Walter Knight tells the story about a little boy who had recently received Christ. “Daddy, how can I believe in the Holy Spirit when I have never seen Him?” asked Jim. “I’ll show you how,” said his father, who was an electrician. Later Jim went with his father to the power plant where he was shown the generators. “This is where the power comes from to heat our stove and to give us light. We cannot see the power, but it is in that machine and in the power lines,” said the father. “I believe in electricity,” said Jim. “Of course you do,” said his father, “but you don’t believe in it because you see it. You believe in it because you see what it can do. Likewise, you can believe in the Holy Spirit because you can see what He does in people’s lives when they are surrendered to Christ and possess His power.”
“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, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.
John 14:15-18 NKJV
http://bible.com/114/jhn.14.15-18.NKJV
Lord, you are amazing to not just forgive us for our sins, to not just show us the way by the example of your walk on this earth, but to come and dwell with us and change or lives, reconciling us to be more like Christ, empowering us to put away the ways of the world and the flesh to walk in step with your Holy Spirit – as we surrender to your will. And this surrender is not just once in prayer, but a daily death to self will and renewal in your grace, as we learn to walk in your Spirit as this new creation being molded and chastened and disciplined and taught by you.
Lord, help us to turn on the lights, to turn on the righteousness, to turn on the holiness, to turn on the sacrificial love in our lives that is clearly separate and different than the ways of this world – not so that we can stand proud of the change – but so that others who don’t yet know this power might understand that it is real. It is easy for someone to deny the existence of electricity if they’ve never seen it at work in a light bulb, television, or other appliance. If we say that power is in the lines, but refuse to turn on the appliances to prove it, how foolish would we seem to those who don’t believe?
Lord, we want to walk closer to you today, more in your strength and power and less in our flesh nature – we realize this is not an easy walk and that it will put us in opposition to the normal, natural flow of this world and its agents and influences – but we want to sell our worthless possessions and buy that field that has the real treasure in it, those eternal blessings. Help us today to follow in your footsteps, bearing the burdens of others, sharing the testimony of you Holy Spirit alive and guiding us. And this testimony is best communicated through our life example of faithful actions, even to the point that words are only necessary to explain why our life is so peculiar, so different, so unique when examined by the commonplace ways of the world around us. Lord, let your light shine through us, so that your power cannot be denied, so that all of us might want the one and only thing that we need in our lives daily – more of You.
Harold J. Ballinger 