“But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto Me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.” Acts 1:8

“But ye shall receive power…”  We live in a day where the mass conglomerate of evil and all the imps of hell have stiffened their necks against the Living God, scoffing at His ways and laughing at His people. If we ever needed power, it’s now. As a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, it should be my soul’s daily aim to lay hold of every divine resource made available to me through His atoning death on Calvary’s Cross for the proclamation of this glorious Gospel. To ‘receive’ is not to stand passively by, hands in pockets, under the froward notion that “God will give me whatever He wants me to have.” No! We position ourselves at the threshold of His great mercy as an active, yielded participant with hands outstretched, the reverberating cry of our hearts being, “Lord! I want everything You have to give me!” Biblically, we have reason to believe that there may have been anywhere in the ballpark of above 500 people to hear Jesus’ last words and see Him ascend in a cloud of glory out of their sight (Acts 1:4; 1 Cor. 15:6), yet only 120 followed through with His command to tarry in the upper room… and so it is today. Power in the Greek text is ‘dunamis’ – that is to say dynamite; miracle working power! Would that every born again child of God obey Jesus’ last and final command and wait for the promise of the Father – the precious Baptism in the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in other tongues – igniting the torch of their life in the fire of Pentecost! If you’re saved, Glory to God! There’s more! Keep asking, keep seeking, keep knocking, keep running after Jesus! He is the Baptizer in the Holy Spirit and millions of people the world over can testify that it’s real, it’s real, it’s real!

In the dust of His feet,

Sunni Hoffman

“… . And Judah was carried away into exile to Babylon for their unfaithfulness.”

– 1 Chronicles 9:1b

We are a most fickle people. We make grand declarations of thankfulness and (sometimes obnoxious) vows of loyalty to the Lord with no follow through. Truly, there’s no miracle cell hidden in the back corners of our human DNA waiting to evolve into greatness through a single spark of our own ambition or human ingenuity. We are a helpless people, easily carried away by the cares and longings of the world and our own sinful hearts.

By way of example, let’s say you are floating out at sea and have been given instructions to stay by the lighthouse. You soon find that you have drifted away quickly for want of pulling anchor. With but a single night’s closing of the eyes and resting of the heart, you look up and find that you are miles from where you were instructed to stay, wondering “How did I get here?” How many times have you looked around in your own Christian walk and found that you are far from where the Lord would have you to be? I’m sure it was much the same for Judah/Israel of old. Carried away into slavery … again. And Christians, those precious souls who truly love the Lord, drift off and are carried away into slavery to sin every day because they won’t pull anchor, throwing the weight of their life and heart onto the Lord Jesus Christ and His finished work on Calvary. It would do us all well to take thought for how truly weak and unable we are, coming to Him today in complete dependence, asking that His ‘staying power’ be lived out in our stead. He is able.

In the dust of His feet,

Sunni Hoffman