Just a reminder …
“You will receive power…” (Acts 1:8) — that’s how Jesus framed it.
Not a suggestion, not an optional high-speed 64GB RAM upgrade for the hyper-spiritual, but a promise — and a necessity. Power. Not of human origin, not mustered up through effort or intellect, but breathed into us by the Spirit of the living God. It’s power that makes the Church more than an organisation, that takes words and gives them weight, takes faith and gives it fire, and that takes our witness and makes it effective.
You won’t find this difficult to imagine because it’s the news from a few days ago: one of the busiest airports in the world — Heathrow — grounded to a halt. Not because of fog or flight restrictions, war or terrorism, but because of a fire at a nearby power station. Just like that, the electricity failed. Screens flickered and failed. Flights stalled, cancelled or diverted. Thousands stranded. All the systems still in place, all the technology intact, but without power? Useless. Form without function. The lights went out.
That’s not just Heathrow — potentially, that’s the Church if we are complacent. It could be us.
When we sideline the Spirit — when we trade intimacy for activity, dependence for strategy, power for polish — we risk becoming beautiful buildings with no breath in them. The systems may keep running. The programmes might impress. But underneath it all? Delay. Disruption. Darkness. The lights may be on, but no one’s being transformed.
When you pause for thought, it gets even more sobering.
Back in the Old Testament, there’s this line in the story of Samson, buried in Judges 16:20. After Delilah wears him down and he finally lets the secret of his awesome strength slip, she calls in the Philistines. Samson wakes up, ready to fight, just as he always had. “I will go out as at other times and shake myself free.” And then come these chilling words: “But he did not know that the Lord had left him.”
He didn’t know. He assumed the power would always be there, that God’s anointing was permanent, and that his experience of the past guaranteed future strength. But he was wrong, and so he stood up, flexed his muscles — and found them depleted of strength. Something had gone wrong.
That’s the danger. Not that we lose the Spirit in some dramatic explosion of failure, but that we slowly drift, step by step, into self-reliance. We can get so used to the machinery of ministry, the rhythm of services, the applause of the crowd, that we no longer notice the absence of power. Then we keep going out to shake ourselves free — out of habit, out of tradition — but the strength is gone. And tragically, we don’t even realise it.
Paul warned of it too: a people who would have “the appearance of godliness, but denying its power” (2 Timothy 3:5). That’s not idle talk – it’s a prophetic warning to anyone building without the Spirit, working for God while walking far from Him.
So the call is urgent — return. Realign. Repent. Don’t wait until the lights go out. Don’t wait until you’re standing like Samson — surrounded, confused, empty.
“You will receive power…” Not just once. Not just in theory. But again. Fresh. Real. Today.
If we’ll humble ourselves, wait on the Holy Spirit, and welcome Him.