This week we are continuing our discussion on the Holy Spirit. Last week we talked about the Holy Spirit being the forgotten God and the need to spend time focusing on Him and how He works in the lives of believers today.
This week I wanted to talk about how the Holy Spirit gives us power to serve God. While this may scare some of you, the thought of anything supernatural happening, I can assure you that the Holy Spirit is still moving in the earth today, because the Bible tells us he is.
“And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.” – John 14:16-17
Now that we acknowledge that God promises the Holy Spirit to be with us forever, let us turn our attention to the Spirit’s empowerment. We see in both the Old and New Testament that the Spirit will empower people for the work of service.
In the Old Testament we see him empower Joshua with wisdom. He empowers several of the Judges to do various acts, like empowering Sampson with strength. He empowers Saul to fight the Philistines. He empowers David to lead Israel as king. There are some who believe that the Holy Spirit was dormant during the Old Testament and that is far from the truth.
In the New Testament, the biggest news is seeing Jesus get empowered by the Spirit. Jesus quotes Isaiah when standing in the synagogue as says:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.” Luke 4:18-19
You see that Jesus is empowered to do the work of the ministry: preaching, setting people free, healing the blind and proclaiming liberty to the captives. The Spirit came upon Him and His response was to go and do. Some of us struggle with this. We pray for the Lord’s Spirit to fill us, yet we don’t actually want to do anything. Or worse, we want God to do for us.
Jesus, who is God, relied on the Spirit. How much more should we, as everyday Christians, rely on the Spirit in our lives? We need to take seriously Paul’s command to be filled with the Spirit. The original language implies and constant refilling as in you need to be filled daily.
And even though the Spirit is active while Jesus is walking the Earth, He gets even more active after Jesus ascends to heaven and that’s because of God’s promise in the book of Joel to “pour” out his Spirit in the last days. God kept his promise according to Peter in Acts 2 and poured out his Spirit on the day of Pentecost. This empowered Jesus’ disciples to speak in various languages. And while we may spend more on that specific item on another episode, the result of this empowerment led to thousands of people getting saved. The Spirit moving results in conversions.
While you see the Holy Spirit moving in the lives of the apostles, you also see him moving in members of the churches. Paul talks about the churches receiving spiritual gifts from the Holy Spirit in his letter to the Corinthians. These spirit empowered gifts were to be used to build up the church for the work of the ministry.
If you don’t take anything else from this, note this part…the Holy Spirit is empowering people to build the church, to serve in the ministry, to help others. The Holy Spirit is not a person to be used to get what you want or to puff up yourself.
The Holy Spirit is empowering you to do the work of the ministry, not because you are special or because you have it all together, but simply to do the work of the ministry – to love others. The Holy Spirit is in you to help you. Let’s not grieve the spirit or quench the Spirit, but let’s show our love for God by being filled in the Spirit.
The Good News –
Nashville Becomes Largest Abortion-Free City in US
Unreached People Group –
Today’s Word – John 3:16-21
16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.
19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. 20 Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. 21 But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.
everydayjesus.net 