After Jesus rose from the grave and spent forty days visiting people and “speaking about the kingdom of God,”1 he told his disciples, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.”2 And then he was gone—before they could ask any more questions—and I’m sure they had a few! Like, what kind of power was he talking about? That would have been my question. So, let’s ask it. What kind of power did they receive? It has to do with words—which sounds a bit disappointing, doesn’t it? I mean, why not give the disciples the power to heal or the power to turn a few loaves of bread into hundreds of loaves or the power to turn water into wine? At least a super human power like flying, or being super strong, or super fast, or having x-ray vision, right?
But no. It was the power to speak words. The power came to them at Pentecost when people of all nationalities were gathered. It was the power to communicate to everyone about “the mighty works of God.”3 Some people refer to this gift as “speaking in tongues,” which sounds very spiritual and mystical, but it was really just speaking in the different languages of the people present. And it only happened at this one gathering. No where else in scripture do we read about people suddenly having the power to speak in another language.
So, what is going on here? God came down! Again! It was his Holy Spirit that appeared and rested on the believers. His Spirit gave the believers the power to communicate with everyone else who was there (approximately 3,000 people) about Jesus. Why is it so important that God gave them words to communicate? What else do we have but words? God used words to create the world: “God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.”4 Later, “the Word became flesh”5 in the form of Jesus. After Jesus ascended into heaven, the Word appeared again at Pentecost in the form of a spirit—a tongue of fire.
As a former English teacher who loves words, I find this so exciting! James refers to our words as what we do with our tongues. He says we curse, we bless, we put people down, we lift people up, we boast, we teach, we judge, we pray, we confess, we quarrel—we talk a lot! Whether written or spoken, words are powerful. As believers, we have the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus, living inside of us and that includes the ability to say the right thing, the good thing, the godly thing.
So. The question for us today, is how is that going for you? What are your words (written and spoken) conveying to others? There are so many scripture verses regarding words. I’ll choose just one: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.”6 That verse covers a lot of territory, so I’ll let the Word of God speak to you instead of me talking about it! (Sometimes it is good not to use words. 🙄) And I still think it would be cool if we had the power to fly.
1Acts 1:3 2Acts 1:8 3Acts 2:11 4Genesis 1:3 5John 1:4 6Ephesians 3:16