How many times a day do we use the words “me,” “myself,” or “I”? I tried keeping track once and finally gave up because I lost count. Have we considered just how powerful that “I” is? Our mind’s eye, personalities, and core existence.
Let’s look at exactly what we’re up against when we pit our human mind against the power of the Holy Spirit.
Christ and the apostles were on a boat after He delivered the Sermon on the Mount. As they crossed the Sea of Galilee, a great windstorm blew in. The waves swamped the boat, and it filled up with water (Mark 4:35-37). The Sea of Galilee is 13 miles long, 8 miles wide, and roughly 140 feet deep, and it rests 700 feet below sea level. As a lake in a natural bowl with high hills around it, cold air comes off the Golan Heights and collides with hot air from the desert, creating turbulence right over the water. After crunching some numbers, let’s put an estimate on that moving air mass at about 657 billion pounds.
The boat was about 27 feet long and seven and a half feet across. A rough estimate of the weight of the water in the Sea of Galilee is 44 billion pounds of churning waves that could easily swamp a small boat. The air and water together make about 701 billion pounds of moving mass. That’s roughly the weight of 836,872 fully loaded jumbo jets heading down a runway!
Now imagine this: it would take a counteracting force of megawatt power equal to that of running the city of Las Vegas for 44.7 years to stop all those jets!
Bearing these figures in mind, we find Christ’s reaction: “Then He arose and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, ‘Peace, be still!’ And the wind ceased and there was a great calm … And they feared exceedingly, and said to one another, ‘Who can this be, that even the wind and the sea obey Him!’” (Mark 4:39-41). In that moment, 114 million megawatts were harnessed to stop 701 billion pounds of moving mass. And Christ did all this, not with a shout, but with a quiet command.
What does this have to do with us? The average human brain weighs 3 pounds. Can we try and understand the contrast between the mighty storm on the Sea of Galilee and what goes on in our heads? That exact same mighty force that stopped the wind and water tells each of us in a still quiet voice, “No, walk this way, not that way.”
We don’t wrestle against flesh and blood but against spiritual wickedness in high places. And we do this with 3 pounds of brain. We really need some help, which God promises comes through the power of His Holy Spirit (Ephesians 6:12).
Christ is gentle. The power He used to stop the storm could absolutely vaporize us. God could choose that route, we’ve earned it, but He doesn’t. Instead, He chooses to call us with that quiet voice to come and walk through the storm with Him!
The Holy Spirit is so powerful that it can win any battle we allow it to. All things really are possible when you command that amount of power. The final question is: which one is winning the fight in your mind? The Holy Spirit or “I”?
By Ben Orchard