Wind is power. Since early recorded history, people have harnessed the energy of the wind. In my youth, I experienced this powerful influence sailing with my father. In the ancient world, as early as 5,000 B.C., wind energy propelled boats along the Nile River. By 200 B.C., simple windmills in China were pumping water, while vertical-axis windmills with woven reed sails were grinding grain in Persia and the Middle East.
New ways of using the energy of the wind eventually spread around the world. By the 11th century, people in the Middle East used windmills extensively for food production. Returning merchants carried this idea back to Europe. The Dutch refined the windmill and adapted it for draining lakes and marshes in the Rhine River Delta. When settlers took this technology to the New World in the late 19th century, they began using windmills to pump water for farms and ranches and later to generate electricity for homes and industry, and in 1887, the first electricity-generating wind turbine was installed to charge batteries.
In the 1900s, electricity-generating wind turbines developed and were used around the world. Wind makes the turbine blades spin, and the energy of this motion is converted into electricity by generator. Obviously, without wind, those turbines would be useless. But in using the wind, these turbines are quite useful. Interestingly, these turbines work just fine in high winds – even gale force winds.
In the spiritual realm, just as turbines harvest the winds of nature, we as believers are called to access the wind of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, in our walk with the Lord.
Jesus made comparisons between the wind and the Holy Spirit. He said, “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8).
And when the Holy Spirit fell upon and filled the disciples at Pentecost in Acts 2, He was described this way: “And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting” (Acts 2:2). This was not a weather phenomenon, rather a supernatural event. In Hebrew and Greek, the words for wind and spirit are synonymous. Wind is frequently used as a picture of the Spirit (cf. Ezek. 37:9).
Just as the building of the turbine is man’s initiative to harness the power of the wind to create electricity, so you and I must be intentional in accessing the power of God, namely the Holy Spirit, in becoming powerful and effective witnesses for Him.
And how do we access this power? Faith.
Interestingly, wind energy is a free, renewable resource. Its use does not affect its future supply.
In the spiritual world, our access to the Holy Spirit is unlimited. He is always in us and ready to empower us. We are called to “walk in the Spirit” (Gal. 5:16) and “be filled by the Spirit” (Eph. 5:18). This means we surrender to the Lord in faith, being obedient to His Word and following where He leads.
The Holy Spirit powers our walk and witness. Without His power, we will be spiritually unplugged. Apart from the Holy Spirit guiding, leading and empowering us, our ability to witness is incapacitated. No power. No effectiveness. No fruit. And although we may be able to perform the mechanics of the Christian life, including the work of evangelism, in our natural strength, without God’s power, its end is fruitless. Jesus said in John 15:5, “Without Me you can do nothing.” The Psalmist wrote, “Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it” (Ps. 127:1).
Jesus said to His disciples just before He ascended into heaven: “But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8).
Acts 1:8 is a key verse in the entire book of Acts. It contains the disciple’s mission and power source to accomplish that mission – the person of the Holy Spirit.
Ten days after Jesus gave that directive, the Spirit did fall on the disciples at Pentecost (the Jewish feast of Shavuot), and the disciples were off and running. Three thousand people were saved that day and the movement expanded just as the Lord had promised. Just as His promises and His power were critical to the effort of His people in the first century, so they are for us today.
In fact, the Holy Spirit is the lead actor in the book of Acts. Not only was He the wind that powered the turbines of the early church, He is also the engine that powers our witness today as we press on into the gale. To paraphrase Paul: “For we can do all things” [that bear fruit and have real spiritual impact] through Christ, who strengthens us” (Phil. 4:13). Therefore, we need to stay connected to the source.
Power translates from the Greek word dunamis, from which we get the word “dynamite.” Every believer contains the spiritual dynamite he or she needs for the Christian life, including an empowered witness. In short, the Holy Spirit is to our witness what physical wind is to wind turbines – it’s the source – the essential source of energy.
Jesus taught the apostles by the Holy Spirit, who was both the source and power of His ministry (Matt. 4:1, 12:18, 28; Mark 1:12; and Luke 3:22, 4:1, 14, 18). And upon tasking them with the Great Commission, the Lord promised the Holy Spirit would be their ministry power.
We can’t overstate the importance of the Holy Spirit’s work in and through us, as well as in the hearts of those we seek to reach. He is the one who transforms the human life. Therefore, we will continue to refer to His character and work throughout this book.
So, while the gale of growing persecution moves against us, the wind of the Spirit propels us forward into the gale, for His glory, our good, and for the blessing of those to whom we minister.
Going Where No Man Has Gone Before
As we think about the gale of persecution that seeks to impede us, let’s acknowledge real barriers that must be crossed in order to accomplish the Great Commission. When Jesus said, “Go and make disciples of all nations,” He reminded the disciples that He would be with them always, through the person of the Spirit:
And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen. (Matthew 28:18-20).
Imagine being a disciple and hearing Jesus’ command to “make disciples of all nations” and His prediction that they would be His witnesses to the “ends of the earth.” That must have been an incredible shock.
There would be barriers to bridge and lines to cross. How could they understand that command? By faith in the One Who would never leave them or forsake them. And not only faith in Him, but faith in His promised empowerment to engage and fulfill the mission.
Where We Go… in His Power
By its very nature, the Great Commission requires faith. How was that original band of Jewish misfits going to go out and share the Jewish Messiah with the nations of the world… with people so different from them? In the book of Acts, as it is for us today, there were massive challenges to be met. In the face of these challenges, we note astounding and inspiring demonstrations of faith and of the Spirit’s power.
There were established religious lines to be crossed. In Acts 2-4 there was teaching, preaching, and healing happening in Jesus’ name. The only problem was the Jewish religious establishment. Religious leaders had resisted, rejected, and ultimately persecuted Jesus to the point of death. They carried that hatred to the disciples and the early church. It was Jesus’ followers who were emphatically crossing the lines of appropriate religious decorum – doing all of it in His name and in His power.
In Acts 2, after the Spirit came at Pentecost, Peter preached to the Jewish crowd and, as already mentioned, 3,000 people responded to the Gospel. In Acts 3-4, after Peter and John had healed a lame man in Acts 3, they were arrested by the religious leadership (the Sanhedrin) and asked by what power or name had brought about the miracle. Peter, “being filled with the Holy Spirit,” stated:
“Rulers of the people and elders of Israel: If we this day are judged for a good deed done to a helpless man, by what means he has been made well, let it be known to you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, by Him this man stands here before you whole” (Acts 4:8-10).
While we applaud the boldness, courage, and faith of Peter and John, we need to remember these were the same disciples that had fled in fear when Jesus was taken and crucified. Now, we see them not only crossing the line, but also disregarding the potential personal consequence of crossing that line. And how did they do it? Through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Today, we’re told by the politically correct crowd that religion is fine, as long as it’s private. “Don’t make waves,” they say.
“Don’t speak. Don’t proselytize.” The religious barrier in the first century was the Jewish establishment. In the first century, as noted, it pressured the messianic Jewish believers not to teach or heal “in His name” (Acts 4:18).
Today, the religious lines are drawn. Warnings not to cross these PC-constructed lines include pressure from various political and social groups who desire to make the expression of our faith strictly private. If it’s private, the establishment tells us, it’s OK. But once you go public, you’ve crossed the line. And chronicling current Christian persecution here in America is difficult, because it’s so rampant. One simply needs to do an internet search for “Christian persecution in America” to get the idea: “Don’t cross the line or there will be trouble.”
Bridges to Cross… in His Power
There are cultural bridges to be crossed. When Jesus told the disciples they’d be His witnesses “in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8), “Jerusalem and Judea” would be right up their alley, while the words “Samaria” and “to the ends of the earth” would have shaken them – it was beyond their imagination.
Being His witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea would be understandable, as the disciples would have been comfortable on some level with this very familiar territory. They’d spent three and a half years in the “Jesus School of Ministry,” which by the way, was organic, intensely personal and practical. In short, it was real – life unplugged. And for the most part, it took place in their familiar territory, Jerusalem and Judea. So, the locale for being His witnesses on their home turf of Jerusalem and Judea on the surface wouldn’t provide such a challenge.
What would present a great challenge would be Samaria. Why? Because Samaria was a place of division, acrimony and polarization. Jewish people typically wouldn’t step into Samaria. They viewed Samaritans with disdain. The Assyrians invaded and exiled the Northern Kingdom of Israel seven centuries earlier. It was their practice to subject people through intermarriage, taking away their ethnic distinction. Jews from the conquered Northern Kingdom intermarried with Assyrians creating a new people group called Samaritans. Jews from the south, Judea, would later see the Samaritans as half-breeds, and held them in contempt. As you might imagine, Samaritans didn’t take kindly to such vitriol and developed a mutual disdain for their critics.
If going to Samaria wasn’t bad enough, Jesus was sending them to the “end of the earth.” By faith, the Lord would call them to places they did not know, much the same as He called Abraham to go to a land “God would show him” (Genesis 12:1).
Jesus had given them a glimpse of cross-cultural ministry when He ministered to the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4. Here, the disciples got a preview of ministering outside their comfort zone.
In Acts 10, the Lord called Peter to preach the Gospel to Cornelius – a Gentile – and his entire household. The Jewish people’s disdain for Samaritans paled in comparison to their hatred of Gentiles (non-Jewish people). Some Jewish people had nothing to do with Gentiles. In fact, dirt from a Gentile country was considered defiled to certain religious Jewish people, and some would shake it off their sandals before entering Israel.
In this context, Peter is called to not only enter the home of Cornelius, but eat food that wasn’t kosher and share the Good News about the Jewish Messiah. That required faith and the power of the Holy Spirit.
Part of our call as Jesus-followers today is to cross cultural bridges, bringing the truth and grace of God to places and to people different than we are. Today, we don’t need to leave our country to cross cultural bridges. The Lord may call us to reach out to Muslims, atheists, homosexuals and the irreligious in our own country.
And how will this happen? We walk by faith in the power of the Holy Spirit.
The increasingly diverse U.S. population also demands that we not avoid those who are different, even those who push back against us. Instead, we lean against the gale, against the forces crying out, “Stay back,” and reach out to them.
How are we going to do it? The same way the early disciples did. We plug into the Source, depend on Him in all ways.
The Holy Spirit gives us boldness. The Holy Spirit helps us know what to say. I personally don’t have the spiritual gift of evangelism. But I do know we are all called to be witnesses for Jesus. If you’re a Jesus-follower, you have the Holy Spirit, the engine that powers your witness.
I need Him to fill me, to empower me, to help me know what to say and to give me courage to cross lines and connect with people in our ever- changing cultural context – all for Jesus’ sake and for His glory.
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