We read in the Acts of the Apostles, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes down on you” (1:8). Jesus spoke these words to His discouraged and frustrated apostles who had just
witnessed His cruel death on the cross. Now they reached for hope, and it came down like the roar of a mighty wind and transformed them. They experienced a tremendous inflow of power through the Holy Spirit. The disciples walked away from Pentecost and went to the ends of the earth, preaching, teaching, healing and transforming the world with the power of God.
Exemplifying Jesus, these humble, uneducated, poor fishermen started the greatest spiritual revolution in history. They became people of hope and people of power through the Holy Spirit. Jesus Christ is living within us at this moment and is using us — to the degree that we surrender to His leadership — to effect a transformation of our world into a united sacrifice of praise and glory to His Heavenly Father. In the power of the Holy Spirit, Jesus manifests the fullness of God’s infinite love for each of us. The Holy Spirit is the source of all our hope. The power given to Jesus to destroy sin and death has also conquered darkness. He is the Light of the World!
Jesus was raised in glory and given a new relationship to His Father and to us and our world. Jesus the divine presence of the mind of the Father speaks His loving Word in the power of the Holy Spirit within us in the depths of our hearts. In an exciting new Trust in God’s Power, God now communicates Himself to us in our darkness by the bright light of His fully realized Word — Jesus Christ. We have hope because into the dark silence of our inner world the brightness of Jesus enters. We have been created to live in the power God gives us just as an electrical appliance is built to run on the current of an electrical power line. The manufacturer of an appliance assumes that electricity will flow into it and designs the parts accordingly. If the power is not turned on and the electricity is not permitted to run through, the appliance is worthless.
The same applies to us. God has created us so that our whole being springs to life the moment we receive His power. We live in hope and the fullness of life becomes a reality for us when we have His power in us through the Holy Spirit. We share in the brightness of Jesus Christ and cry out in hope: “Come, Lord Jesus” (Rev 22: 20)! United to Christ in the love of the Father, pray in hope that someday soon, “All of us, gazing on the Lord’s glory with unveiled faces, are being transformed from glory to glory into His very image by the Lord who is Spirit” (2 Car 3: 18).
Reprinted with permission from Awakening Our Treasures; published at the Sower, Stamford, Ct.
