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TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks About the Tempter (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 021. The Itch of Power
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The Itch of Power
Then there is the bad effect, where the hurt of sin gets in. It itches. There is the itch of thinking that you have it. You are pleased with yourself. You are taken up with the fact that you have the power. How beautiful you are; how mentally keen; how well you do certain things; how you can make men and things bend to your desires; how a look, or a word, or a finger uplifted makes things go. It may not be expressed in so many words; it may even be hidden away under an outside of apparent humility, but you feel it; you know it; it is the dominant thing underneath in your thoughts. That's a bit of the itch of power.
Then, with that, goes the supposition or distinctive feeling that this power is from yourself. It is really due to you. It originates in you. That is the reason you are puffed up so big. The "I" is printed so big as to belittle all the other letters of the alphabet, even the letters G, and O, and D. The Giver of it is forgot. Mirrors are in demand here, especially the sort that cast a rosy-hued glamour. The fact of trusteeship has entirely slipped out of sight. The upward look is lost; the inward look absorbs the eyes.
And then the swing over into the next stage is very smooth and easy. This power is to be used for yourself. The one passion here is how to use it all for your own advantage. There may be giving, or doing for others, but this is merely incidental, and the whole tendency is to make it seem as big as possible. The purpose underneath the giving or the doing, is to puff up the sense of pride, or else to get more for yourself in return.
These are the two effects produced by the possession of power of any sort; the good and the bad; the natural and the unnatural—the awing sense of God, and the itching sense of self.
This great spirit-prince has great power, power of beauty, of mental and spiritual endowments, and of position. They were given him by God as a trust, to be used for the Giver. The true aim of his life was to glorify God. That was God's purpose in so richly endowing him. He was to administer this world for God. He was to do just what our Lord Jesus will do when He returns to set up the kingdom upon the earth. In his own character, may I say very reverently, he was to be what our Lord Jesus was in His character. This was his true aim. The possession of the rare power entrusted to him was meant to awe, to fill him with a reverential love for the Giver, and an earnest desire to be true to the great trust reposed in him.
The true ambition underneath his aim was to be a tender, burning passion for God. The God-passion, the one dominant desire to please God—this was to be the one fire burning in his heart.
What is his aim? and what his ambition? They follow the line of the true, but with this startling difference, he puts himself in the place of God. The one aim of his life, mark it very keenly, is to get the world for himself! He would drive God out, and have all for himself. He would dethrone God, and take the throne himself. He would kill God off that he himself might be supreme.
It is with greatest difficulty that such words can be spoken or written. They seem blasphemous. They are blasphemous. His whole burning, driving aim is just that—blasphemous! Yet mark very keenly that it is a very common blasphemy in our common life.