On Having Superpowers

I just started reading Francis Chan's second book, Forgotten God, which dwells on the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives and in the church. I've read approximately 30 pages of the book and I already have to blog some of my thoughts on things that Chan brings up. Here's the excerpt that really inspired me to write:

"Then in Acts 2, we see the fulfillment of this promise in a way that must have shocked the disciples. The Holy Spirit's power is unleashed like no one had ever seen or experienced before, and Peter shares the amazing promise that this Holy Spirit is available to anyone who believes. The Epistles tell us of the Holy Spirit's amazing power at work in us, our Spirit-enabled ability to put our sin to death through Him, and the supernatural gifts He gives us" (Chan 30, my emphasis).

When I first came to Encounter in the Spring semester, Doug identified the things that I was interested in as Sci-Fi and superheroes. I guess I talked about those two topics a lot in front of him? Maybe I couldn't think of anything else that I was interested in in those times when we were asked about ourselves? I don't know. A question I was recently asked was what do I make famous with my life? How sad is it when the things that are most apparent to others are television shows that I enjoy, fleeting TV franchises. What if instead people identified me first as a Christian and not merely a conservative or an English major or a TV aficionado or a book lover or whatever else will pass away into the oblivion of history? This strand of thought has gotten me very off topic. Back to my initial idea.

Can I just say how freaking cool is the Holy Spirit? According to Scripture, the Holy Spirit is the intercessor between us and God. Pastor Drew said (I paraphrase), when we blunder through our prayers to God since we really have no idea how to pray, the Spirit (the advocate or lawyer) presents our "case" to the Holy God. God hears and answers our prayers! What a great system that God created? Going back to my fixation on the whole superhero franchise (Buffy, X-Men, Doctor Who, etc--according to me, all these mentioned are superheroes), the phrase that piqued my interest in Forgotten God is "supernatural gifts," not spiritual gifts but supernatural gifts. It is a subtle difference, I know, but significant, nonetheless.

As Christians, the Holy Spirit enters us and we are then given superpowers! Superheroes don't use these powers for their own benefit but to help rescue others. The Doctor on the series, Doctor Who, is a Timelord, for crying out loud! He has the ability to travel from the Victorian Age to 5 billion years in the future, just for the sake of the human race. I guess it's more exciting to help others when you're super powerful than not (like the Q on Star Trek, a billion points to anyone who knows who that is) but I digress. Isn't it the same deal for Christians? Doug pointed out in Encounter the other week that though we are given spiritual gifts, these gifts aren't meant for us to use them for our own benefit. Take the gift of encouragement for instance. How silly would it be for someone who has this gift to use it on themselves? "Buck up, Cecil! You need to get out there and do this thing!"--or whatever.

I don't really know what my spiritual gifts are in particular (I haven't had patience to sit down and take a survey like this one: http://buildingchurch.net/g2s-i.htm; too much hard core introspection, I guess). Anyways, it's almost time for small groups to start so I'll wrap these thoughts up for now. Hopefully more later!