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This is part five of a six part series on Preparing for Pentecost. You can read part four here.
Someone said that 95% of what happens in biblically sound churches – programming, preaching, music, liturgy, fellowship – could be done without the Holy Spirit. That is not to say that it is! My point is that all our churches desperately need the ongoing, supernatural power of the Holy Spirit. I know I do. As we prepare for Pentecost and a season of mission, we continue to focus on God’s gifts of power from on high.
Forty days after Easter, just before he ascended to heaven, Jesus said this to his disciples: “Behold, I’m going to send the promise of my Father upon you; but tarry in the city of Jerusalem until you are endued with power from on high.” (Acts 1:4) They already had the Holy Spirit in them from the first Easter. Receiving the Holy Spirit, John 20:21, is a different thing from the supernatural empowerment of the Holy Spirit, Acts 1 and 2, as I wrote in the previous installment of this series. Jesus’ promise for Pentecost was the enduement of the disciples with power from on high.
You might ask, “Why did they need more power?” The disciples had already walked in supernatural power on mission. Remember the mission of the seventy from Luke 10? They had already cast out demons, and they had already healed the sick with a word, because they were already living in Kingdom reality, ushered in by Jesus. Jesus had given them faith to believe for miracles! On that occasion, Satan fell like lightning from heaven. They already walked in supernatural power, but now Jesus was telling them to wait, to tarry – for still more power.
Jesus’ message was, I’m not finished empowering you! You need more power to do what I’m calling you to do. God wants us to walk in more supernatural power in our daily lives, so we can be more powerful witnesses for Him. Jesus promised, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the Earth.” (Acts 1:8) As you read on in the book of Acts, you’ll see that that is exactly what they did. The disciples ministered in power in those places, just as Jesus had; and they even did some things that Jesus did not do – which Jesus also promised they would do in John 14:12. They healed the sick, brought sight to the blind, raised the dead, and preached the Gospel all over the Mediterranean world. Jesus told them, “As the Father has sent me, I also send you.” (John 20:21) The word here for the verb “to send” is a form of the Greek word apostello, meaning to be “set apart, sent out on mission, or to be set at liberty.” (Strong’s) Jesus sends us in apostolic power.
We were not designed to live our lives cut off from supernatural spiritual power. This was God’s plan from the beginning. We are so much more than physical beings. God is concerned about far more than our self-identity, our bodies, and our pleasures. God gave you a spirit; your spirit is eternal. You are not a physical being having a spiritual experience; you are a spiritual being having a physical experience.
Spiritually, you and I are like sponges. We can get spiritually dry when we neglect God. One way you can fill up on more of God is by asking Him to baptize you in His Holy Spirit and allowing Him to control you. For many of us, when we first did that, God thoroughly changed us. While He accomplishes this in different ways for different people, God baptized me with His Spirit by giving me a gift of tongues. When He did, in 1989, I was changed forever. My conscience was changed, and became much more sensitive to right and wrong. My character became more righteous in an instant. You can ask my wife! Over time, I also received gifts of healing, discernment of spirits, faith, encouragement, words of knowledge and more. Those gifts have not faded but have grown as I’ve used them, like muscles in the gym. I’m getting my reps in! I experienced a huge increase in both my relationship with Jesus, and my effectiveness in ministry.
Even so, our fallen human nature has a natural tendency to drift away from God, simply because that is the path of least resistance. Like natural skills, you must use your spiritual gifts, or they get rusty. There is also a sense in which you can lose some of the blessing of what you had when you were filled up. Like a sponge, you can be squeezed out by the cares of this world, and lose some of that anointing. You can also run headlong into sin. The problem with sponges, and Christians, is that while they can be filled up, they also get depleted. The apostle Paul says, “Go on being filled with the Holy Spirit.” (Ephesians 5:18) Paul knew we needed refills! Maybe you’ve been squeezed out, or just dried out, by being out of the flow of the Holy Spirit for too long. The remedy for this is to repent, to dive back in, to sit in God’s near presence, and to ask Him for a fresh infilling of his power for witness.
Pentecost is just around the corner. Let’s tarry in prayer, in God’s presence, and ask Him to prepare us, and endue us with yet more power from on high. We do this so that the Gospel of salvation might change our world, as it did that day in Jerusalem 2000 years ago when 3,000 were saved.
The Rev. Clancy Nixon is Director of Renew, a ministry of Anglican Revitalization Ministries. He served as rector of a church he planted for 24 years, and he led church-planting and revitalization efforts for the ACNA Diocese of the Mid-Atlantic for seven years. He continues to work with the province in healing and renewal ministries. If you’d like to learn more about Renew and how we might serve your congregation or diocese with a conference or coaching, please visit https://www.americananglican.org/renew.
