Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

I typed ‘power’ into my internet search engine and expected a T-Rex or a mountain gorilla or an elephant or a killer whale; but I got a shrimp… specifically a 4 centimeters long, 25 grams in weight pistol shrimp. According to Men’s Health magazine, they are, gram-for-gram, some of the most powerful animals in nature. They have a claw that “fires bubble bullets” at over 100 feet-per-second and is 60 decibels louder than a real gunshot. In addition, the “bubble bullet’s” velocity generates an 8,000 degree flash, vaporizing the surrounding water. They can also use their “bubble bullets” to create a live-in burrow by drilling into basalt rock.

Now multiply that power by 4,000, which is how much larger a human is compared to the pistol shrimp, and you’ll get an idea about how weak we are compared to the animal kingdom?  You could almost make a movie out of it… in fact, they did and it’s called “Project Power” and Jamie Foxx’s power comes from the pistol shrimp. As a human, with the power of a pistol shrimp, he’s able to generate a temperature burst 8,000 degrees hotter than the surface of the sun.?

Paul, in his second letter to the church at Corinth says, “But he (God) said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.” (2 Corinthians 12:9)

The next time I searched for ‘power’ the result was a television show about a drug dealer, James ‘Ghost’ St. Patrick, who owns a nightclub, but lives a secret life as a drug dealer. Then I looked up ‘power’ in the dictionary and it said, “the ability to do or act” and “the capability of doing or accomplishing something.”

Suddenly I realized James “Ghost” doesn’t have any real power; he expends a tremendous amount of energy and money and time doing something illegal and temporary. But he really doesn’t accomplish anything. What a contrast with the God who created the heavens and the earth with a word? Or even some of God’s people who, bit by tiny bit, are changing the world around them.

Therein lies the problem; we are caught up in a futile attempt to appear powerful, yet we are constantly re-affirming our weakness. So Paul tells the Corinthians, if they’ll only admit their weakness, they’ll begin to know God’s power. Now we’re left with a choice; do we keep trying to appear powerful or do we admit our weakness “so that Christ’s power may rest on us” and in us?