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Monday, February 28, 2011

But You Shall Receive Power

Acts 1: 6 - 8, Therefore, when they had come together, they asked Him, saying, "Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?" And He said to them, "It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has put in His own authority. 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." NKJV

The Bible is filled with Words of Wisdom, Knowledge, Prophecy, Truth, and etcetera. But how does a Christian know when a Word from God's Word is speaking directly to them? Do you just flip open the Bible and point to a scripture and say this must be God?
Jesus tells us in John 10 that His sheep (Christians) know His voice and another we won't follow. He also taught us in John 14 that He would not leave us comfortless, but would pray to the Father, and He would send to us the Spirit of Truth. Since the Father has given us the Holy Spirit, we must trust in Him and not lean to our own understanding; the Lord doesn't expect us to figure out the next step in our faith walk on our own. If you just randomly open your Bible and hope to hit the correct Word for the day, or you place a fleece before the Lord for confirmation to a prayer that you prayed, then know that there is a better way.

You see, we not only need a Word from the Lord to help us navigate life in a fallen world, but we must understand that God only gives us direction in the hour that it is needed. If we should be moved by impulse, we could be casting the seed of God's Word before its time and could risk it falling onto sterile ground or producing no results in our situations.

Let's suppose that you're having an issue with a co-worker, and you've asked the Lord to reveal wisdom to you from His Word. If the co-worker doesn't understand you or your faith, then there's a good chance that they will persecute you. If this is the case, then we want God to move quickly to alleviate the problem with the co-worker. Have you noticed that Christians tend to become anxious for God to move quickly on their behalf when they are faced with serious or difficult issues? This is why the Lord will only release "A Word in season" to those who are weary. It isn't based on the difficulty of our situation, but on the degree of our weariness. Hasn't the Lord promised us in 1 Corinthians 10 that He wouldn't place more on us than we're able to bear?

In our verses for today's word, the disciples asked Jesus if He was at that time going to restore the kingdom back to Israel. Jesus told them,"It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has put in His own authority." When I have heard ministers teach on these verses in Acts 1, they tend to stop where it says, "In His own authority," but Jesus didn't stop there; He proceeded to teach us the ways of God concerning the "timing" of the Father. He said, "You shall receive power after the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be witnesses of Me in all the region and ultimately the world."

In other words, Jesus was telling them that it would happen, but not the way they thought it might. The kingdom will be restored when the Holy Spirit comes upon His people, and they move under the power or the authority of the Kingdom of God to fulfill God's will in the season that He has predetermined. I share this principle with you to say this: if you are looking to God for a Word of wisdom, knowledge, or etcetera, then you must be willing to wait until He sees that the timing is right. This way, His will shall be accomplished and not ours. It's not that God doesn't care about what we're going through. It is that He has a different perspective from His vantage point than we do; our view is generally from the temporal (flesh) view point, and His view is always from the eternal view point.

Now we understand better why the Lord will sometimes wait to answer our prayers when we find ourselves in fiery trials. There's another reason why the Lord will wait before releasing a Word of direction, and that is so He can see if we will wait on "His" timing, or if we will be moved by our carnal (impulsive) nature. Submit to God and resist the temptation to act on impulse; wait until you know that God has spoken a "Word in season" before you act. As a minister, I wait on the Lord to speak to me before I speak to the congregation or to you in a devotional. He knows what we need before we ask, but we must be willing to wait on God's ways and resist our own ways.

God's Way Is Best,
Pastor Asa

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