Transcription
Hello, my name's Swanson. I just want to share a few things with you that I think might be a blessing to you from Acts chapter one. Basically, in Acts, what you have is Jesus preparing the disciples for life after his physical presence has diminished here on earth, is gone. And in fact, how do you now carry out the mission that Jesus has entrusted to, not only to the disciples, but how do we carry that mission out? And, and it's lived out in Acts as an example of how we ought to do it, as an operative outdoor dude.
Jesus literally says to the disciples, who are somewhat anxious about that, as I'm almost sure you and I have been if you've been walking and talking with someone for three years who meant a lot to you. And the disciples are, I said, very anxious about this. And Jesus says to them, "You know, don't be worried about things that are not in your hands. What you need to do is to first of all go to Jerusalem and stay there until you are endued or endowed or in, in filled with the power of the Holy Spirit." And then, "Don't do it now. And then you shall become my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the other most parts of the world." In other words, my sisters and brothers, witnessing without the power of the Holy Spirit is fruitless. You really do need to experience this in-filling of the Holy Spirit because that is the power that God has given us in the person and presence of the Holy Spirit to make this happen in our life.
Notice something here that is really interesting too, because what really prompts this is that the disciples asked the question of Jesus, "Now were you at this time or store again the kingdom to Israel?" And because what is happening is that the disciples are now moving in a direction that Jesus does not want them moving, and that is earthly power. And Jesus is saying, "No, no, no, no, no, no. Moving in the power of your own strength. You just go to Jerusalem and wait till the Holy Spirit comes and I'll just be able then to lead us as a church in that direction." And that's very important, particularly this day and time in which we're living, and very invariably the church finds itself trying to leave without God. And that's the crux of what I'm trying to get at. And so you don't do that; you wait until the Holy Spirit to give us direction and gives power for us to move.
Now I know right now that there is this, this anxiety around in many of our churches because we don't see the energy, the excitement; we don't see the growth; we don't see the vitality that we ought to see in our churches. And sometimes we try to get ahead of God and make that happen. So this, this thing about waiting just really, really, really, really bothers us. But I say it's not a where you do nothing; it is where you are actually praying and you're asking God through the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit to come and to give you leadership, direction, and guidance about what you might do because this way you've never been before. We've never been in a place where the church is actually, in a sense, in a culture today that is pretty much anti-Church. And so what we have to do is to understand and know that with somewhere where we've never been before. And so in the midst of that, we really do need power that we've not had before, and so we really need that now.
Here's the point I really, really want to get to you. While we're asking the church to change, we need to understand something that Robert Quinn in his book entitled *Big Change* helps us to really understand, and that is you cannot expect deep and lasting change in an organization without having deep and lasting change inside of yourself. Which means then that if you really want to see a vibrant, powerful church, being a local church or an organizational body of the church, then you've got to change; you've got to change the way that you're doing, doing them in your own life and how you function. And I found that any of we Wesleyan people, in particular, would go back to some of our roots, and that one of those things is that John Wesley understood very, very much so that real true sanctification and change in a person's life comes within the community. And he saw that happening mostly in small communities where people held one another accountable for how we live and how we prayed and how we interacted with our community. One of the primary things was, "How is it with your soul?" And "How are you living with God?" And so those things of a port, and in that community, we learned how to live for God and just out of that, out of loving each other together, holding each other accountable, that we learn more and more and more about how to not only live but how to act on behalf of God and how to use the power of the Holy Spirit in a way that transforms us and also transforms the church.
So remember this, work; this is the way I want you to remember. There is no transformation without formation. There is no transformation, not only of the world, which everybody is trying to do, without you being informed. And you need to be formed into the image and likeness of Jesus Christ. And that happens in community with the power of the Holy Spirit at work inside of you and inside of that small group. And that calls for patience. I'm always amazed at the patience of God and how God has been so patient with us through this whole, whole process. And I really wish we would learn to be patient and stop running here and start running ahead of the process of our own maturation process so that we can be fully empowered to do what we need to do in Christ Jesus. So as you are formed, then you can transform your communities into being those places where they are in places that, that give people a glimpse of what Heaven's gonna be like. Oh, this is Jane Swanson, just trying to help you to understand a little bit more about what's going on in the book of Acts and how we can be what God really wants us to be if we'll just wait, but not sitting waiting and doing heaven, forgetting to get involved with each other and allowing the Holy Spirit to help form us. God bless you. I hope this helps you to see that whole episode in the book of Acts in a more clearer and sharper way.