Day 13: The Holy Spirit Will Give You Power

What is it that God wants to produce in us through His Holy Spirit? Paul tells Timothy three things about it which I want to emphasise. He says:

“For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.” (2 Timothy 1:7)

Let’s look at the first one: power. What kind of power does the Holy Spirit bestow? Just before Jesus left his disciples and ascended back to heaven, He said:

“But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me…”

He also said, “Don’t begin to preach until you have received this supernatural power which can come only by the Holy Spirit.” Now, that was not military power. It wasn’t physical power. It wasn’t intellectual power. They didn’t spend a lot of time arguing and theologizing. It was a supernatural, spiritual power.

You see, the message of the gospel is totally supernatural. It centres in the record of a man who died, was three days in the tomb, was raised up from death, and raised up to heaven. Now that is supernatural. What Jesus implies is it is unreasonable to present a message about a supernatural set of events with merely natural power and natural reason. The message is supernatural, the power must be supernatural.

And as soon as the Holy Spirit descended, a totally new kind of supernatural power was released in Jerusalem and, according to Jesus’ plan, began to spread outwards from Jerusalem to the outermost parts of the world.

So, the first thing that we need to see as imparted by the Holy Spirit is a different kind of power from the power that this world understands. When we seek to imitate the methods of the world, when we covet the kind of success that the world esteems, we are actually turning away from the real source of true spiritual success, which is a spiritual power that’s of a totally different kind and can only come from the Holy Spirit. It is a supernatural power that exalts Jesus, produces miracles, convicts men and women of sin, righteousness and judgment, writes God’s laws in their hearts, and brings them into a totally new kind of life. That’s all that God is concerned about for His children.

Reflect: When I seek to imitate the methods of the world, when I covet the kind of success that the world esteems, I am actually turning away from the real source of spiritual power: the Holy Spirit.