The Spirit at Work in Believers, Part 5

~~~~~~~~~~~You Will Do Greater Works than These When the Spirit Comes Upon You

John 14:12-17 assures us that we will be empowered through Christ and the Spirit to do great works in Christ's name. Verse 12 says: " the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father." 

Christian author Laurie Kehler, in her book, “This Outside Life--Finding God in the Heart of Nature,” in chapter 5, talks about Jesus’ reference to the wind in speaking about the Holy Spirit as recorded in John 3:5-8, as well as the Spirit’s outpouring at Pentecost described in the Acts of the Apostles in chapter 2. She says with regard to the acts of the Holy Spirit in the Church and in individual Christians’ lives, “Our Western minds are uncomfortable with things we cannot explain or control… we think that if we cannot wrap our minds around something completely and put a tidy label on it, it must not be true.” 

She goes on to say that she had only been a Christian a few years when this man named Rick had just returned from the mission field in Africa. As he was telling his accounts of what took place there, many persons within listening distance edged farther away. But Laurie got closer. "Rick was saying, 'It’s incredible! The blind are seeing and the lame are really walking!'” The listening crowd became even more thin. He was reporting on events and circumstances in villages where he had been. To his surprise, and despite "his pre-conceived notions about theology and the r God moves, he was a witness to the movement of the Holy Spirit and the healing power of Jesus’ name." Laurie continues, "It didn’t matter how he thought things should be like in the kingdom of God or what his theology was. What mattered was the Spirit was moving with or without him. Yes, the wind blows wherever it pleases!"

In another story, a woman named Suzanne on vacation with a group of Christian travelers happened upon a village. The people of the village asked them, “Are you Christians?” The travelers replied yes, and the villagers said, “Oh good. We will get the sick now.” The travelers looked back and forth at each other in "shock and surprise," and "a lot of discomfort." The villagers lined up and said, “You can pray now and we can be healed, right?” Suzanne confesses that they did not know what to do, and that their faith was not a whole lot, "but with their little bit of faith, they started placing hands on people and prayed for them." As she is recalling this years later, she says she is "still in shock, as it was so surreal and out of our control. It wasn’t about what we said or did – it was all about the power of Jesus’ name. We prayed for those people and they were healed. Right before our eyes."