8 Sermon Illustrations on Empowerment by the Holy Spirit

John Henry Jowett has beautifully expressed what characterizes the life of power. "Another element in a forceful character is heat, the fire of an unquenchable enthusiasm.... The Acts of the Apostles is a burning book. There is no cold or lukewarm patch from end to end. The disciples had been baptized with fire, with the holy, glowing enthusiasm caught from the altar of God. They had this central fire from which every other purpose and faculty in the life gets its strength. This fire in the apostles' souls was like a furnace-fire in a great liner, which drives her through the tempests and through the envious and engulfing deep. Nothing could stop these men. Nothing could hinder their going. 'We cannot but speak the things that we have seen and heard. We must obey God rather than men.' This strong imperative rings throughout all their doings and all their speech. They have heat, and they have light, because they were baptized by the power of the Holy Ghost." The Spirit as the Receiver There must be a correspondence between the receiver and the transmitter. When we listen to a radio broadcast, there are many sound waves all around us, but the only way for us to become aware of them is to have an appropriate receiver able to catch them and make them audible. We would never know that anyone was talking to us from a distance if we expected our watch to pick up the sound waves. There is only one way in which man can know God, and that is through man's own spirit. God is a Spirit and can be known only by a spirit. We must not expect to feel Him with our fingers, or see Him with our physical eyes. It cannot be done. Yet that which can be perceived only by the spirit of man is just as real as that which can be perceived by his physical senses.

Spiritual ploughman, sharpen thy ploughshare with the Spirit! Spiritual sower, dip thy seed in the Spirit, so shall it germinate; and ask the Spirit to give thee grace to scatter it, that it may fall into the right furrows! Spiritual warrior, whet thy sword with the Spirit, and ask the Spirit, whose word is a sword indeed, to strengthen thine arm to wield it!

— Spurgeon

Doctor Gordon of Boston used to say that as you passed along Washington Street of that city, or Broadway, New York, you might see stores with the card in the window, “To rent, with or without power,” and anyone could rent the store, and by paying something extra could have power furnished from the engine in the rear. Doctor Gordon thought it would be a good thing to ask men and women after they were saved if they wanted to be a Christian “with power” or “without power”, and if the latter, to tell them there were no vacancies for that kind among God’s people.

Join? Word, we hardly know what we are praying for. I saw a venerable brother the other day, and he said to me, "I remember speaking with you when you were nineteen or twenty years of age, and I never forgot what you said to me. I had been praying with you in the prayer-meeting that God would give us the Holy Ghost to the full, and you said to me afterwards, 'My dear brother, do you know what you asked God for?' I answered, 'Yes.' But you very solemnly said to me, ' The Holy Ghost is the Spirit of judgment and the Spirit of burning, and few are prepared for the inward conflict which is meant by these two words.'" My good old friend told me that at the time he did not understand what I meant, but thought me a singular youth. "Ah!" said he, "I see it now, but it is only by a painful experience that I have come to the full comprehension of it." Yes, when Christ comes, He comes not to send peace on the earth, but a sword; and that sword begins at home in our own souls, killing, cutting, hacking, breaking in pieces. Blessed is that man who knows the Word of the Lord by its exceeding sharpness, for it kills nothing but that which ought to be killed.