Power Up!

When I was a sophomore in high school my basketball coach yelled at me during a practice session, “Denny, power up! Don’t be a weenie under the rim! Be strong!”  My coach, Herky Rupp, was the son of a very famous college coach at Kentucky, so when he spoke, we all listened with reverent attention!  I had just been “outed” as a weakling in the eyes/ears of all my teammates. 

The reason his words are with me still?  In my adult life at many various points along the way I have felt very weak, especially “under the rim” (which is where all the rough action happens on a basketball court).  I felt very weak just 14 days ago when I underwent lung surgery to remove cancer!  I have always been much more comfortable shooting a 15-foot jump shot from the perimeter, rather than grappling for rebounds under the rim.  There are others on the team who did the power moves, not me.  And that, of course, is why the coach yelled at me!

Power is something we recognize easily.  The vice-president in our company who handles the staff meetings has power.  The doctor who arrives on an accident scene and starts CPR to save a life has power.  The kid in our tenth-grade class who announces a run for student body president has power. The judge who randomly gets assigned a high-profile case has power. 

Power.  Easily recognized, yes.  Easily talked about, no.  Easily understood, no.  Can you recall a parent instructing you how to obtain power, why power is needed, and actually saying to you Power Up?  Until that day on the basketball court at Lafayette High School in Lexington, Kentucky, nobody had ever told fifteen-year-old Steven A. Denny to Power Up.

The Bible is filled with talk about power.  In fact, one can theologically claim that Jesus repeatedly told his followers to Power Up.  We hear the recently resurrected Jesus tell his disciples in Acts 1:8, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you” and again in John 20:21 “he breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.” [NLT]. Paul tells us, “For God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but of power, love, and self-control” (I Timothy 1:17 [NLT]).

Paul tells us to Power Up in the last words of his letter to the Ephesians: “A final word:  Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power” (Ephesians 6:10 [NLT]).  The Greek word always translated “power” is dunamis, from which we get our English transliterated word “dynamite.”  How vivid is that?  We are called to “get under the rim” and show explosions of energy like an explosion of dynamite! 

So what happened after I was told to Power Up?  Why, nothing short of a miracle for this 6’2” 140 pounder!  I am quite sure that before that week I had never before shown up in the box score after a game with a “double-double,” and surprise, surprise, in the next game I had over ten points and over ten rebounds!  [Don’t be too impressed, since I am also quite sure it never happened again!]

Where in your life do you need to Power Up?  Let us hear Merton’s “and I hope I have the desire to please you in everything I do” as our personal Power Up call.  Be with us Lord as we Power Up to meet the needs before us, which might even include “roughing it up under the rim” and coming out with over ten spiritual rebounds!

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