Monday January 8th
Firstly, as we recommence the daily devotions, a Happy New Year. And welcome back!
Although we are already a week into 2024, I will commence the devotions this year with the verse that I have already shared at Emmanuel as a verse for us to take hold of for this year, Zechariah 4:6
‘Then he said to me, “This is the word of the LORD to Zerubbabel: Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the LORD of hosts.’
It is my intention to share more from this verse on a Sunday morning, but for today it is a reminder for us that we need as individuals and as a local fellowship to know what it is to be led and empowered by the Holy Spirit as we seek to live for and serve God in the generation in which we live.
In the natural, some are physically stronger than others, therefore they can take on bigger tasks or do the things that require more energy, but in the spiritual, we can all be equally fit spiritually as we seek to live for the glory of God. He gives his Spirit to us without measure, what we need to do is to earnestly desire the Holy Spirit, to be filled with the Spirit, to be led by the Spirit and to walk by the Spirit.
Looking back to the last few days that Jesus spent with his disciples, one of the most important commands that he gave to them was to ‘wait for the promise of the Father’, which was to ‘receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you’, this Spirit infilling was to empower them to become witnesses of the Lord Jesus Christ. Just ten days later, on the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came, and the disciples immediately began to boldly proclaim the good news of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and many signs and wonders were done in His name.
See in themselves they were powerless, therefore as far as the disciples were concerned they could not move forward by their own might, nor by their own power, it needed to be, it had to be by the Spirit.
And so, two-thousand years later it is the same for the Church in the 21st century, it is not by our might, nor by our power but, by the Spirit of the Lord.
We need to seek, to desire to know what it is to go through this year filled with the Holy Spirit, empowered by the Holy Spirit, equipped by the Holy Spirit, we have to learn to shelve our own ideas, our own preferences, our own agenda, our own programme and to be willing to allow the Holy Spirit to do what he desires, discover what his agenda is for us, his programme for us.