood by her while she moved in and out of psychiatric hospitals, having every known treatment for her mental illness. During those years she did some crazy things that even gave him biblical grounds for divorce. Instead, he self-limited himself. He remained faithful to her. He stood by her side. He prayed for her. He loved her. And today that woman is many years past that desperate decade. She has earned a Ph.D and ministers alongside her husband.

Four, an evidence of spiritual power is joy.

By joy I don’t mean a trite, flippant, happy-go-lucky approach to life in which you roam around with a grin so wide that you look like you have a coat hanger caught in your mouth. I have a real problem with people who have that soupy, sappy, happy look that denies the realities of human existence. No, I am talking about a kind of authentic fulfillment which comes from experiencing deep suffering. I could introduce you to people who have been potentially devastated by the curve balls life has thrown at them. Their story parallels the story of Job. Yet they display the joy of the Lord. On the other hand, I could introduce to you some of the most unhappy people I know, who have what appears to be idyllic existences. Their lives seem to be charmed with all the money, influence, prestige, and success a person could want. But they live joyless lives.

Five, an evidence of spiritual power is vulnerability.

The Roman Catholic writer, Henri Nouwen, wrote about it in one of his classic books The Wounded Healer. Let me guarantee you one spiritual fact of life. If you had a problem, and you claimed the help of the Lord in it, you are much better prepared to help someone else who has had the same problem than someone who has lived antiseptically isolated from that problem. In your very woundedness you become healer. That’s why recovering alcoholics have the finest ministry to people struggling so much with alcoholism. That’s why I direct those who want help to some of my friends who have gone to the very bottom, having lost their jobs, families, homes, and self respect. In their desperation they reached out to the Lord and found His help, forgiveness, restoration, and the capacity to live one day at a time without a drink. In the very vulnerability of their willingness to share comes hope for someone else.

Are you aware that there is the ministry of the “eloquent ear?” You may not even have the answer to someone else’s need. You tell them of your own struggle and then let them talk. It’s amazing what an open ear and an open heart of a vulnerable person can be in terms of channeling spiritual power.

Six, an evidence of spiritual power is submission.

This is a tough one. Who wants to be in submission? So often this, in a distorted way, is applied to the husband/wife relationship. When the Bible teaches submission, it’s talking about our submission as human beings to God, in which we, the finite, kneel before the Infinite. When it talks about submission of one human to another, it is talking about a mutual submission. We are brothers and sisters in Christ. It’s not a matter of the weak submitting to the strong. In fact, the model of Jesus is the strong submits to the weak. There is equality in this submission in which we build each other up, not lord it over the other.

Seven, an evidence of spiritual power is freedom.

I don’t have to have the power anymore. I don’t have to run rough shod over weak. I don’t even have to go around and check you out. I am called to be honest, to declare the Word of God. I am free to love you. You are free to love me. We are called to rebuke each other in love. If that rebuke is not accepted, I am free to move on and you are free to move on. My job is not to control you. Nor is your job to control me.

Jesus Christ came to show you and me that there are alternatives to exploitive, manipulative, competitive, and nutrient uses of power. He came to encourage us to the integrative use of power in which He, with His creative power, breaks the stranglehold of the demonic, remakes broken lives, enables us to face the specter of death, and in turn wants to use us as the creative channels of His power in these evidences of love, humility, self-limitation, joy, vulnerability, submission, and freedom.

Are you up to this? You can be with God’s help!