Witnessing In The Power Of The Holy Spirit (Part I)

'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' - Acts 1:8 (New King James Version).

 
The prime purpose of the coming of the Spirit of God upon the disciples was to equip them to witness.  The Comforter does not come in order to allow men to be comfortable, but to make them witnesses for Jesus - Acts 1:8.   This is not a word only for the 'big guns' of evangelism with their structure and organization.  It is the promise to all believers who will open their lives to the operation of the Holy Spirit in fullness.  We have been called to be witnesses of the Kingdom of God.  The secret of personal witness is not the intensity and often the unreality of sallying forth armed with a bunch of tracts ready to run every unsuspecting soul into the ground: but the real power of personal witness is felt where the reality of the love and power of Jesus through someone raises the sort of questions in others that require an answer.  Christians, in the main, have lost the art of being 'naturally supernatural' in their daily relationships and involvements with other people.

 
As witnesses for Jesus, our lives do need to be different and not contradict what we say God can do.  But more than this, we need the empowering of the Holy Spirit within us.  Middle class decency does not take the place of the power of the Holy Spirit.  We also need to lose our reticence about witnessing for Jesus publicly, even if we are labeled as extremists or nuts.

  The  Help of Holy Spirit
There at least seven fundamental areas in which we can be sure of the help of the Holy Spirit.

 
1.  Experience
Our testimony grows out of our experience of Christ.  There is no real truth apart from experienced truth, because truth is not effective in us unless we do experience it. Then it becomes real and powerful in our lives.  This is what Jesus meant when He said that we would know the truth and the truth would set us free - John 8:32.   This is the very heart of discipleship.

 
A disciple is a person who follows the truth, not as a mere philosophy or ideology, but as a life changing reality.  A disciple has a personal relationship of faith and commitment with the One who has described Himself as the Way, the Truth and the life - John 14:6 .  This is the difference between a person who can repeat the story of Jesus and the person who says 'I know' - 2Tim.1:12 .

 
The Holy Spirit brings us experience of God.  He makes real within our lives the forgiveness and freedom which come from the work of Christ for us.  He releases in our lives God's power, by which we are able to live and act in the reality of the Kingdom of God.  This is why the process of conversion and commitment is so important.  Then we become truly aware that we have been turned away from an old way of life and have entered into the reality of a new life in Christ.

For the many who never enter a church or read a Bible, our lives will be the first and most important witness to the power of God that they may ever know.  As someone once said, 'Our lives are probably the first Bibles that many people ever read.'  The material for personal testimony is built by the Holy Spirit into the very fibre of our own experience of life with Christ.

  2.  Assurance
The Holy Spirit is Himself, first and foremost, a witness to Jesus Christ.  It is the Holy Spirit who points us to Jesus and who reveals to us the meaning of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus - John 16:13-14 .  But He is also a witness within us.  This is the ground of our assurance and confidence as believers - Rom.8:16 .

 
'….Having believed, you were marked in Him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession..' - Eph.1:13-14 .

 
The word 'deposit' here also means ' engagement ring ' from the original Greek.  So the Holy Spirit is given as an engagement ring between two lovers – God and us. Here lies the secret of effective personal witness.  It is not something that is hyper-tensive and filled with anxiety, but rather it is something that bears witness to this relationship of confidence and truth that exists between the Heavenly Father and any of His newborn children.

  3.  Boldness
'Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness ' - Acts 4:29 (NIV).

 
The early Christians spoke and acted with boldness that did not come from themselves, but was the result of the work of the Holy Spirit within their hearts.  Jesus had promised His disciples that they need have no fear whenever they were told to give an account of themselves on His behalf, because it would be given to them in that very moment what to say.  The book of Acts clearly shows that the Holy Spirit gives the words and power to those who will witness faithfully to what Jesus means to them.

 
To be Continued!
     STAY BLESSED!
 
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