Transcription
Hello students. This is unit four of Introduction to Missions, and we're going to look today at the role of the Holy Spirit in mission work. Paul says something fascinating in 1 Corinthians 12:3. He says, “Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking in the spirit of God ever says Jesus is accursed, and no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit.”
He gives an explanatory note of this in 1 Corinthians 12 and another place in 1 Corinthians 2 and verse 14. He says, “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned; they are discerned by the Holy Spirit.” The fascinating thing to me is that he literally says you cannot say Jesus is Lord unless the Holy Spirit’s at work in you. So I know the Holy Spirit is at work in these classes and in your life if you’re able to say Jesus is Lord.
Now I think what he means, in addition to just the words “Jesus is Lord,” is in light of what he said in Romans 10:9. When he says, “If you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart God raised him from the dead, you will be saved,” if this was a class and we were sitting down together—and I hope to see you in a few weeks—I would have you repeat the phrase, “In your heart you believe.” Because the word of God all fits together, I believe we can take that back to 1 Corinthians 12:3. This is a heartfelt confession; it’s not necessarily just saying the words. I think someone can say the words and not mean it, but to mean it from your heart, like it is your true belief, your true motivation, to have it as your true belief, your true motivation, and to say Jesus is Lord—that can only happen by the Holy Spirit.
Why am I focusing on that? Because the only real mission work that can happen anywhere on planet Earth is spirit-led missions. Because no one can follow Jesus, no one can come out of spiritual death—which is separation from God—into spiritual life—connection with God—unless the Holy Spirit raises them out of that death and into this life with Jesus. And when he does, then from your heart you can say Jesus is Lord, or the people God calls you to, if it’s across the street or in another nation, because his Great Commission is to all the nations. Make disciples of all the nations. So anywhere you go, if someone is going to give their heart to Christ and from their heart confess that Jesus is Lord, it’s going to be because the Holy Spirit is giving you the assignment and the Holy Spirit’s at work in the unbeliever to bring them out of death and into life. Romans 6:4 says, “We were buried with Christ through baptism into death, and raised to walk in new life.” The one who raises us to that new life is the Holy Spirit.
Jesus warned that there were affirmations, or professions of faith, that were fake. In Matthew 15:8, he says, “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” I think that connects back to Romans 10:9. So I can say that I believe, for most who are viewing this lesson, most who are enrolled in the seminary, the Holy Spirit is at work in your lives. And maybe even if you’re an unbeliever… I think me saying “maybe” could be an expression of doubt. I think even if you have not, from your heart, confessed Jesus as Lord, you’re here for a reason, and the Holy Spirit’s at work in your life. Let’s pray together.
Father, thank you for our time together in this lesson, this unit on the work of the Holy Spirit. I pray that you would increase our understanding of the role and the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives and in missions, but more than that, I pray that we would truly be open to the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives and the assignment that the Holy Spirit is giving us individually, daily, to take the message of Jesus, to be emissaries of the Gospel, whether it’s across the street or around the world. Open our eyes to that and empower us, Holy Spirit, in Jesus’ good name, I pray. Amen.
So here’s the way the Bible describes the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, or through our lives. It teaches that the Holy Spirit’s work is simply a continuation of the work of Christ Jesus through our lives to the world. All the work of salvation, redemption, rescue from sin, forgiveness—all of those things—everything is from the Father, through the Son, Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit; from the Father, through the Son, by the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus makes reference to that in John chapter 16. I’m going to begin in verse 5, and don’t get frustrated if I make comments, as we go, to make comments on a passage of scripture as you’re reading through it. That’s called a homily. And with the scriptures we look at, I want to treat them this way, and so we’ll go verse by verse from John 16:5-15, and I’m going to give comments about the verses as we go.
Verse 5, John 16: Jesus says, “But now I am going away to the one who sent me.” So Jesus is letting the disciples know—it’s at the end of his life, he’s 33, he’s about to be crucified—and he’s letting the disciples know he is about to go away from this Earth to the Father, to the one who sent me. And none of the disciples, even though Jesus over and over and over again clearly said—at least 15 times in the Gospels—“I will be crucified, I will be buried, and I will rise; I’ll conquer death, I’ll be resurrected”—none of them asked questions. Jesus said, “No one is asking questions about where I am going.” It’s like the disciples are just putting it out of their mind; they’re focused on the here and now and not on the eternal aspect of what Jesus is doing. Verse 6 says, “Instead, you grieve because of what I’ve told you.” They’re not asking questions; they’re just like, “This is not what we expected.”
Verse 7: “But in fact it’s best for you that I go away, because if I don’t, the Advocate won’t come; if I do go away, then I will send him to you.” So Jesus has said, “You’re not asking enough questions about this; in fact, you’re not asking any questions about this. I tell you over and over again that I will be crucified, buried, and rise from the dead, and instead of being curious about that and what I’m accomplishing through that, you grieve. But it’s actually better; it’s better that I go away because I’m going to send someone to you who is your Advocate.” So Jesus goes on—we’re going to see in the next verses—he’s clearly talking about the Holy Spirit. Jesus makes this statement that is astounding. He is saying it is better for the Holy Spirit to come and be inside you than it is for me to be on this world in the flesh beside you. It’s better for the Holy Spirit to be inside you than for me to be with you here beside you. That’s an amazing statement. What would you rather have? Would you rather have Jesus sitting on a chair in front of you answering your questions, or would you want to know and be able to access the Holy Spirit within you? Jesus taught us—and the rest of the scripture obviously teaches us—that the Holy Spirit is the empowering presence of almighty God living on the inside of us. He is the directing intelligence of almighty God living on the inside of us. And so what Jesus is saying is, if you understand who the Holy Spirit is and if you access what he has to offer you and what he wants to do through you in the world, you’re going to be more effective, more powerful. And he makes this incredible statement: He goes, “You’re going to do greater works than even I do.” That’s an amazing statement from the Lord.
Verse 8: “When he comes”—and so personal pronouns are used of the Holy Spirit. Jesus never called the Holy Spirit “it”; it’s not a nebulous power, it’s not an “it,” the Holy Spirit is a “he,” he’s a person, he’s the third person of the Holy Trinity—“When he comes, he will convict the world of its sin and of God’s righteousness and of the coming judgment.” Verse 9: “The world’s sin is that it refuses to believe in me.” In our last lesson we talked about we’re the image of God, two words worth, and will, we have great value, but we have a will to obey or disobey, a will to follow or to go our own way. And Jesus is referring to the will. He says the world’s sin is that it refuses to believe in me. Verse 10: “Righteousness is available because I go to the Father, and you will see me no more. Judgment will come because the ruler of this world has already been judged.” The ruler of the world is Satan, and he’s already been judged on the cross and through the Resurrection; the enemy is defeated. Verse 12: “There’s so much more I want to tell you,” Jesus says, “but you can’t bear it right now. But when the Spirit of Truth”—this is a title Jesus gives the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth—“when he comes, he will guide you into all truth.” Remember what Jesus said about truth, John 8:31-32: “Abide in my word, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” It’ll set you free. It’s the Holy Spirit that enables us to understand the truth, truth that sets us free. He’s the Spirit of Truth; he guides us into all truth. Here’s a very interesting thing Jesus said: “He will not speak on his own.” Let’s pause there. The Holy Spirit will not speak on his own, but will tell you what he has heard, and he will tell you about the future. This is what Jesus says. And so when Jesus came to the Earth—second person of the Holy Trinity, God the Son comes down to the Earth, gives up access to divine attributes, gives up even his ability to speak when he’s born as a baby—and then when he grows and he’s carrying out the will of the Father, in John chapter 5 he says that he doesn’t even speak his own words; he speaks the words the Father gives him. So Jesus, when he came, spoke only the words of the Father. The Holy Spirit comes, and when he comes inside of us when we believe and receive Christ, the Holy Spirit doesn’t speak his own words; he only speaks the words of Jesus. Jesus says he will not speak on his own, but will tell you what he has heard, and he will tell you about the future. Oh, that’s interesting to me.
Verse 14: Jesus says, “He will bring me glory by telling you whatever he receives from me.” The Holy Spirit communicates to us only what Christ gives him for us. And verse 15: “All that belongs to the Father is mine.” This is Jesus, and he says that is why I said the Spirit will tell you whatever he receives from me. Some translations in verse 14 say the Holy Spirit magnifies Jesus; others say he glorifies Jesus. This is why the Holy Spirit works in our lives here on planet Earth; it’s why he sends us on missions, whether locally or globally; it’s because the world needs Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit works in us so that the character of Christ, the love of Christ, the Light of Christ can be formed in us, and that Christ may be magnified through us. Now what does that mean? I mean, we don’t make Christ bigger than he already is. What does it mean that we magnify Christ? That’s what the Holy Spirit does. Well, I have a coffee mug here, and um, right now I can look at this recording device, I can see everything in this room, I can see the lights, I can see the technical director, Trent, I can see lots of things around me. I can still see lots of things around me, but when the mug gets closer and closer and closer to me, right now all I see is the mug; I don’t see anything else in this room. That’s the sense in which Jesus is magnified; it’s not that he becomes bigger out there somewhere; he becomes bigger in our perspective. We have more Christ in our perspective, and so we see Christ, or we see through Christ, everything that’s happening around us, instead of just seeing things from our perspective. Christ is magnified in our view, so that we see the world, and we don’t just see the world; we see that person in line in front of us at the grocery store, we see the person that is walking on the sidewalk, we see everything around us, our neighbors, our family, a stranger that we run into; we see them through the eyes and through the character of Jesus Christ. That’s what it means for him to be magnified, and that’s the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, to magnify Christ so that we see the world through him and through his heart.
So in the book of Acts—often in your Bible the book of Acts is titled “The Acts of the Apostles,” but that’s not in the original scriptures; there’s nothing that says “The Acts of the Apostles,” that’s just a title that was added later—and I believe it is a little bit of a misguided title because the person that shows up on every page of the book of Acts is the Holy Spirit. And so it’s much more accurate to call the book of Acts “The Acts of the Holy Spirit,” because right off the bat the first thing that’s mentioned in the book of Acts is the role of the Holy Spirit and in the work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of believers; the Holy Spirit causing Pentecost to happen, the work of the Holy Spirit through the lives of the Apostles and the earliest believers, and the spread of the church and the multiplication of the church in the 28 chapters of Acts, as the Holy Spirit raises people out of death into life in Christ and causes people to gather together in local bodies of believers, and people are sent out to all these different places that are written to in the New Testament—to Ephesus, to Thessalonica, to Galatia, to Philippi—through the missionary journeys. The book of Acts contains missionary journeys led by the Holy Spirit. And so if you want to know the role of the Holy Spirit in missions, read carefully all 28 chapters of the book of Acts.
So let’s start and look at Acts chapter 1, verse 1, and we’re going to learn something amazing about the Holy Spirit right off the bat. So Acts 1:1 says, “In my first book”—again, this is going to be a homily; I’m going to make comments on these verses—“In my first book,” who’s saying that? Luke. Luke wrote the Gospel of Luke and he wrote the book of Acts. The Gospel of Luke is the longest Gospel by far; it has more details than any other Gospel. We go to Luke to find out what was happening in the around the birth of Christ; that’s the passage we read at Christmas every year because it has details that the other three Gospels—Matthew, Mark, and John—don’t have. Luke is a very long—it’s the longest book in the New Testament in terms of word count—and so it covers detail upon detail of the life and the ministry and teaching of Jesus Christ. So that if you read the Gospel of Luke you think, “I’ve read all that there is to read about the work of Jesus Christ,” but wait, see what verse one says: “In my first book…” Luke is saying this: “Oh, Theophilus…” This may or may not be an actual person because these are two Greek words put together: Theos, which is God—that’s where Theo comes from—and philos, which is love, like the city of Philadelphia means the city of brotherly love; philos is a word for love. And to put it together, Theophilus means “a lover of God.” And so Luke may be writing in general to everybody who loves God, or there may be a chance that there was somebody named Theophilus. My personal opinion is he’s probably writing to all of us who love God. “In my first book, I told you, God-lover Theophilus, about everything Jesus began to do and teach.” Luke tells us here that his Gospel—which is the longest book in the New Testament that has the birth, life, teachings, miracles, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ on planet—he says that’s just what Jesus began to do; it’s not everything that Jesus does; it’s what Jesus began to do. And so what he is saying is the Holy Spirit is the work of Christ Jesus continued through you and me. So when Jesus was here for 33 and a half years on planet Earth, he just started the work; he started the work, and then the spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit, comes inside every believer, and he’s been continuing the work. And so you and I are Jesus continued. There’s a great book by that name by Dr. J.D. Greer, just called *Jesus Continued*, and it’s about the work of the Holy Spirit through the life of believers. Great book.
Verse 2, Acts chapter 1: “And him telling you everything Jesus began to do and teach until the day he was taken up to heaven after giving his chosen Apostles further instructions through the Holy Spirit during the 40 days after he suffered and died. He appeared to the apostles from time to time, and he proved to them in many ways that he was actually alive, and he talked to them about the kingdom of God. Once when he was eating with them, he commanded them: ‘Do not leave Jerusalem until the Father sends the gift…’ Where you’re sitting right now, I want you to, out loud, say, ‘The gift.’ The gift. The Holy Spirit is referred to as the gift. ‘Stay there; don’t do anything until the Father gives the gift he promised, as I told you before.’” Verse 5: “John baptized with water, but in just a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit. You will be immersed.” That’s what the word baptized, baptizo, in the biblical language means: to be fully immersed. And he’s saying, “In a few days you’re going to be fully immersed in the Holy Spirit.” So when the apostles were with Jesus they kept asking him, “Lord, has the time come for you to free Israel and restore our kingdom?” They’re still thinking physical Israel is under the rule and oppression of Rome, and so they thought Jesus was just there to deliver from Roman oppression and set Israel free physically. And what Jesus came to do was to set us free spiritually, to give us peace and a relationship with God.
Verse 7: Jesus replied, “The Father alone has the authority to set those dates and times.” There’s going to come a time when Jesus returns from Heaven, a second coming, the second Advent of Christ, and then he will rule and human governments will go away, but that’s not why he came. He came the first time to set up his rule and his government in our hearts. He said, “The kingdom of God is within you.” And so the kingdom is the rule, the reign, the government. Verse 8: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses, telling people about me everywhere—in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the Earth.” This is missions. The Holy Spirit comes upon people. In Galatians 5 we’re taught that the Holy Spirit will come upon you in the sense that he will give you direction; he will give you assignments; he will fill you with some beautiful internal experiences when you yield to the Holy Spirit. And when that happens and he fills you, you will be empowered to be witnesses of Jesus and his work, emissaries, people who go out, people who are sent out with the message of Christ to others. That’s what it means to be a witness. And he says, “You’ll tell people about me everywhere,” and he makes these distinctions, these four different distinctions. They were in Jerusalem when this happened, and he said, “So you will tell people in Jerusalem about me.” So wherever you live, if it’s Orlando, Florida, that’s your Jerusalem; if it is Cedarville, Washington, where our little farm and ranch is, that’s my Jerusalem. Jerusalem is where you live. And Jesus says, “I’ll make you witnesses where you live; that’s your Jerusalem.” And then throughout Judea. Judea is regional. Jerusalem was a part of Judea. And so the way our country, the United States, is organized into 50 separate states, maybe an entire state would be a Judea; maybe the—I’m in the Pacific Northwest—maybe the Pacific Northwest, that is Washington and Oregon and Idaho, maybe that’s Judea, but it’s regional, beyond the place where you live; that’s Judea. So he’s saying, “I will make you witnesses in your Jerusalem, where you live, in the region where you live,” and then he says, “in Samaria.” So that would be equivalent maybe to the country; so America, Brazil, Canada, the country would be Samaria. And then to the ends of the Earth; that’s the nations that he mentions in the Great Commission: “Make disciples of all the nations.” And so what is he saying? He’s saying that if you are yielded to the Holy Spirit, God in some way will use you as his witness where you live, in your Jerusalem, your Judea, your region, your Samaria, your country, and to the ends of the Earth, to the nations.
And I know people that love the Lord Jesus Christ, and I grew up in the hills of Western North Carolina, the Appalachian Mountains, and I know followers of Jesus Christ who had little farms up in the Appalachian Mountains who never came down from the mountains except they come down and maybe there’s a little church up there, and they live there; they seldom ever come down into town, but they love Jesus. And the people who live in that little area, that little valley in the mountains, they are witnesses to those people in that valley. Our farm in the South, our family farm, was on in a little valley called Cany Fork. My grandmother and my grandfather, Alvin and Essie Moore, loved Jesus. They would come down once a week off of the mountain to a little white chapel called Balam Grove Baptist Church. My grandfather was a deacon there, and they would come down and they would worship with a small group of people there, and they would go back to the farm. Do you know what I observed growing up? They were witnesses in our little valley, but not just to our little valley, because God brought missionaries; there was a missionary that had a small cabin—very close to—he built a small cabin very close to my grandfather and grandmother; became friends with them; and they began helping fund missions in another nation through that missionary. They gave their tithes and their offerings through Balam Grove Baptist Church, who connected with a mission organization that dispersed funds globally to start churches. And so my grandmother and grandfather, living on a farm in the mountains of Appalachia, were—they were witnesses of Jesus even though they never left that valley, almost never left the valley. God still allowed them to be witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, to the uttermost parts of the earth. So God’s going to use people even if they don’t go physically to another nation; when they’re yielded to the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit’s going to use people, all people, to make a Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and ends-of-the-earth impact, because that is the purpose and the mission of the Holy Spirit in the book, *The Acts of the Holy Spirit*.
So where’s all this going? So everything about the Holy Spirit, his work in our lives, it’s moving toward something, and I want you to understand the role of the Holy Spirit to magnify Jesus, his empowering us to be witnesses and carry out missions locally to globally, and I want you to know it’s going somewhere, and we’re going to expand on this in the next unit, but there are—there are three—stay with me—there are three “greats” in terms of carrying out the mission of God: first, there’s the Great Commandment; second, there’s the Great Commission; and third, there’s the Great Collaboration. And so I want to explain those three things in terms of where the mission is going ultimately. The Great Commandment is found in Matthew chapter 22, around verse 38 and following. They are asking Jesus, you know, “What are the greatest commandments?” And Jesus said the greatest commandments are love—love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbor. The second commandment is love your neighbor as yourself. And Jesus is not talking about the person that lives next door; not only talking about the person that lives next door to you; when he uses the word “neighbor,” he just means anyone that you happen to come in contact with or in the vicinity of; that is how he uses the word “neighbor.” And so there’s this Great Commandment: Love God, love people. And so that is the motivation for the mission. The motivation for the mission is that God wants our hearts to be filled with his love. The Bible says the Holy Spirit, in the Book of Romans, the Holy Spirit is the one who sheds the love of God abroad in our heart. So when we’re yielded to the Holy Spirit, he fills our hearts up with love; we love God, we love people; that means we’re concerned about people, not just here physically, but eternally, and their relationship with God forever. And so that’s the first great; the first great is the Great Commandment: Love God, love people. The second great—we’ve looked at the Great Commission—where Jesus makes it clear that we are to go because he has all authority, and we’re to make disciples of all the nations and baptize them and teach them all the things that Jesus commanded, which is everything that Jesus taught, because we alluded to in the previous unit that everything that Jesus said is in the imperative in the original language, which means it’s a command; it’s not a suggestion. He’s the Lord; he’s the King of Kings, and he, when he says something, he means for us to do it because he’s the Lord. That’s the Great Commission: Go and make disciples. The Great Collaboration is alluded to in Matthew 24:14, where Jesus teaches that there’s going to come a time when everyone is given the opportunity to know him, to follow him, and then he says, “And after this, the end will come.” And so we’re going forward toward a time when everyone on planet Earth will have the opportunity to follow Jesus. Never in history have we… Oh, by the way, that’s the Great Collaboration. So believers everywhere are going to be working together to give people everywhere the opportunity to follow Jesus.
We can see how that is happening in ways that were not achievable at any other time in history. I recently was at my kitchen table on our farm—that’s 15 miles away from the nearest town—and I was training a group—I believe it was 42—church-planting missionaries in Hyderabad, India, from my kitchen table with a cell phone, with my smartphone on the table. These church-planting missionaries in Southern India were taking notes, being trained, and because we were using Zoom, it was all recorded on their end, and they were able to use it not just for those 42—those 42 were trainers—and they were able to take the training that I did for them at my kitchen table to others and multiply that exponentially. Never in human history has that been a capability. In my life, in my lifetime—and I’m a little past middle age; I’m 53 years old—but when I went to seminary, no one had a—almost no one had a personal computer. I got my first personal computer—if you want to go back and study ancient history—it was called an 8088; there were no windows; it was DOS. If you don’t know what DOS is, Google it. And so it was a very primitive computer; there was no internet; there were no cell phones. This is in my lifetime. We carried books; we didn’t have iPads or personal computers; they just didn’t exist for people in general. Now everybody carries around a computer with them in their smartphone; that’s an incredibly advanced computer. And through that we can communicate real-time with all the nations of the earth. And so I am regularly training people through our mission organization, Impact Multiplied, to start disciple-making institutes globally, and I can do it from anywhere. And so now we can see that that technology is only going to become more and more advanced; the connectivity of the world is only going to become more and more advanced. We see how Matthew 24:14 can happen. There are gospel movements globally, and we’re going to talk about those in the next unit; we call them DMMs and CPMs—Disciple Making Movements, Church Planting Movements. The Holy Spirit is expanding the church, and more people are having access to the Gospel of Jesus and the opportunity to follow Jesus by far than any other time in history. And the Bible alludes to that in the book of Acts, the Acts of the Holy Spirit, in verses 17-21, and it’s quoting an Old Testament passage in Joel, Joel 2:28-32, where it says, in verse 17, Acts chapter 2: “In these last days, God says, ‘I will pour out my Spirit upon all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. In those days I will pour out my Spirit even on my servants—men and women alike—and they will prophesy. And I will cause wonders in the heavens above, signs in the earth below, blood and fire and clouds of smoke. The sun will become dark, the moon will turn blood red before the great and glorious day of the Lord arrives. But everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’” And so the prophet Joel, repeated by Luke in the book of Acts, paints a picture of these two great streams, and they’re flowing parallel to the great day of the Lord, which is the way the Bible describes the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. The streams that are flowing to the return of Jesus are the streams of light and darkness, apostasy and awakening, man-made devastation and spirit-empowered manifestation, culminating, all flowing into the Return of the King of all Kings and the Lord of all Lords to do something. He’s going to do something when he returns, and it’s the fulfillment of what he said in the Book of Revelation when he said, “Behold, I make all things new.” In Romans chapter 8 it says he restores all things. Theologians call the Earth—post-return of Jesus—when Jesus returns to the Earth, when his feet touch down outside of Jerusalem, the Old Testament prophets said that the desert will bloom like the springtime; all of the Earth becomes like Eden. That’s why theologians call it the edenic Earth after Jesus returns. So a great collaboration is coming; man-made divisions of the church are going to yield to divine mandates, God’s mandate and mission; turf wars within the church will terminate and cease, and believers will bond in the mission of God, and Jesus Christ will be manifested to the nations in a greater way than ever experienced in history. How do we know this is going to happen? The words of Christ: He said, “The good news about the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world, so that all nations will hear it, and then the end will come.” Matthew 24:14. Dr. John Piper said, in the midst of all the unbelief—so that there’s going to be a lot of apostasy, falling away from God—and I believe, according to Joel and Acts and other prophetic scriptures in the Bible, there’s going to be just as much awakening. So there’s going to be an incredible revival and spiritual awakening and an incredible apostasy happening simultaneously. And Dr. John Piper, referring to that, says, “In the midst of all the unbelief and coldness and treachery, Jesus says is that the Gospel will be preached through the whole world as a testimony to the nations, and in the face of persecution and in the midst of that deadness, the true church of God is going to have extraordinary power, extraordinary zeal, and extraordinary passion and love for the Lord Jesus Christ as it is led and empowered by the Holy Spirit.” Let’s pray together.
Thank you, Father, for the gift of the Holy Spirit you have given us, the gift, and you’ve said in your word that his power is within us. In Ephesians 1 you said his power is within us, the same power that raised Christ from the dead and seated him at your right hand in the heavenly places is at work in our lives; is accessible to us. And so Father, help us to understand and to grasp and use the power that’s available to us in the person of the Holy Spirit within us, who is called the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ within us, and help us, empower us, Holy Spirit, to continue the work of Jesus in the world, to be the light and the love of Jesus, so that people will ask about the hope that is in us and that we will be able to respond with the truth that Christ suffered for our sins, the just for the unjust, in order to bring us safely home to God; he was put to death in the flesh and made alive by the Spirit. In Jesus’ name, amen.