Bible Study: Acts 17, 15 to 18, 1 and
John 16, 12 to 15.
The secret key to successfully witnessing for Christ is ability
to listen to the Holy Spirit. We are not the ones to preach, we are just
instruments in the hands of the Holy Spirit who is himself the chief
evangelizer. We cannot even give any credit to ourselves because whatever we
say does not belong to us and if souls are converted, it is because we allowed
the Holy Spirit speak and move through us.
Hence Jesus says to us this morning: “I have many things to say
to you, but you cannot bear them now, when the Spirit of Truth comes, he will
guide you into all the Truth… he will declare to you the things that are to
come.” The Holy Spirit tells us not just what we are to say but even the things
are will happen in the future. If you are in tune with the Holy Spirit, you
will be able to know what will happen even before it happens. This is the gift
of prophecy.
We should pray for the Holy Spirit to descend upon us that we
too might begin to know things beyond the reach of our mere intellect. And
whatever the Holy Spirit reveals to us, it is not simply for our
self-aggrandizement but for the salvation of souls and the conversion of hearts
to God.
However, the truth is that we live in an age, people are so
eager to thrill others that they cannot wait for the Holy Spirit to reveal
things to them. They simply tell lies in the name of the Holy Spirit. To lie
with the Spirit is to say things you are thinking in your mind as things that
are coming from the Holy Spirit. Even when your conscience tells you that what
you are saying is far from the truth, you still lie with the Holy Spirit all
because you want to be revered by your listeners or because you want to benefit
from them.
The story has often been told of a minister who changed his
sermon one Sunday morning all because he saw some brand new cars parked in
front of his church. He then declared: “The Holy Spirit has ministered to me
that someone here today will sow into my life the gift of a brand new car.” He kept
on and one and nobody came forward. He became angry and started raining insults
on his congregations threatening that if nobody comes forward, he will not
continue with the service. He then suddenly closed his eyes and started
speaking in tongues continuously. By the time he opened his eyes, he discovered
he was the only one left in the church.
The Holy Spirit is the spirit of truth not of lies. Woe betide
anyone who lies in the name of the Holy Spirit. Our country today is filled
with lots and lots of great liars who have prophesied different things in the name
of the Holy Spirit, none of which have come true. Before this new administration
came into office, some men of God prophesied that so and so will happen in this
country and now that we see the very opposite happening, we can now see that
they were not inspired by the Holy Spirit but by their bank alerts. May God help
us.
St. Paul’s experience in Athens which we read about in today’s
first reading is a classic example of how our mental reasoning can deceive us
into assuming we are hearing from the Holy Spirit. He thought that by laying a
foundation to an Altar that they themselves had built to the UNKNOWN GOD, he
would lead them to know the true God in heaven. But guess what? Out of a
multitude of thousands, he ended up converting only a handful of persons.
Lesson: The god that the Athenians served is totally different
from the God who created heaven and earth, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
So since Paul decided to preach to them about their own god who they referred
to as “unknown”, they couldn’t understand why their unknown god (made by their
own hands) could then be capable of rising from the dead. How can a piece of
stone rise from the dead? Was the stone alive in the first place? Rubbish…! So
they walked away from Paul saying “We shall hear you again.”
Paul learnt this bitter lesson that day. A lesson we sometimes
miss in the name of inculturation. The gods our fore-fathers in Africa served
is not the same as the God of heaven, their own gods were their own creations
and they knew what their gods could do, but the God we serve is the one who
created us and we cannot put any limit to what he is capable of doing. Faulty inculturation
only leads to syncretism and this is why attempts to convert Africans have not
be successful. What we have is people going to church to worship the gods they
once served in the bush. That is why we have many church-goers but only few Christians.
That is why our streets are littered with churches yet evil in our society is on
an unprecedented scale.
Dear friends, let us listen to the Holy Spirit and not to our
senses and we will preach and prophecy the truth and nothing but the truth.
Let us pray: Lord Jesus, fill me each day with the Holy Spirit. Amen
God bless you. Good morning. Be Happy.
Live Positive. Have Faith. It is well with you.
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