The Ultimate Power
by Sharon Reidenbach

A bolt of lightning has enough energy to toast 100,000 pieces of bread!

A large wind turbine can produce 5.2 million kilowatt hours of electricity, enough power for 600 households. The power generated at Hoover Dam, on average, generates 4 billion kilowatt hours of hydroelectricity a year to serve 1.3 million people. Yet Hebrews 4:12 speaks of something greater: “For the Word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two edge sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit and of joints and ma3333333rrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart” (NKJV). This energy isn’t visible on the outside, but discerned by the spirit and the physical core of our being.

George Frederic Handel the renowned composer experienced first hand the magnitude of God’s penetrating Word. Handel’s failed attempts to give London an opera depressed him and he wanted to leave for Dublin. But his close friend, Charles Jennens (1700-1773) believed in the living, piercing, discerning Word of God and asked Handel to read a of passage of Scripture. He’d hoped to stop a genius from making a huge mistake.

The verses Handel read in August 1741, overwhelmed him. The music began to dance and explode within him. Handel forgot to eat, saw no one, and worked day and night. After twenty-four days he’d finished. He closed his manuscript and wrote, “To God alone the glory.” We know it today as one of the greatest pieces ever written: The Messiah.

Psalm 119:50 reads, “This is my comfort in my affliction, for your Word has given me life.” The living Word gave Handel his life back, and reawakened his God-given gift.

Another example of God’s Word that mystically changes a life, involves two veterans from the Civil War. Robert Ingersoll, a prominent atheist, and Lew Wallace, a skeptic. They talked long into the night on a train, regarding the immortality of the soul, of the divinity of God, and if there was a heaven or a hell.

Ingersoll challenged Wallace to write about the futility of Christ and His doctrine. Wallace took the challenge.

It took four years, but in 1880, Wallace finished. He titled it, Ben-Hur: A Tale of Christ. It’s one of the great if little known ironies in the history of American literature; Having set out to win another soul to the side of skepticism, the inspiring avalanche that descended upon Wallace from the Word buried his former spirit, and led him to Christ. And Robert Ingersoll, the atheist, inspired a Biblical epic of all time.

Lightning bolts will cease, wind turbines will stop, and water cascading over a dam will dry up, but Matthew 24:35 reassures us that: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but My Words will by no means pass away” (KNJV).

The Word encouraged Handel giving us a masterpiece. A challenge to disavow God produced a novel next to the Bible, and saved a soul.

In our walk of trials, may we grasp, devour and claim the lasting, true, majestic power that can transform and regenerate us back to life: God’s Word. But be ready, friend, for a jolt you’ll never forget!