Who’s the Hero of Your Story?
Yesterday was Pentecost, the day in which we celebrate the pouring out of the Spirit into the lives of the church. When they were baptized in the Spirit, the disciples began to live lives of purity, power and peace. Without the Holy Spirit, we have to try generate our own purity and power and peace, and that is simply impossible.
But as Christians we have the extraordinary gift of the Holy Spirit – and baptized in the Spirit we reach new levels of effectiveness for God.
Think of this: the Holy Spirit didn’t fill the disciples at the end of the book of Acts, but at the beginning. The book of Acts opens with Jesus ascending into heaven, and in chapter 2 the believers are filled with the Spirit, and so they rush out and do amazing things through the Spirit.
Spirit as Hero
The book is called the Acts of the Apostles, but I love what Roy Hession said – we should actually call it the Acts of the Holy Spirit! Or as Derek Wilson once said in a sermon, we could call Acts the 5th Gospel – the Gospel of the Holy Spirit.
The whole book is about the Spirit’s work in the believers, and how through the Spirit they were enabled to do amazing work for God.
In fact the Spirit is mentioned 55 times in the 28 chapters of Acts. It is the dominant theme in the book.
Here’s a question to kick off your week: is the Spirit the dominant theme in your life? In your story?
I ask myself: If I had to write The Acts of Luke Powell, would it be a book where the Spirit is the hero?
We tend to make ourselves the heroes of our own stories, don’t we. We put ourselves in the center and work everything else around our own agenda.
Spirit-Led Living
But the book of Acts shows us that as people of God, the Spirit should be the hero of our stories! Every part of our lives should be run by the Spirit, and like the apostles in Acts, we should be following the Spirit’s leading and empowering day by day by day.
So today, I pray, that you and I will get out of the way and let the Spirit take His place in as the hero of our day. And may our lives reflect the words of God through the prophet Zechariah, who said “not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit” I will live my life.
