’“But the hope of God’s kingdom kept spreading and multiplying everywhere!” Acts 12:24 TPT. That hope kept spreading everywhere back then, after the Holy Spirit came… because God’s people wouldn’t shut up! We need to look deeply at the effect the Holy Spirit had on ordinary human beings …  They were so confident in WHO they had met, that they were not afraid of death.  

In other words, they were suddenly fearless. We can analyse these words up one hill and down the other, but the truth IS, these people met SomeOne so extraordinary He utterly changed them, not by His doctrine, but by Who He was! What Christ had taught them came alive in their hearts. In those moments everything Jesus said to them was instantly digested and made part of them. It became flesh.

Being born again takes what God said in His book and makes it into a living word, in our lives. It stops being what we have to DO and becomes who we ARE! We simply must not settle for how many hands are raised when there is a call to come and meet Jesus! He is beyond extraordinary, and if meeting Him does not utterly change our POV on this life and the next … then we didn’t meet Him yet, we just heard about Him. 

That is not a bad beginning place BTW, we simply need to understand that the Holy Spirit did more than change mindsets – He totally changed people’s hearts, their inner lives. I exhort you strongly, don’t settle for the smaller portion! Meeting the risen Christ is meant to have an irreversible impact – He is to be sought because meeting Him changes our view of the world around us and Who He is.

The kind of wishy-washy half-hearted faith many of us settle for, is a pale shadow of really knowing Him. With Jesus there is always more – more to love, more to learn about, more to worship. Christianity is not a passive  belief. It demands everything. But He gave us His all too – without hesitation – that’s what keeps us going!

I think that many people are not living a life worthy of what He did for us, because they have not met the Man Who is God in human form. If this is how you feel, then I strongly urge you to study the gospels over and over again. Ask the Holy Spirit to help you see beyond the words and doctrines of this world, and pray for an ever increasing revelation of Who HE IS. (Read the bits in red!) That means read what Jesus Christ Himself SAID. 

Sometimes we get way too clever and so we stop listening with the heart of a child, and listen with our heads instead. One word of heart revelation is worth a billion words of clever ploys and well-written words. WE MUST SEE HIM FOR WHO HE IS, FOR OURSELVES! His Word needs to BECOME ‘flesh’ for all of us. Our brains cannot possibly comprehend just Who we are dealing with. We need that place inside us that has been dead in sin all our lives to come alive. The Holy Spirit will do that for us. First He captures our attention then He captures our hearts. He came to lead us into greater things.

I love His book because it reveals Him to me. That kind of mind-blowing view of Who He is, is my daily bread! If what I believe elevates me and what I think I know, if it elevates knowledge over truth … then I’ve missed His whole message. Jesus Christ did not come here so we could be clever or famous – HE CAME TO EARTH TO REVEAL GOD’S HEART OF LOVE TO MANKIND. He did not come just to teach us the new covenant – He WAS that covenant in human flesh. If you want to know about how much God loves you, look at Christ.

Sadly we cannot spread abroad a HOPE we do not have! We’ve been doing that for 2,000 + years and we have gotten nowhere. Let the Holy Spirit take your hand and let Him lead you into a deeper, wider, more intimate place where all you can see is how beautiful Jesus is. How generous He is, how precious He is, how much we need Him. We need to comprehend what mankind has been given before we try to give it away. We are to be His living illustrations.

However, don’t stop reaching out to others with what you know already, and don’t stop going after knowing the One Who loved YOU more than life itself.  I bless us all with fresh revelation of Who He truly is, and what He did for all of us. AMEN. 🙏