Power
About this series
The aim of this series is to present some of the Bible’s teaching about The Holy Spirit in order to raise expectations of life in the new covenant. If Jesus said, “It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you” (John 16:7), we want to ask: In what ways do these Scriptures show that The Holy Spirit being with us is “for your good”? Our expectations should certainly be raised!
Hopefully this series will help us grow in both our understanding and our experience of The Holy Spirit - personal, powerful presence of God with his people.
About this talk
God’s people are now those who have power within to live for God and to live as he calls us to. We are those “who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit” (Romans 8:4), “who live in accordance with the Spirit” (Romans 8:5), whose minds are “governed by the Spirit” (Romans 8:6), “who are led by the Spirit of God” (Romans 8:14), who are empowered to “live by, be led by and keep in step with the Spirit” (Galatians 5:16, 18, 25).
Acts 1:8 makes explicit what is demonstrated through the rest of the book - God’s people will be empowered by the Spirit to live the new life to which they’d been called, being witnesses to the reality of Jesus’ resurrection life. While the story of the early church is not perfect, the whole of Acts is an account of living by, being led by and keeping in step with the Spirit.
The power they knew among them led to, for example: speaking tongues, miracles, generosity, salvation, prophecy, guidance, mission, endurance in suffering, physical manifestations of God’s presence (eg. “the place where they were meeting was shaken,” Acts 4:31). So notable are the effects of the coming of the Spirit that at one point, Simon the sorcerer offers Peter and John money so that he could have “this ability so that everyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit” (Acts 8:14-19). Oh that we may know God’s power among us that it might cause people to be desperate to experience that power for themselves! We look at the following:
What does power in the Christian life look like?
How can we grow in our expectation of being empowered by the Spirit?
How does it look like for us to experience the missional impulse of the Spirit?
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