A Disciple Named...
Acts 1-6 describes one of the most glorious works of God in history. It’s an amazing sequence of action-filled events: powerful preaching, mass conversions, miraculous healings and wonders. All were the fulfillment of a divine promise foretold by Jesus.
Before his resurrection, Christ instructed the disciples to wait in Jerusalem to receive the “promise of the Father.” That promise began its fulfillment on Pentecost, Israel’s feast of “first fruits.” The world was about to see the first fruits of Christ’s labor on the cross for us.
The disciples couldn’t have possibly imagined what God had in mind for them. They probably thought, “Great! This promise means God is about to restore Israel. He’ll free us from the shackles of Roman bondage forever, and we’ll be his people again.”
Today I think the church might have a similar reaction if we heard the same promise from Jesus. We might think, “When God’s promise comes, our churches will be filled to bursting. The Holy Spirit will move in other cities and people will travel from all over just to get a taste. We’ll be blessed as never before!”
We should want the Holy Spirit to fill our sanctuaries, to bring joy and comfort to God’s people. But when God’s glory comes, it won’t be for our benefit alone. Jesus didn’t say, “When you receive power from on high, you shall be my churchgoers, my Bible studiers, my prayer meeting attenders.” He said, “You will be my witnesses to the ends of the earth.”
God’s power is meant to go beyond the walls of the church to the very farthest reaches of the world.
That’s what we see unfolding in the book of Acts. When Peter got up to preach to the crowd that had gathered, 3,000 people were saved. Later, as Peter and John testified throughout Jerusalem, signs and wonders followed in miraculous healings and deliverances.
Yet that was only the beginning. If the work of the Spirit had stopped in Acts 6, all the power of God would have remained in the hands of twelve apostles. Instead, a tectonic shift took place. God said, “My Spirit will no longer move through just a select few. I’m going to empower every man, woman and child who calls on my name.”
I thank God his promise didn’t stop in Acts 6. Yet in a sense, that’s just where it has stopped in the church today. We assign God’s power to preachers, leaders, broadcasters, authors, anyone with a “platform.” But is God at work in the pews? Is the Spirit’s power working through every believing man, woman and child, the way the Lord intended? If we have been saved, then we’re meant to be filled with the power of God to do the works of God.
Here’s how it happened in Acts: “There arose on that day a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles” (Acts 8:1). According to this verse, the apostles stayed in Jerusalem. But all the other believers were scattered throughout the region. “Those who were scattered went about preaching the word. Philip went down to the city of Samaria and proclaimed to them the Christ” (Acts 8:4-5). And so the new power to minister was unleashed.
Let me add that the man named Philip mentioned here wasn’t the apostle in Jerusalem but a layman. Signs and wonders followed this simple man as he preached. Demon-possessed people were delivered. Disabled people were healed and leaped for joy. Later, when Peter came to Samaria to witness these works, he saw that “there was much joy in that city” (8:8). An entire city was touched by the joy of God! That’s quite an impact made by a single layperson. Yet the Holy Spirit has given the same power to us that he gave to Philip, to do the same spiritual works.
Next we see Ananias, a follower of Jesus who lived in Damascus. We aren’t told much about Ananias. All we know is that he was filled with the Holy Spirit — and he had a tough job ahead of him: God had called him to witness to Saul, the famous Christian-hunter. At the time, Saul was “raging” against the church — and Ananias was being called into the line of fire. He knew that if he wasn’t hearing God correctly, he could be killed.
What would this mission sound like today? Maybe something like this: “Gary, I want you to go into the hills of Pakistan. There’s a man hiding in a cave, and he’s the head of Al Qaeda. I have blinded him temporarily. He’s ready to reject his Muslim faith and follow Jesus. Now, go to him and give him the gospel.”
Ananias had to overcome a very real fear for his life. He did it by being overcome with God’s love. Suddenly, Ananias was filled with compassion for a man who had proclaimed himself the mortal enemy of every Christian. So he went in faith — and the story of Saul’s conversion is well known. His transformation into Paul — the most famous follower of Jesus of all time — may be the most important conversion in history. Paul not only got saved but wrote a major portion of what became the New Testament.
God also used women and young people throughout Acts, just as he used Philip and Ananias. At one point we meet Tabitha, whom I call the Pentecostal Mother Teresa. She was known throughout Joppa for her good works and acts of charity, ministering to people at every level of society. Timothy was a young man who apprenticed under Paul, a pair God used mightily “so (that) the churches were strengthened in the faith, and they increased in numbers daily” (Acts 16:5). Every single day scores of people came to Jesus under a ministry co-partnered by a young person.
Then in Acts 11, we read of another tectonic shift in church history. This one came through Spirit-empowered believers whom Scripture doesn’t even name. These were the first witnesses to Gentiles, taking the good news of Jesus beyond the barriers of Judaism: “There were some of them…who on coming to Antioch spoke to the Hellenists also, preaching the Lord Jesus” (Acts 11:20). I love the phrase used here — “some of them.” These faithful, unnamed believers had no idea of the crucial part they played in history.
In every movement of God, simple, unseen laypeople get hold of the power of Pentecost to do great things in his name.
Pentecost wasn’t just a historical event that happened 2,000 years ago. It is a living, breathing phenomenon that’s still happening. Missiologists say Pentecost occurs around the world every thirty minutes. Somewhere at this moment a small group of people are crying out to God — and his Spirit is falling on them, empowering them to be his witnesses to an unsaved world.
Pentecost is happening right now in Varanasi, a city in northern India I visited not long ago. Less than 1 percent of the population had been churched when a young Christian woman arrived there a few years ago. She began leading people to Jesus one by one, and those converts began leading others to the Lord. Now there are thousands of dynamic churches in the region with a powerful witness for Christ. This young woman didn’t keep Pentecost to herself. There are others just like her all over the world — Christians who cry out to the Spirit to take the Father’s love farther.
On several occasions my father, David Wilkerson, told me what grieved him most when he pastored a small Pennsylvania church in the 1950s. It was a Pentecostal church, so the services followed a certain course. Sister so-and-so played the organ and the congregation sang some traditional songs. Someone stood up and delivered a message in tongues, followed by another who provided the interpretation. Dad then preached. Afterward, he offered a prayer and people came to the altar crying forthe Holy Spirit to come down. Then everyone went home.
This church had no outreach. It had no ministry of mercy. Very few people wee brought to Christ during the few years my father pastored there. These were Christians who sought Pentecost for themselves; they never knew the Pentecost God had in mind for them. My father’s heartbroken prayer said it all: “Lord, if this is Pentecost, I don’t want it. If it’s about having a ‘bless me’ club week after week, I’ll have nothing to do with it.”
It was out of his desire for true Pentecost that Dad stopped watching television and spent time praying instead. The rest is history. These decades later, his book The Cross and the Switchblade has sold multiple millions, with over 1,000 Teen Challenge Centers around the world working to rescue the lost and broken. All of these works proclaim God’s active power today through the Holy Spirit.
The church has yet to finish reading an important chapter of the Bible: Acts 29.
Of course, there are only 28 chapters in Acts. But for centuries God has been writing another chapter through tens of thousands of disciples. Their names aren’t Philip or Tabitha or Timothy. Today they have names like Jenny, who attends our church in Colorado Springs. She’s a red-haired Australian with the most fun laugh you’ve ever heard — and she’s crazy for the gospel. Every day she and her husband see God’s power move on the people they encounter.
There’s also a disciple here named Jimmy, a guy I’ve ministered alongside for decades. Few people evangelize the way Jimmy does. Recently, when he led someone to the Lord, he suggested, “Let me lead a Bible study in your house.” Soon more people in that neighborhood were coming and getting saved. Jimmy did the same thing in another neighborhood. Then another. Bible studies are popping up all over the city because of one radical Christian who believes in the Spirit’s power to move hearts supernaturally.
There is a disciple here named Chris, a young man in our church who got saved just a few months ago. He was suicidal when he met Jesus at one of our street outreaches. Now Chris is involved in a home group and is full of God’s Spirit. He asked his group to pray for his old friends, some of whom he says are demon-filled. An older man in the group offered to go with Chris to witness to his friends, but Chris chuckled: “You don’t want to go where I’m going.” Our seasoned teams have gone into some of the city’s darkest places, but God has chosen to send a bold, young believer to reach one of the darkest.
There is a thirteen-year-old disciple named Jonathan in our church who prays with the authority of a lifelong missionary. His prayers bring adults to their knees because he has the sound of a broken and contrite heart. Jonathan hungers to see God save the lost, and his spiritual hunger is infectious.
The disciples I’m describing are 21st century Christians who have been given 1st century power. And you and I are called likewise — to be equipped by the Spirit of God to do the work of God. I believe it’s time for many in the church to no longer be merely hearers of his Word but doers. Bible studies and prayer groups are good, but it’s one thing to know about Jesus and his glory; it’s another to have his Spirit living inside us so that we minister as he did. That’s the reason the Holy Spirit has come: to live in us so he can accomplish his purposes through us.
I urge you to pray with me: “Lord, may I be strong in learning your Word — and may I be equally strong in doing your Word. I want to be among that group of ‘some of them’ who long to see your power at work in the hearts of the lost. Bring Pentecost here today, Lord! Amen.”