True Power

At the end of every podcast, we like to ask our guests to share what God has been teaching them in this season of life. This week’s guest is Jon Collins’ . In 2009 first company, Epipheo, introduced the business world to “explainer videos.” Jon now creates these videos for The Bible Project.

Philippians 2:6-8

Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!

Yeah, I think the biggest theme for me that keeps recurring throughout this project and even recently is this image of God as, well, just that—God. He wants to empower us to work with him. And so I've been thinking a lot about what is the story of the Bible have to say about what do we do with power. 

And power is something that we can all crave. I think it brings security and influence and maybe it'll bring us friends. And it often does bring the things that we want, which is why it’s so enticing. And it's enticing for a reason. I mean, it's an important thing. But how easily we use it to be selfish and to protect us and ours, to marginalize all sorts of things in the story. And the Bible just shows us that over and over. 

So I’ve been thinking a lot about the example of Jesus in power. It's like Jesus had ultimate power. We read Philippians 2 about He's one with God. But what did he do with his power? He decided to be self-sacrificial and radically generous. And just think about how true power really is that way. If you see someone in their business or whatever who is really just trying to hold on to power and demean people and prop themselves up. You know, it's just not true power. 

True power is self-sacrificial and giving because true power could be killed and still be the true power of the universe. And as I’m reflecting on that, I think it's been such a gift with this project. I mean, every time someone gives to this project, they're empowering us and we want to use that power. Well, whenever you get a client, you know, you're being empowered. So, as Christians, we should question how we think about power and how that should make us different from the world.