Fred Rogers, of the television program, Mister Roger’s Neighborhood, took courses on how to preach while he was in college.
During the semester he was attending a class on homiletic. On weekend he and his wife took a trip out of town with a couple of friends. On Sunday morning the visited a little church together.
During the sermon he kept counting every mistake he thought the preacher was making. The pastor looked as if he was about 80 years old. When the sermon was over, Rogers turned to one of his friends intending to say something critical about the sermon. He stopped when he saw tears running down her face.
She whispered to him, “He said exactly what I needed to hear.” Rogers said it was a formative experience for him. He said, “I was judging and she was needing, and the Holy Spirit responded to need, not judgement.”
When I hear a story like this I am reminded of the necessity of the Holy Spirit’s power. God was using the elderly pastor to share exactly what someone needed to hear. Rogers learned God uses not just human excellence, but the Holy Spirit’s power to work in people’s lives.
The Apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 2:4 - “And my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power.”
Without the Holy Spirit we operate in our own strength and only accomplish human-size results. But when we live in the power of the Spirit, the evidence is supernatural.
The Holy Spirit is absolutely vital to our lives today! We’ve never needed Him more than we need him now. If the Holy Spirit moves, nothing can stop Him. If He doesn’t move, we will not produce genuine fruit – no matter how much effort or money we expend.
Christianity becomes irrelevant when it becomes purely a human creation. When our lives and our church can be explained apart from the work and presence of the Holy Spirit, something is terribly wrong.
Francis Chan - “If you read the Bible completely outside of the context of contemporary church culture (for example if you lived on a deserted island), you would be convinced the Holy Spirit is as essential to a believer’s existence as air is to staying alive. You would know the Spirit led the first Christians to do unexplainable things, to live lives that didn’t make sense to the culture around them, and ultimately spread the story of God’s grace around the world.”
Ephesians 5:18 – “Be filled with the Spirit.” The command is in the present tense. This doesn’t mean we are to be filled once. It means we are continually filled. We are continually to be controlled by the Holy Spirit. We must continually cooperate with the Holy Spirit. We must stay in contact with the Holy Spirit.
Jesus told us that the essential purpose of the gift of the Holy Spirit is that we would have power to serve as God’s witnesses. Acts 1:8 says, “But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
Today’s Challenge: Where is the power of God’s Spirit in our lives? Are you and I daily walking in the power of the Holy Spirit? Let’s begin to pray that God would fill us with His Holy Spirit and that our lives would manifest power as we serve others around us.
