Acts 1:8
But the Holy Spirit will come upon you and give you power. Then you will tell everyone about me in Jerusalem, in all Judea, in Samaria, and everywhere in the world."
Scripture taken from the Contemporary English Version © 1991,1992, 1995 by American Bible Society, Used by Permission.
I really enjoy listening to the teachings of evangelist Joyce Meyer. She truly tells it like it is, and she has a great knack for putting things in ordinary terms for ordinary people. The other day I heard her say that we can hardly pray without using the word “just” in a sentence. “Lord, if you will just heal me.” “Father, if you will just help me pay my bills.” “God if you will just get me out of this mess.”
Joyce said she looked up the word “just” in the dictionary, and it said “only or merely … by a narrow margin … barely.” Now I ask you what she asked … “Do you really want God to ‘barely, by a narrow margin’ meet your needs?” Do you see how we limit God in our prayers?
Acts 1:8 tells us that we have been filled with the power of the Holy Spirit. By that power, we can do amazing, incredible, seemingly impossible things. We can boldly go out and share the love of Christ with others. We don’t have to have a “just” mentality … “I am just one person,” or “I am just this or that,” or “I can just get by myself, so how can I minister to anyone else?” We are more than this by the power of the Holy Spirit.
We have so many resources right at our fingertips for sharing God’s love and the Good News of Jesus with others, starting with a smile on our faces and a cheerful attitude. We have great social networking tools like Facebook, where we can post positive encouraging messages for others. It’s one thing to share our need for prayer and a concern for our health or the well-being of someone else, but some of us have made these outlets our daily sounding board for everything to how poorly we slept to our pounding headache to how much we hate our job and can’t wait for the weekend! Do these comments and the attitudes behind them reflect the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives?
We need to be aware of the Holy Spirit within us. More than that, we need to be recognizing His power and living and speaking in a way that says to others… “He/she has something special … something extra that is above and beyond ordinary.” We need to live this way because it is the truth! We are not “just” Christians … we are driven by the power of the Holy Spirit, and for many of us, it’s time we acted like it! How much power are you operating under today? Are you fully filled with Holy Spirit power … or are you operating in “just” enough?
©2010 Debbie Robus
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