by Kirk Cowman
One of my biggest fears is of being unprepared. In school, I hated classes with pop-quizzes. In business, I would over-prepare for meetings out of fear of having everyone looking to me for something I didn’t have. As a pastor, a reoccurring nightmare I have is of having forgotten that I’m preaching that week and being completely unprepared.
In Acts 1, Jesus gave his disciples a mission, to be his witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the world. Can you imagine being one of the disciples and hearing Jesus that day? It is like my nightmare of being unprepared.
The disciples were from Galilee. They had grown up and lived the majority of their lives there. They had done some traveling, but likely only within the boundaries of Israel, an area smaller than our province. The disciples were fishermen, tax-collectors, freedom-fighters. They were uneducated, uncultured, common, everyday people. Now, Jesus was telling them that they were going to go to the ends of the world telling people about him!
Think of it like being from a small town in Saskatchewan, having not graduated from high school, working for minimum wage all your life, and then being told you were going to New York to address the United Nations.
The disciples were completely unprepared for what Jesus was entrusting them to do. No wonder they gathered to pray every day after he ascended to heaven. I can imagine what some of those prayers might have sounded like, “Lord help us!” and “Would you mind dropping in for a moment, we’ve got some questions?” If you’ve ever felt unprepared or unqualified to do something, then you know what the disciples were feeling.
Yet in Acts 2 something incredible happens. The first church is gathered praying and suddenly the Holy Spirit fills every single person in that room, giving them the ability to speak in different languages. What happened draws a crowd.
The crowd is made up of people who were in town for back-to-back religious festivals. There were people from all over the world and each of them heard their language spoken by members of the church. Peter got up to speak to the crowd and he has 119 people behind him who are fully equipped to translate his message into the languages of every single person in the crowd. Three thousand people begin following Jesus that day. It turned out that the disciples and the church were completely equipped to be Jesus’ witnesses.
God knew the disciples weren’t prepared, so he sent his Spirit to equip them. As you read through Acts you will never find the disciples unequipped for what God invites and entrusts them to do. The Holy Spirit is continually equipping them and he wants to do the same for you and me today.
Do you ever feel like you aren’t prepared or equipped for God’s mission? Do you ever feel like you aren’t the right person to be a witness for Jesus in your neighborhood, school or workplace? Do you ever feel like you just can’t do what God is asking of you?
What God invites you to do, he equips you to do. When it comes to the mission of God, you may feel unprepared or underqualified, but you aren’t. The same Holy Spirit who filled Peter and the other 119 on Pentecost is in you. The Holy Spirit will equip you to do what God is calling you to do. Ask him to equip you, seek the filling of Holy Spirit and step up into the mission God has for you.
Can you imagine what would have happened if Peter hadn’t stepped up that day? What if the 119 Spirit-empowered translators had decided to just go back inside, instead of translating Peter’s message? Thousands would have missed out on discovering Jesus. Jesus’ message and the church would not have moved forward and the world would not have been changed. This could happen today, unless we step up.
It is our turn to step up in the full power and equipping of the Holy Spirit and be Jesus’ witnesses everywhere we go.
