“Dunamis” Power

Jonah had 40 days to reach 300,000 people with God’s message. So with urgency he went and preached to the Ninevites.

The Bible says that we should preach the Word and be persistent, whether the time is favorable or not (see 2 Timothy 4:2). But preaching doesn’t mean yelling. Preaching is proclamation.

It’s one thing to elevate your voice so that a large crowd can hear you. But I’ve actually seen Christians yelling at people. Don’t do that. Calm down. Lower your volume. Listen more, and lovingly share in an understandable way the things someone needs to hear.

The primary way that God has chosen to reach nonbelievers is through the verbal articulation of the gospel. You may preach it, you may text it, you may tweet it, or you may share it conversationally. But the idea is telling people there is a God in Heaven who loves them and sent his Son, Jesus Christ, to die on the cross for their sin and rise from the dead three days later.

The Bible tells us there are only two things that have power: God Himself and the gospel. Paul wrote, “For I am not ashamed of this Good News about Christ. It is the power of God at work, saving everyone who believes—the Jew first and also the Gentile” (Romans 1:16 NLT).

In the original language, the word for power that Paul used is the Greek word dunamis.

When a man named Alfred Nobel invented a material that exploded, there never had been anything like it. As he thought about what he would name this explosive device, he talked with a friend who knew Greek. Nobel asked him what the Greek word was for explosive power, and his friend said it was dunamis. So Alfred Nobel named his invention dynamite.

There’s dynamic, dunamis, explosive power in the simple message of the gospel.