Hulk Hogan’s Lasting Legacy: Why Real Power Comes from Faith, Not Fame
The longer I’m on this earth, the more celebrities I grew up with pass away, and there have been many recently. Each passing brings back memories, be it good or bad, of the time I followed those celebrities perform or compete. Along with all of the well known celebrities, musicians, and performers who have passed recently, just this week we lost Hulk Hogan, a muscled wrestler and a real showman. I never knew much about Hulk until his death. Funny how our lives are revealed in death.
Hogan’s real name was Terry Bollea. He was a public Christian who would tell anyone that Jesus “died on the cross and paid for my sins” and that “the only thing that is really real is the stuff that’s gonna last forever: your faith and your belief in God and knowing that once you’re a Christian and you’ve accepted Christ as your Savior, you’re not gonna perish but you’re gonna have everlasting life.” Hulk was baptized with his wife in 2023. He was proud to say, “Total surrender and dedication to Jesus is the greatest day of my life.” Hulk had wealth and fame and worldly possessions, but he didn’t count them as riches.
Hogan was correct; faith in Christ is “the only thing that is really real.” Faith is real power. This makes sense because if God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, God can bring about transformation no other source can produce and provide a peace “which surpasses all understanding” when we seek it from him (Philippians 4:7). Only God can give us courage in the face of storms and joy in the midst of tragedy. He sustains us in the storms and enables us to be “more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Romans 8:37).
Max Lucado writes: His first act in earthly history was to turn chaos into calm. “The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters”. The inaugural activity of the Holy Spirit was to hover over a frenzied world. Before God created the world, the Spirit of God calmed the world.
The world we live in can tempt us to separate religion and faith from the “real world,” separate Sundays from Mondays, and tempt us to turn to other secular sources found in the world for comfort. We can choose to turn to God in the wrong way for the wrong reasons, making him a “genie in the bottle” to whom we pray in hard times, but not in good. He can be the spare tire we hope we don’t need, the parachute available in case of emergency.
Bottom line is the real power does not come from fame, fortune, talent, or material possessions. Real power comes from our faith and faith is taking that first step toward a Savior who loves us more than we can fathom.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. noted, “Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.”
Debby Efurd is co-founder of Cary John Efurd Ministries of Pittsburg, TX. She has been a contributor to Bound for Life and written numerous articles published in LifeNews, Christian Post and the Baptist Standard, and is the author of Go Tell It! Debby can be contacted at caryjohnefurdinistries@gmail.com. Visit her at the Second Mile blog at https://debbyefurd.com.
Tagged: God’s love, scripture
