How Power Season fits into the bigger story of God's campaign

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A campaign must have fire in order to get anywhere, and the whole campaign team has to catch the fire. The Bible readings for Power Season tell us how that happened with God's campaign to save the world from itself.

Jesus had the fire, his enemies tried to snuff it out by killing him, but God re-lit his fire and raised him from death. Could the fire spread? Could the power that worked in Jesus when he was on earth gets connected to his followers so they could carry on his campaign after he returned to heaven? 

How do we get the power we need to make a difference in the world? How do we even get the power to fix ourselves and deal with our own problems? How does authentic power work? It's all there in the biblical story:

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Old Testament:

• Judges: Israel's early experience shows that a society without any central power cannot hang onto its freedom. It keeps getting victimized by its neighbors.

• Ruth: The amazing little story of King David's great-grandmother, who was not Jewish by birth

• 1 & 2 Samuel, 1& 2 Kings, 2 Chronicles: The long and often sad story of Israel in the four centuries when it had its own kings. (1 Chronicles could also fit here, but it is allocated to Roots Season to spread the amount of reading evenly through the year.)

• Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Micah, Nahum, Zechariah: Prophets who condemn the mishandling of power by Israel's kings and other kings. In contrast, they describe the proper way the Messiah will use power when he comes.

New Testament:

• Acts: The "Light My Fire" book, the story of heaven's power working on earth through people like us who represent Jesus and his campaign

• 1 & 2 Corinthians: The church in the ancient Greek commercial center of Corinth showed us how not to use power, and Paul wrote these two letters to promote humility and unity.

• Colossians: Magnificent reflections on the way Christ exercises his power from his throne, transforming us who follow him

Looking back over all this, we gradually realize where and how we fit into this story, and a fantastic thought dawns on us--God is in the empowerment business! He isn't a scorekeeper or even a coach. He gets into the game with us by his Spirit, coming inside us, enabling us to play better than we ever could have by trying harder.

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But Jesus is not running a military or political campaign. The Jews thought that the Messiah would do that, and many of them rejected Jesus because he didn't. He is not trying to get elected as Messiah. He is running a public awareness campaign to spread the word that he IS the Messiah, God's chosen person to lead the campaign to set the world right.

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Part 1 of the proof is the resurrection. The world conspired to block his campaign by executing him as a danger to society. God undid his execution so he could continue his work as campaign leader, taking it to a new level. 

That's where we come in as Part 2 of the proof. Jesus never went public with the announcement that he was the Messiah until he was on trial, but he told his disciples to spread it to the world as soon as they experienced the empowering arrival of his Holy Spirit. That's what we see in the story of Pentecost in Acts 2.

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Jesus has made us walking evidence of his power for good so that the whole world will get the memo that heaven's power is at work on earth just like it was when he was here in person. This isn't political. We don't have to govern anything or overpower anybody.

We just have to let the Spirit of Jesus empower us to become more than we could ever be on our own and to do things that humans can't do. The more we open up to the influence of his Spirit, the better we do our job as evidence that Jesus is still in touch with earth, still "here" on earth through his Spirit. So let's savor the power theme in the biblical story this season, soak up all of it we can.

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If you use the SYNC Bible reading guides for the other six SYNC "seasons," you will cover the whole Bible in a year. The big story of the campaign gets clearer and richer as you appreciate it from all seven seasonal angles.