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By his Spirit ...

Tuesday, June 10, 2014. We had the weekend of pentacost the last days. Pentacost is about the Holy Spirit. It is about God himself, God's power in our life. But it does not work as we would usually expect. His power is the power of the spirit - a different power, not as clearly visible as wappons, airplanes and tanks. But it is not less powerful …!

Not by Might, Nor by Power …

The prophetic book of Zechariah takes us into a time where the temple was destroyed. The word came to Zerubbabel, to build it up again … but not by might!

6 Then he said to me, “This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel: Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts. 7 Who are you, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel you shall become a plain. And he shall bring forward the top stone amid shouts of ‘Grace, grace to it!’” 8 Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying, 9 “The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this house; his hands shall also complete it. Then you will know that the Lord of hosts has sent me to you. 10 For whoever has despised the day of small things shall rejoice, and shall see the plumb line in the hand of Zerubbabel. “These seven are the eyes of the Lord, which range through the whole earth.” (Zechariah 4, 6-10)

You might ask yourself: how is this going to work? How can it be? In an environment, where pure force was experienced by all the people. In an environment, where the people of Israel have been brought into excile, by force. In such an environment the Lord himself claims that things will change completely, but not by force!

What about yourself? …

I have been sitting in a worship service in Eastern Germany on Sunday, close to the Polish border. And the pastor talked about the power of the spirit. It was quite moving: the spirit has the power to penetrate everything, all your difficult situations, all your struggle. The spirit is what counts!

If it is the Spirit, what can we do? How can we act? What to think, what to feel, how to live? Is it to bear the suffering silently? Is it to cry aloud? Is it to be upset and full of angry words? Is it to run away? How to react? How to wait?

Waiting for the spirit to act is the crucial art here. We need a constructive way to wait. We need to prepare ourselves, “make a way for the Lord”. In a concrete situation, there can be many ways to wait for the Lord constructively. And there will be a time to act. Led by the spirit, our action can be a part of God's plan. Though it will not be our might which counts, but his spirit can do it! (Roland Potthast) ... more texts