Power Given. Purpose Driven.

God Gold of the Day

“8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

–Acts 1:8

Was going to keep going in Colossians like I promised but I’ve been learning some awesome Gold at church lately that I’m so excited to share! I’ll go ahead and warn you, as much as I’d love to plan out and script these messages for you. God doesn’t work on my time and His timing and intervention is always 100x better than anything I could ever create! Hope these next few messages from Acts brings some big time BOLDNESS to your lives and moves you from comfortable Christian to a follower of Christ who is on the move, living for the Gospel and the spread of it!

This verse from Acts is kind of like a foundation verse for the whole book of Acts! Beyond all the stories of men doing amazing things for God, how they show us examples of living this life with Christ and for Christ. Acts 1:8 shows us HOW these men do what they do and WHY they do what they do.

First we’ll look at the HOW?

The Holy Spirit. I could just leave it there but I’ll explain, so during this time Jesus had just died, raised from the grave and these disciples were sitting around looking at each other clueless as what to do next. Christ comes on the scene and speaks a life changing, power giving Promise to them. Yes, Jesus, who has died and been resurrected shows up to speak to these guys in person. Sounds crazy but it’s just Jesus! It shows how capable and loving He is to come back and give these guys some direction and a promise to hold onto while they sat in their cluelessness.

HOW do these believers do what they do throughout this book of Acts? Sharing the Good News of the Gospel, preaching and telling people about Christ, performing amazing miracles? The HOW is in the first part of this verse, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you;.”

When one receives Christ into their lives, just as these disciples had, Jesus has given us the gift of the Holy Spirit living within us. The same Holy Spirit that worked through Christ during His earthly Ministry allowing Him to speak truth, love without limits and face a lot of persecution and turmoil surrounding Him. That same Holy Spirit lives within every born again believer!!!! The inflow of the Holy Spirit, the power of God at work within us, that inflow causes the outflow of our lives to change in a lot of big ways. Having the power of the Holy Spirit living within me is something I’ve overlooked throughout my life with Christ and overlooking the power we have, it makes it really hard to live FOR Christ.

The Holy Spirit enables us to do more than we could ever possibly do on our own. And we see in the second part of the verses after seeing the HOW in living this life not only with Christ but FOR Christ, we see the WHY?

Why would we need this power? Because without it, with out the power of God flowing within us, we are incapable of doing anything. In the second part of these verses we see the WHY, “and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

The inflow of the Holy Spirit’s power in our lives allows us to accomplish greater than we could ever do alone. With the inflow of Jesus’ power, comes the outflow of Jesus’s purpose in our lives.

Jesus says the HOW in the first half of verse 8, and in the second part He gives the WHY! He gives the disciples and us direction here on what to do, what the mission is, what the primary purpose is for this gift of power from the Holy Spirit. To WITNESS!!!

Jesus didn’t stop working after the resurrection, He gives us the power of the Holy Spirit so through us He can continue to do what He did in His Ministry here on earth, telling others of the Good News! The power of the Holy Spirit gives us help in so many areas, reading and understanding God’s Word, living more like Christ on the daily, the wisdom and discernment in that guides and controls our thoughts and actions. But in all those smaller things, which are all necessary to grow in, all that leads to the bigger overall specific purpose that Jesus has given us. To WITNESS.

To share Him and the Good News that He died, bled, and rose from the grave to give us! In the power of the Holy Spirit, Jesus entrusts to live in this power for the lives around us. It’s the fact that Jesus has given us everything we need to do anything possible and the one, big thing He tells us to do, the grand, huge, ultimate life mission that He’s given us, be honest, how much do we really use this power for the purpose in which Jesus gave it??? I’ll be honest. Outside of these messages, I struggle in Witness. I may have a conversation about faith here and there but sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Good News that changed my life completely around in the most awesome of ways. I’ll be honest and tell you that I fail to witness 9 times out of 10 but seeing this truth, seeing HOW Jesus has given us this great gift of power from God Himself through the Holy Spirit and the mission to be BOLD in witness for Him, it makes me question everything that I say I stand for when I am really just laying down looking up at the awesome opportunity Jesus has set before me.

It’s convicting for sure but I don’t want it to just hit you in your or my gut and feel bad for a minute then go back to living this comfortable Christian life like we have been doing. I pray that God speaks His truth so powerfully through these next few messages on examples of living a life with Christ that changes lives for Christ, that we don’t just feel bad but we move. We move from conviction to application, from life to LIVING and showing, telling, and yelling to others the Good News that’s changed our lives and how Jesus’ love can do the same for theirs! Let’s take this in and get prepared to move in the power of the Holy Spirit that Jesus has given us so we can live out the purpose that Jesus has left us with!!!