I want this superpower!

I came across a rare superpower in the Bible that I'd like to have. This valauble but often overlooked power has even been borrowed and adapted for some Marvel comic characters, though I much prefer the true-to-life Biblical version.

It's important to remind ourselves that any superpowers described in the Bible are quite different than the superpowers imagined as part of the hugely popular DC and Marvel Comics Universes. The musclebound fictional superheroes of these comics all operate according to powers inherent in them and controlled by them. The real-life superheroes of the Bible, though, all operated according to powers belonging solely to God and controlled by God, meaning that these men and women might've appeared as scrawny, humble types of no seeming consequence. But the vast army of superheroes in the Bible did things of great consequence, and were able to do so because of God's great power at work in or through them – whether it was Moses calling up cascades of water from desert rocks, or Elijah calling down devouring flames from the sky, or Daniel sleeping unharmed among hungry lions. God's superpowers at work in God's humble servants made mighty heroes of them all. Just check out Hebrews, chapter 11 for a list of what they achieved through faith in a great God of incalculable power!

But there is one superhero in the Bible whose superpower from God is often forgotten when celebrating the Heroes of the Faith, and it is this superpower that seems so appealing to me. The hero's name is Ezekiel, and his superpower is truly the stuff of legends. The Marvel Comic Universe wouldn't have created the indestructible Wolverine or the awesome power of Ultron if it weren't for this great power. I speak of the mythical adamant stone, from which is derived the fictional alloy of adamantium. Because God knew that Ezekiel would face great opposition due to the harsh and disappointing nature of the message God gave him to deliver to His people, God transformed Ezekiel's forehead into adamant stone, the hardest substance in all the earth. "Like adamant stone, harder than flint, I have made your forehead; do not be afraid of them, nor be dismayed at their looks, though they are a rebellious house" (Ezekiel 3:9, NKJV). Other translations use the word "emery" or "flint" due to the unfamiliarity of the archaic term "adamant," but I prefer the strong and illustrative connotations of the adamant stone.

To us today, the word "adamant" is a descriptive word rather than an object. It means to be firm and unyielding, resolute and determined. A person who is adamant will not give in to anything. But before it was an adjective, "adamant" was a noun: a legendary stone of impenetrable hardness, its root meanings including untamable, unconquerable and unyielding. The Greek word adamas, from which it is derived, meant unbreakable or invincible. To have a forehead of adamant stone would enable a person to withstand anything that came against it, any opposition, any conflict, any warfare. (No wonder Marvel Comics latched onto it!) It is such meanings that give the word such force and make it such an excellent choice for the translators of Ezekiel's story. Ezekiel, with his super-powerful forehead of adamant stone, had been called by God to be unyielding and unwavering in the face of forceful opposition!

Ah, but of course, this is all meant to be understood in a figurative sense, and would be more accurately understood as God giving Ezekiel a resilient spirit in the face of stiff resistance, but I still love the graphic language God used to describe His equipping of His prophet Ezekiel. And it's a superpower from God that I often long for in the face of the many challenges life throws at me.

I think all of us would benefit from asking God for a forehead of adamant stone, so long as we used it wisely. I would want to use it to express my determination to trust God no matter what! But it's important to remember that it is only meant for those who are facing great resistance or strong opposition. Do I want that? Deep down, I suspect I have no choice if I want to follow Jesus. Following Jesus means entering a spiritual battle for which we need to be heavily armed with spiritual weapons that reflect God's divine enablement and protection. So I'm simply saying that having a superstrong forehead of adamant stone that reflects an unyielding, unshakable and absolutely indestructible faith in God is among my God-given superpowers of choice.

© 2016 by Ken Peters

When God stirs my heart...

Quite awhile ago I came across this picture in a discarded magazine from 2002. I was struck by it. I studied it carefully and wondered about the circumstances that surrounded it. I wondered if the two children were brother and sister. What were their names? Maybe they had memories of happier days. It appears from what the girl was carrying that they had once had a home. But did they have anything more than each other and the meager possessions she carried? Were their parents alive at the time of the picture? I wondered where they were going and what they were thinking at the time of this photo.

Then I cut it out and put it in my desk drawer and forgot about it (or where I'd gotten it from).

Yesterday I found it as I was cleaning my office. Once again, I was struck by it. But this time I wondered about my life as much as theirs. I have a very comfortable life. I'm well-off and have enough to share. It's not that I don't already share with people in need, but it's just that I'm wondering if I'm meant to do something more with part of my remaining surplus. I'm wondering if I can look at this picture (or the millions like it if I dare to look for them) and then continue my life unfazed -- unchanged -- unconcerned.

I'm looking in the mirror here, not at whoever may be reading this. And I know Ezekiel 16:49 all too well to put this out of my mind. "Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy." Consider me fazed. Once again, I'm stirred to adjust some of my spending patterns to ensure that my excess results in someone else's solace.

© 2009 by Ken Peters

The Value of Numbers

Numbers can be numbing. But we’re battered with them everyday. Polls and percentages, stats and stocks, discounts and death tolls – it’s all coming at us in every form of media available. It’s no wonder people switch off when they hear the latest estimates of a famine or a bomb blast. It’s the downside of an IT culture in which so much information is available that we can’t possibly absorb it all, let alone give a considered response.

And yet I think there’s value in knowing what’s going on. As a Christian who believes that Christ has called His people to share the Gospel with every people group on the planet, I find numbers helpful. I think it’s worth knowing that there are about 16,314 people groups in the world and that about 6,739 of those are still considered unreached with the Gospel (that’s about 41.3%). Now depending on whether you’re a glass half-full or glass half-empty person, you could find that encouraging – about 59% of the world’s ethnic groups have a viable Christian church already among them, and essentially two-thirds of those groups are considered primarily Christian! In fact, of the world’s 236 countries, 169 (or 72%) are Christian-majority countries. And isn’t it encouraging to know that over 95% of the world’s population has the Bible, Bible-portions, the Jesus film, gospel radio, or gospel recordings available in their language (4,334 out of 6,516 languages)?

I could throw around so many more numbers that you’d have to be a real stats junkie to keep reading. If you want more like that, Joshua Project is a great place to go. But it doesn’t take long before all those numbers begin to feel overwhelming – or like some kind of artificial reality. After all, a number doesn’t move us the way a real person does. A number is data that informs our mind, but a face is a neighbor that touches our heart. That’s why it is known among aid agencies that the calamities that draw the television cameras will get far more dollars than more serious tragedies that are merely reported in print.

Though I understand why this would be, I still believe that numbers have great value in helping us to understand the state of the world. Do you know how many people are on this planet? Do you care to know how many of those people still have no Christian witness living among them? Or do you want to know how many people in this modern world still live without safe drinking water, or how many kids in Sudan have no access to a school? Such numbers shouldn’t be used to appeal to a sense of guilt, but rather to stir our interest. Figures can feed passions, and depending on what our passions are, some numbers will interest us more than others. But the point is, know what God has given you passion for and know the numbers that will feed that passion. Don’t go numb to all the numbers coming at you just because there are so many. Look for the ones that matter to you. That’s why I’ve inserted a population counter just above the news headlines in the left margin of this blog. And that’s why you’ll also find a live stat-counter regarding all kinds of concerns at the bottom of this blog (just scroll down to view it).

But the million dollar question is, What good are such numbers – even the ones that pertain to our passions – if we aren’t going to do anything about them? The danger, of course, is that if all we do is read the data and do nothing with it, we will become bloated with facts and calloused to the plights of the people they represent. We’ve got to act! Ezekiel 16:49 says that the sin of God’s people was that they were “arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.” I live in a land of physical and spiritual abundance, and that leaves me feeling vulnerable to the same thing being said of me! And it is for that reason that numbers matter to me. Numbers like how many are in need, how many are unreached, how much money do I earn, how much can I share? I can’t respond to all the numbers – and nor am I expected to – but I can do something about the numbers that tally the things God has given me passion for. And that is why there is great value in numbers.

© 2008 by Ken Peters

Seeing God in it All

Many people are reading the news these days and asking, “How bad are things going to get?!” Well, whatever the answer, my conviction is that whatever is happening in this world, both now and throughout history, on either a personal or societal level, God 's purpose is to magnify Himself and make Himself known. I believe that because of how much I see that to be the case in the Bible. Quite recently, I was reading Ezekiel 38, which happens to be an intense battle scene. It's an event far more serious than today's news headlines. Gog of Magog and a vast army of many peoples “like a cloud covering the land” (38:9) are advancing “like a storm” (38:9) on God’s people, intent on destroying them. What could be a worse scenario for Israel? Isn’t this the kind of global scene that would cause a person at risk to wonder where God is or to question God’s faithfulness and to flip out with anxiety? Though more serious, it has the same feel of the financial storm that many people today see approaching (if they don’t feel it’s already come upon them). The picture Ezekiel describes in chapter 38 is one of imminent disaster, of impending doom, much like many news headlines today.

Enter God. In fact, God has been in the picture all along. It is God who actually gathers that vast army from Magog to stand against His own people (38:16). And when the battle is over, it says that all those troops and peoples will be strewn on the mountainsides, food for the beasts and the birds (39:4). God says in Ezekiel 38:23 that all of that tension and catastrophe will be to magnify Himself, to set Himself apart and make His name known in the sight of many nations! Wow. Why such extreme measures? Many people suffer in a scene like that. But God’s view is that wherever there are those who put their trust in something other than Himself, like Prince Gog of old, those lesser things must be shaken, and if necessary, struck down, for God will not share His glory with another.

So how then should we view the troubles we face in these days? Is God uninvolved in the turmoil of Wall Street or Bay Street? Or is He allowing things to escalate until all will clearly see where we ought to put our trust and who ought to be our God? God will allow enemies to advance in our lives, and He will allow pressures to build, with the ultimate intent of magnifying Himself above everything else in our lives! He wants to do that in each of our hearts, but as we see in Ezekiel, will sometimes do so on a wider scale so that all will see that God “is the Lord” (38:23).

My desire is that this realization of what God was up to in Ezekiel 38-39 will spill over into my perception of 2008. God is worthy of all glory, and is robbed of glory when anything becomes so important to me that when it is shaken, I lose my trust in God. So my response to the news these days is to magnify God – to trust and depend on Him through it all – before He needs to take desperate measures to make sure He is magnified in my life.

© 2008 by Ken Peters

Giving like we just can’t help it!

I don’t write letters to newspaper editors very often, but the last few times I’ve done so, it’s been in response to articles that highlight our society’s commitment to the high life while so many desperately poor people suffer all around us. I wrote such a letter to the National Post in response to an article in Friday’s paper entitled, “The problem with the right to food.” The article was a reaction to the UN declaring that because having food is "a right," wealthy nations are obligated to help the poor. I felt that the writer's reaction to this declaration was very much a “take care of yourselves” kind of attitude toward the people of the two-thirds world. The letter I wrote to the Post ended up being one of the “Letters of the Day” in Saturday’s paper, though it was somewhat abbreviated. Here is what I wrote in full…

Dear Editor,
In Karen Selick’s case against the “right to food,” she seems more concerned about the right for the wealthy well-fed West to have the right to “rest, leisure and reasonable limitation of working hours” than about the fact that, as you also reported, six million children under the age of five in Ethiopia alone are presently at risk of acute malnutrition. This is the problem with a culture obsessed with affluence – we’re so concerned about what we might have to go without while trying to think as little as possible about those who might need it more. If insisting on the “right to food” is so problematic to Ms. Selick, then why not change the focus to the right to give? We have incredible resources in North America. We consume far more than any other part of the world to sustain our lifestyles, and my salary actually puts me in the top 2% of the world’s wage earners even though my gross salary is less than $50,000. My feeling is that, as a resident of this planet, with great abundance comes great responsibility. Whatever rights to food that the starving masses of the world have or don’t have, I believe that we have a responsibility, and the right, to care about their plight. So let’s not get distracted by any “one-world socialism” conspiracies while literally millions are dying of starvation while we pile our plates high with food everyday.
Ken Peters, Winnipeg, MB

The Bible is clear that everyone has a responsibility to look out for the interests of the poor: Government leaders, spiritual leaders, God’s people, citizens of the world, everyone. Even a godless city like Sodom was judged for having “abundant food and careless ease, but she did not help the poor and needy” (Ezek. 16:49). If God expected that of Sodom, all the more reason that God’s people should be concerned about the poor. And when someone writes something for all of Canada to read, saying that it’s wrong to tell someone that they have to give up some of their food just because someone without food feels they have a right to eat, I want to stand up and shout – Did we do something to deserve to be born in this affluent nation? Is the privilege we enjoy purely a result of our own hard work or is it a gift from God? And what did those starving, dying children in Burma or Ethiopia or Haiti do to deserve their low, impoverished place in this world? If we have abundance, it’s by the grace of God. And if we don't like someone telling us that because they feel someone has a right to something we have in abundance, we have to give some to them, then what do we think of God telling us that? I guess the question for the Christian then is -- Is this something that God tells us that we must do, or is it something He'd just kind of like us to do?

There’s no shortage of Biblical support for being generous toward the poor. My feeling is that it’s simply not optional. God expects it of us. He provides grace and resources to us so that we can obey Him in this. And when God’s people choose to give generously and sacrificially the way God wants us to, we become extremely bright lights amidst the desperate neediness of this world.

© 2008 by Ken Peters