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Faith

Faith as a power grab

simon-the-sorcererLife is full of things that you cannot control. You cannot control the weather. You can influence the thoughts and behaviour of other people, but you cannot control it. You cannot control your own mortality. You cannot control most of the things that happen to you in life. Some people wish that there was some magic way for them to get a bit more control, and Simon the Sorcerer thought he had found a way when he saw the power of the Holy Spirit, as reported in Acts chapter 8.

What Simon did not understand was that the power of the Holy Spirit comes only when people join God’s agenda. The Holy Spirit is not something or someone that you can harness to fulfil your own agenda. In fact, why was Simon so keen to get more power in the first place? Apparently so that more people would fear or respect him and so that he could get more power and fame, at the cost of everyone else.

God is not in the business of helping us out in our own little power struggles. Jesus did not come to lord it over others, but to serve them. He commanded us to love our neighbours and to do good even to our enemies. Being a part of God’s mission to save the world, fulfilling the very jobs that we were created to do, is so much more than the maximum that any of our own selfish petty ambitions could ever amount to.