To Speak, or Not To Speak

11/23/2005

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him,
so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Romans 15:13 (NLT)

How do we communicate God’s Holy Spirit to others? “Tell them about Hope!” That’s what we all need in our darkest times! Hope! The scriptures talk about being filled with the Holy Spirit, drunk on the Holy Spirit, and how the Apostles were accused of being drunk when they were baptized with the Holy Spirit--that’s what we should desire in our own lives…to know God like that! To have a faith like that! To not fear what we have always feared because Jesus has so transformed our way of being who we are that it’s not about us anymore, it’s all about Him! The only way of even coming close to our lives being all about Jesus, and not all about us, is to abandon ourselves to Him more and more each day…and if we live until we’re 100 years old, we will have only scratched the surface of truly knowing Him and trusting Him as we should in this flesh that we live in.

When Peter and John healed the crippled beggar at the temple gate, “people saw him walking and praising God, they recognized him as the same man who used to sit begging at the temple gate called Beautiful, and they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him.” (Acts 3:9-10 NIV) We don’t know what God is doing with other people, but we can know it’s amazing and wonderful because we know what He is doing within us is amazing and wonderful. He is taking the person we know, the one who has been lied to by the enemy for years about what we should and shouldn’t do, what we can and can’t do, and God is changing all that. He is bringing the reality of 2 Corinthians 5:17 true in our lives, which states, “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” (KJ) That’s hope in progress!

…For the man who was miraculously healed was over forty years old.” Acts. 4:22 (NIV)

Step-by-step God is setting us free from the lies, not by our own doing, not by making up our own mind, but by His mighty miracles in His own timing! We are not born bold, but we are when God’s power fills us! We are not born willing to share the Good News of Jesus Christ, but we are when God’s power fills us! We are not comfortable telling of His great love, but we are when God’s power fills us!

Still, to this day, there are amazing miracles happening all around us! God is busy at work, in each and every heart, wanting our full attention, our total abandonment, our complete obedience…why? Because He loves us so very much, He wants nothing less for us!! God offers us the very same thing He offered the crippled beggar through Peter and John, “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.” (Acts 3:6b NIV) When God can shake a room and cause us to speak boldly about Him even though we have never done so before--there is some power, some force, some supernatural something going on, and we need to pay attention! We need to not dismiss it as anything other than what it is, God at work in this world, trying to get our attention, wanting us so to be healed in Jesus’ name that we are able to “walk” through each day of our lives filled with His hope!