God's Work in God's Way

The following is an excerpt from a chapter in the book No Little People, by Francis Schaffer.

There is no source of power for God’s people—for preaching or teaching or anything else—except Christ Himself. Apart from Christ, anything which seems to be spiritual power is actually the power of the flesh. Luke’s record of Jesus’ pre-ascension statements has exactly the same emphasis: “But ye shall receive power after the Holy Spirit is come upon you; and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth” (Acts 1:8). The force of the Greek is, “ye shall receive power; then ye shall be witnesses.” A specific order is involved: after having the Holy Spirit come upon them, the disciples were to witness. Though we today are immediately indwelt by the Holy Spirit when we accept Christ as Savior, being indwelt is not the same as having the fullness of the power of the Holy Spirit. The disciples had to wait to receive the Spirit at Pentecost. Christians today are to follow the same order: to be indwelt by the Holy Spirit at salvation and to know something of the reality of the power of Christ through the agency of the Holy Spirit—and then to work and witness. The order cannot be reversed. There are to be many “fillings.” Doing the Lord’s work in the Lord’s way is not a matter of being saved and then simply working hard. After Jesus ascended, the disciples waited quietly in prayer for the coming of His Spirit. Their first motion was not toward activism—Christ has risen, now let us be busy. Though they looked at the world with Christ’s compassion, they obeyed His clear command to wait before they witnessed. If we who are Christians and therefore indwelt by the Spirit are to preach to our generation with tongues of fire, we also must have something more than an activism which men can easily duplicate. We must know something of the power of the Holy Spirit. (Schaeffer, Francis A., No Little People, pp. 64-65, Crossway)