Witnesses
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
The last words of Jesus before returning to the Father were a call to his followers to be his witnesses around the whole earth. But what does it mean to be a witness?
According to the dictionary, witness can be defined as:
- One who can give a firsthand account of something seen, heard, or experienced
- One who furnishes evidence
- One who is called on to testify
Jesus left us a method which we must follow if we are to be effective witnesses.
- “But you shall receive power” – we have to wait until we receive power <ability or virtue>
- “when the Holy Spirit has come upon you” – we will receive the power when (and only when) the Holy Spirit comes upon us.
But this in turn has other requirements:
- We cannot be good witnesses without the help of the Holy Spirit. He is the one who will provide the evidence needed so we can give a truthful testimony.
But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you. – John 14:26
- The Holy Spirit is only given to those who love and obey Jesus.
If you love me, keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Helper that he may abide with you forever-the Spirit of truth – John 14:15-17
We can have all the desire and best intention to witness about Jesus, but we can only witness what we have seen or experienced. Otherwise we could be found as false witnesses.
If we are to be witnesses for Jesus it is important to have an experience that we can use as evidence of the truth of our testimony about Him
Let’s strive to know the word of God, submit to His obedience, and follow the direction of the Holy Spirit so that we may be the witnesses that Jesus needs us to be.
Comments
Witnesses — No Comments
HTML tags allowed in your comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>