Discover His heart: He commissions and empowers us to be His witnesses
Who would have thought split pea soup would be the catalyst to lead someone to the Lord! Back in grade school, when I was 7 years old, my best friend and her brother were over for lunch one day. My mom had made split pea soup for us, not exactly kid food, and as she left the kitchen she cautioned, “Don’t add crackers to your soup or it will be too thick to eat.”
As we looked at our bowls of green goo in awe, we decided that crackers could only help the situation and started to crush many crackers into our soup and soon learned that mom was right. We could have built a monument with the mortar that sat in front of us. I started to cry just as she came back into the kitchen. Money was tight, and this was wasteful.
Mom decided to use this situation to talk about obedience and pleasing the Lord. At the time I really didn’t understand what came over me, but I started to sing an old hymn of the church, “There is a fountain filled with blood, drawn from Emanuel’s veins, and sinners plunged beneath the flood lose all their guilty stains.” Well, at 7 years old I certainly did not understand all the theology behind that song, and neither did my friends, but they started to weep. In a matter of moments, they were repeating the sinner’s prayer. Carol and Michael were the first souls I helped lead to the Lord, but it was the Holy Spirit that convicted them of sin.
@ John 20
“Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you.’ Then he breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone’s sins, they are forgiven. If you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.’” (21-23) When we read this scripture, it’s easy to get hung up on the question as to whether or not Jesus was saying that the disciples could forgive sin. Unless they were the pure, spotless Lamb of God and had sacrificed their lives on the cross for sin, absolutely not. However, this was Part 1 of a Spirit-given commissioning for these new believers to present the Gospel, God’s terms for salvation, to the world. Part 2 followed in Acts 2 when they received the power of the Holy Spirit, the dunamis, the dynamite explosion to be His witnesses.
Jesus wanted His disciples to know that they were not alone in presenting their message because the convicter, the convincer of sin, the Holy Spirit would be with them. “[The Holy Spirit] will convict the world of its sin, and of God’s righteousness, and of the coming judgment.” (16:8) The Holy Spirit is the great evangelist, and we are His voice. Understanding this truth should remove anxiety and apprehension from sharing the Gospel with others.
The Holy Spirit convicted my friends of their sinful nature because that is His job. Having already received the Lord as my Savior, I had been commissioned by the Lord through the Holy Spirit to bring others to Christ, and it was so very easy because He did all the work. I mean, if at 7 years old I could be used in this way, what is my excuse today? We are His voice, and when we do our job in obedience, He is right there with us doing His job!
Moving Forward: I pray that I will never let doubt and apprehension diminish the role of the Holy Spirit in bringing people to Christ. When I share the goodness of God and the salvation He has given through His Son, I am partnering with the Great Evangelist!
Tomorrow @ Hebrews 1- 4
Phyllis Benigas 