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Thursday, July 2

Our Propensity To Abuse Power.

I’m sure that at some point in your life you were a victim of someone who abused his or her power in your life. Maybe it was a family member, your boss, perhaps someone who worked for you, a police officer maybe even a minister. At some point in your life someone abused the power they had by leveraging it against you. The truth is the all of us at some time or another we will be tempted to abuse our power too. And one of the greatest areas in which we will be tempted to abuse our power is when we use our power to protect and increase our power.

Acting Against God To Protect The Blessings Of God.

Have you ever hoped or prayed for God to bless you? You hoped or prayed for a Job and you actually got it, you hoped or prayed for a relationship and it happened and you fell that the reason it happened was because God blessed you. But then there comes a time in which you have an opportunity to honor God but in doing so you may loose the blessing that God gave you, so you use your power to act against God in order not to loose the blessing of God. You believe God blessed you with a job now the job requires you to dishonor God, God blessed you with wealth now your tempted to dishonor God with your wealth, God blessed you with a relationship but to keep this relationship your partner is asking you to dishonor God. You fell that God has blessed you with something or someone and there comes a time when the temptation will be to dishonor God in order not to loose the blessing of God.

In the first century the the most powerful Jewish person was a man named Caiaphas, he was the high priest the only person allowed to enter the most inner part of the temple and he was also the president of the Sanhedrin who were a group of men in charge of interpreting and executing the law. But there came a time when a man named Jesus was gaining great fame thru his teachings and the many miracles he had done especially resurrecting a man who had been dead for four days. These miracles caused many to follow Jesus, and this greatly disturbed many people in power especially Caiaphas.

John 11: 45-50, 53 NIV

Therefore many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary, and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him. But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. Then the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the Sanhedrin. “What are we accomplishing?” they asked. “Here is this man performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our temple and our nation.” Then one of them, named Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, spoke up, “You know nothing at all! You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.” So from that day on they plotted to take his life.

Our Temple Our Nation.

The Chief priest, the Pharisees and Caiaphas were all worried about loosing the blessings that God had given them, they were worried that they were going to loose they’re temple and they’re nation, which by the way was Gods temple and Gods nation. So what did they do? They resisted God in order to keep the blessings of God.
God in many ways has blessed us too and with each blessing God gives us comes a certain amount of power. And there will come a time when you and I will be tempted to use that power in order to save the blessing. We look at our personal situation and say to our selves, if I do what God wants me to do at my job, in my position, in this relationship I may loose my job, position or relationship. And there probably is no greater abuse of power then resisting God in order to save the blessings of God.

Power, when we use it to resist God it is because we fear losing Gods blessings more then we fear loosing God himself.