Plug Into The Power

Plug into the Power

By Pastor Jim May

(This sermon references a video that was purchased from Sermonspice.com that depicts a young man using a chainsaw without starting it.)

Acts 1:8, “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.”

Just like the chainsaw in the video, we need to have power applied before we can really be what God wants us to be.

The fact is that most people don’t use the power at their disposal because using that power requires getting “turned on” to God in a way that they aren’t willing to do.

Anyone can look good when we wrap ourselves in a false front that hides what we truly are. The chainsaw came wrapped neatly, with a little red bow on top. You could see that it was a chainsaw just from the shape of the package, but you couldn’t see the real thing, only the package.

That’s the way it is with people. We wrap our real feelings deep inside a covering of protection because we don’t want people to see the real us. Why do we do that? It’s because many of us don’t want our friends to know what we really think. We don’t want them to know the “real us”, or they just may not want to be friends with us at all.

Have you ever wanted to tell a friend what you really thought of their outfit, or what you really thought of their attitude and manners? Most of the time we hold back from being totally honest because we don’t want to hurt their feelings and lose their friendship.

Most people don’t really want to hear the truth anyway. They would rather hear flattering words and get a pat on the back. If you want to lose a friend, just open your mouth and tell them exactly how you feel. They won’t be around long.

Counselors often have to spend hours with disturbed people to get to the real person on the inside. They go through a process of “unwrapping” their layers of protection, one-by-one, until the real true thoughts and the true personality comes out.

We hide our hurts under a fake smile. We tell the world that everything is fine when, in reality, life seems to be really hard sometimes.

This same kind of scenario is in the church too. People come to church, acting as though they are right with God, putting on a front, putting on their “Christian Face”, when under that front, they are spiritually lacking. There is no power of the Holy Spirit in their lives because they won’t allow Him to control or guide their lives.

A lot of young people go to church, act like Christians, but they haven’t done one thing all week to become more like Christ. They haven’t read the Bible at all. They have spent hours and hours in front of the TV, at the ball games, or playing on the X-Box or some other computer game, but they haven’t spent one minute in prayer, seeking the power of God in their lives.

Week after week some of us walk into the church, but we aren’t any more powered by the Holy Ghost today than we were last week, or last month, or even last year. Why is that so?

It’s because we simply haven’t plugged into Jesus. We pass by him every once in while, but we never take the time or make the real commitment to get plugged in.

If you take the plug that powers your computer game and just pass it by the outlet once a while, I don’t think that game will work for long. If you pass the plug by the outlet and just let it hang on the edge of the outlet, you might accidentally get a spark every once in while when it makes contact, but most of the time, there’s no power coming through the line.

The fact is, unless you take the time to get really committed and plugged in you will never be powered by the Holy Spirit.

Plugging in that power cord on your computer game takes just a little more effort than passing by the outlet. It takes your attention and focusing on what you’re doing so you can get the plug in the right place, apply the right amount of pressure (you don’t use a hammer to drive the plug in), and make sure that the plug in turned in the right direction.

You can’t just show up at church, walk by your Bible once in while, sit through a worship service, and walk by the altar once a week and expect to be powered by the Holy Ghost. That power doesn’t come by osmosis. It doesn’t reach out and grab you like a magnet. You have to get close and work at it before that power will be in your life.