Ordinary believers should see GOD'S POWER demonstrated regularly in their lives. Here's how to make sure you do.
Once when my children, Daniel and Madison, were small, our
family visited Los Angeles. Both the kids were acting their age, poking
each other in the back seat of our rental car and making accusations
such as “Mom, he looked at me!” and “Mom, she breathed on me!”
I pulled into a service station to fill the car with gas before
returning it to the car rental agency. As I did, a young man
approached-he was wearing a bandana, had a bucket in his hand and
started washing my front window. My first reaction was not very
spiritual. I was about to tell him to go away when the Holy Spirit
intervened.
Praying that Daniel and Madison would behave, I leaped out of the
car and approached the disheveled window washer. “Excuse me, but God
told me that you have just gotten out of jail,” I explained. “When you
were a young boy, you were called of God to preach the gospel and you
have been running from the call. You need to go back home and preach
the gospel!”
Instantly, the window washer dropped his bucket and rag, turned and
started to flee. I figured he thought I was a lunatic. But because I
knew the message had been from God, I yelled after him, “Wait a minute,
where are you going?”
He turned back and said: “Lady, you are right, I just got out of
prison. I was called of God to preach in my grandfather's church and I
have been running from God for years. I am going back home to tell
everyone what happened, and I am going to preach the gospel.”
What happened at the gas station that day is called prophetic
evangelism-one means through which God's ordinary people express the
supernatural in their lives.
Many Christians see very little, if any, of God's supernatural
power. Others see it manifest regularly in their lives. What sets apart
those who see the power from those who do not?
Though God works in different ways through different people, most
often people who live supernatural lives have had what can be called an
Acts 1:8 experience with the Holy Spirit. They become empowered to do
kingdom work by inviting Him to come and fill them.
The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Godhead (God the Father,
God the Son and God the Holy Spirit). He is in charge of the
supernatural here in the earthly realm. All a believer has to do is
ask, and He will come.
After the disciples believed in Christ and were born again, the Lord
told them He was going to send them the Holy Spirit. The experience
they all had in the upper room-which some call “being baptized in the
Holy Spirit” and others call “receiving the fullness of the Holy
Spirit”-completely changed their lives.
Jesus prophesied to them ahead of time that they would be empowered
by the experience: “'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 earth'” (Acts 1:8, NKJV,
emphasis added).
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Posted on Thu, March 5, 2009
by Cindy Jacobs