February 26, 2017 YOU SHALL BE MY WITNESSES
Acts 1:8: “but you shall receive power when the Holy Spirt has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.”
It is interesting to note that Jesus did now say that the believers “should” be witnesses, but that they “shall” be His witnesses. Often times, a church ‘schedules’ a three day, or a week of revival meetings and then pressures the members to go out and invite others to come to the meetings, and to pass out tracts regarding salvation. This is not all bad, and there have been some that met the Lord during these revival meetings. The problem is that this practice tends to cause us to see our witnessing as something we do on special occasions, and something we do because we have been encouraged or pressured to do it. Jesus used the word “shall” because He knew that when the Holy Spirit took up residence in a believer, and the believer walked according to the Spirit, that believer’s very life would be a witness 24/7. Witnessing is not so much what we do, but who we are. We underestimate the power of the Spirit within us, and we often underestimate the change that the Spirit brings about in us when we welcome His rule in our lives. However, the sobering fact is that the scriptures warn us not to grieve the Holy Spirit within us (Eph. 4:30) or quench the Spirit within us (1 Thes 5:19). We must realize that as believers, we can choose to walk contrary to the Spirit within us, and thus become a witness, not of the Lord, but a witness of a believer living according to self. Witnessing is not something we can do in our own power, but only through the power of the Spirit within us can we be effective witnesses. Being a witness is a result of having an intimate and vital relationship with God, and walking according to the Spirit. When we come to know that our old man-who we use to be-has been crucified and that we have been made new creations, and we find it our desire to do the things that please our Father, we will be witnesses not only of His work in us, but of His power to change the hearts of all who come to Him. Let us not be content to live in our own strength, but by the power of the Spirit within us. We experience His power by yielding our life totally to Him, by knowing how great, and complete and all-encompassing our salvation is, and by obeying the direction of the Spirit and commands of Jesus.
Romans 8:11: “But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.”
2 Timothy 1:7: “For God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but of power and love and discipline.
Blessings,
Buddy
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