Power from Within? Not!

"But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you." Acts 1:8

When you want to cycle long distances one of the most important things to remember is to eat and drink frequently while riding. If you fail to do so you will "run out of gas", just like your car does when you fail to put gas in the tank. The power to keep going after 50, 75 or a hundred miles has to come from within... not! Yes, it does take inner strength and determination to keep going long miles, but if you don't get the power you need from the outside, all the inner determination you can possibly summon will not be enough. The power to keep going must actually come from outside of you, from the food and drink that you put into your mouth, down into your stomach, and into your bloodstream.

Jesus had given his disciples a huge task. "Go and make disciples of all nations..." That makes cycling a hundred miles look easy. How in the world could they ever hope to undertake such an impossibly great commission? Could they count on themselves? It almost seems as though they were doing that, because before the day of Pentecost arrived they added another apostle to their ranks to help carry out the Great Commission.

But Jesus told them clearly where their power would come from. He said, "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." The power for them to carry on Jesus' ministry after his return to heaven, would come from within only in the sense that the power for me to keep going on my bike comes from within, that is from the food and liquid that I put in my stomach.

The power of the disciples would not come from themselves, but from the Holy Spirit, whom Jesus would send from the Father to enable them to carry on his ministry. Yes, from the day of Pentecost onward, believers have been filled with the Holy Spirit, so in a certain sense, the power to do God's will and carry on Jesus' ministry comes from within, but only because God has put His Holy Spirit in our hearts.

Paul wrote, "our Gospel came to you not simply with words, but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and with deep conviction." (1 Thessalonians 1:5) The power to believe, to do God's will, to carry on Jesus ministry, to share the Gospel with others comes from the Holy Spirit, not from within us. We have no power within ourselves to do God's work and will. But when we receive the Holy Spirit as a gift of God's grace, we receive all the power we need to do everything God asks of us.

So how do we continually "fill the gas tank" so that we can keep going in doing God's will? Just as a cyclist has to keep eating and drinking, so we must continually feed on God's Word and the Sacraments, so that we can have the power of the Holy Spirit at work in us.