Receive Power

 

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon 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)

This power Christians receive, about which Jesus spoke and Luke wrote, is nothing they can manufacture for themselves. Notice the verb “will receive.” The power comes from the Holy Spirit (God). God gives it freely to Christians. This power is part of God’s power and provides believers with the ability to do what God tells them. God gives the ability to do what He commands. This power is part of God’s ability; He can do anything and everything.

With the power of God in them given by God Himself, what was Jesus’ command to His followers? Jesus said Christians are to be witnesses. Witnesses see and hear what God does and says. Witnesses can attest to God's actions and words. Their statements—testimonies—give credence and more power (more punch) so people are more inclined towards believing about God and believing in Jesus.

In Acts 1:8, Luke recorded when Jesus said the Holy Spirit will give Christians the power and ability to serve Jesus by testifying about Him. God expects and empowers believers to hear, see, obey, and then tell other people about Jesus. He compels them by the Holy Spirit, who lives within them, to tell other people. As Christians grow closer to God, it becomes harder to disobey God—His conviction through the Holy Spirit and power within them—and their love for Jesus. Love for God (Father, Son, and Spirit) compels Christians to obey, act, and say what Gods commands, compels, and empowers them to do with His ability.

Understanding that the command, compulsion, and power to obey comes from God makes it easier for the believer to tell whom and go to wherever He leads easier. Love for God makes it easier each day to go further from our safe space, from family, and from friends. That love for God and from Him makes it possible to go far to be a witness about God and the gospel. It helps believers realize no matter where they are, God is already there and always with them. Going far away is easier when your love for God is greater than your love for yourself, your dreams and plans, your parents, siblings, grandparents, and your friends. When God is your everything, He becomes closer to you than these people and things; He becomes mother, father, brother, sister, and friend in your heart. A Christian does not leave these behind but finds that love for God fulfills the love you need.

This means going to your city (Jerusalem), your state (Judea), your country (elsewhere in your country, like Samaria), and the world are easier because of your love for God and His for you. Going and telling is easier because God empowers you with His ability. Witnessing about God is easier because no doubt exists in your mind that God compels and sends you. Obeying is easier because God’s love in you causes you to love the people you have not yet met. God’s love in you gives you immeasurable concern for their spiritual eternity and their lostness—lack of salvation and lack of relationship with God.

Christians’ love for God and people is immense due to their relationship with God and belief in Jesus, making sharing the gospel a necessity. You will stretch yourself so that all people listen to testimony about Jesus. Your relationship with God fulfills you completely, so you lack nothing - family, friends, home, power, purpose, hope, and future. God fulfills each of these needs; He becomes your everything.

What excuse do you allow to keep you from a greater relationship with God, a relationship that comes from obeying Him by being filled with His power and ability?

What excuse do you give for not witnessing about Jesus to people?

God wants to be everything you need. Do not let a human excuse keep you from the abundance of God and from God. Believe and bear witness about Jesus.

Love Poured Out

“God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” John 3:16 [NASB]

For so many people, like you, whether Christian or not, who attended Sunday School at some time, this verse was the first one that struck home for you. It was the first one you memorized, and it may be the only one you memorized. For people who continued attending church and who gave their lives to Jesus Christ, a deeper understanding of the message of this verse occurred. This understanding goes like this, “God loves me so much that He sent His Son to die because of my sin, my badness, in my place so I would not have to endure eternal judgment.” God loves you so much He does not want you to be separated from Him forever but made a way to bring you back to rightness with Him by cleaning your sins and the guilt of sins from your life.

This understanding is correct. It really is about you…about me. But how often have we stopped there saying, “Yes, I believe. Thank you, Lord, for saving me”? How often have we not taken our blinders off to see beyond ourselves to what this verse could mean for other people. Jesus said, “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13 [NASB]) Was He only speaking about His loving people and so dying for them? Or, was He teaching others what they should also do?

Jesus’ life on earth was more than just coming to die for us and then going back to the Father. If that was all He came to do, He could have come down fully grown, and been crucified immediately. Instead, Jesus spent 33 years on earth. Why? So, He could be about His Father’s business. (Luke 2:49) He said this as a twelve-year-old child to his mother and father when they looked for him and found him teaching in the temple. Jesus came to earth to teach us about the Father, His love for us, His care, His heart, and His gift of salvation. A teacher never teaches just so the listener can have knowledge. A teacher teaches so the listener can have and use knowledge by which to live in this world. That was a big part of Jesus’ life. He began teaching at 12 and didn’t stop until his death 21 years later.

When Jesus said in John 3:16, “God so loved the world,” He taught about true love, which only comes from the Father because God is love. (1 John 4:7-21) He taught about God’s love so we would desire it for ourselves and come to know Him as our Savior. But Jesus also taught about true love, the love that comes only from God, to educate people so they would embody this love of God in their daily interactions. He wanted His followers to be intentional in loving other people, just as the Father was intentional and made a plan from the beginning of time to love people by sending His Son.

You see, John 3:16 is not all or only about You. It is about God. Since it is not all about you and since you have received His wonderful gift of love and salvation, you are compelled by His love within you to share it. The love God puts in each of us when we accept His gift of salvation is not for hoarding. It cannot be hoarded because it is too high, wide, and deep to fathom or contain. True love, God’s love, when it enters your heart, overflows abundantly. It rushes over the top and floods out of your life in words, actions, and thoughts. Yes, “God so loved you,” but hear Jesus’ words again. “God so loved the world.” True love, God’s love, is alive, active, overflowing, unending, uncontainable, and for all people. This love is about God and from God for all people.

Jesus came to bring us salvation and eternal life. He did it because of His love for us even when we were filthy with sin. With our dirty faces, darkened evil hearts, and blindness to anyone but ourselves, He saw our spirits and knew who we really are and He cared. Jesus loved us too much to let us stay that way, captive to the dark. Jesus’ love poured out to us, as He explained in John 3:16, allows us to see other people as Jesus sees people and allows us to love other people as He loves them. When this happens, we say, “God so loves them (the world) that He gave His only begotten Son so that whoever of them believes in Him will not perish but having everlasting life, and I so love them that I must tell and show them God’s love poured out in and through me.”

Jesus came to bring salvation and life. He also came teaching us to do as He did on earth. Jesus taught and commanded His disciples and followers to go and tell the world about Him and make disciples. Through Peter, He said, “If you love Me, feed my sheep.” “God so loved the world” is not just for you to hoard. With God’s love in you, you are to be like Jesus; go to all the nations and telling them about the love of God, His great plan from the beginning of time. See people through God’s eyes of love and go tell and show them His love. “God so loved the world” is for all people, not just you or me.

“Do you love Me?” Jesus asked.

You must answer that for yourself with your heart, your words, and your life.

How will you answer? In word only or in deed?

“So, when He had washed their feet, and taken His garments and reclined at the table again, He said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right for so I am. IF I then, the Lord and Teacher, washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I gave you an example that you also should do as I did to you.” (John 13:12-15 [NASB])