Finding Great Power: Acts 4:32-33
How do we find great power to get things done? The early church found great power to testify to the death of Christ to pay for sin and the bodily resurrection of Christ to defeat sin and death once and for all.
They used that great power to testify and reach others for Christ. We can learn from them and find great power for our endeavors today!
The answer to our query about how to find great power to get things done is in Acts 4:32-33, “(32) Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common. (33) And with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the power of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all.” (ESV)
It’s imperative we see the unity the believers had in this early history of the church. Noticethe full number of the people who were believers were of one heart and one soul. They were so unified they considered all their possessions the property of one another. This attitude of oneness wasn’t imposed by some human power but emerged from the power that came from God! There’s amazing power when a group of people find unity of purpose!
Notice great power was on the people and that led to great achievement of their mission to testify to the resurrection of Christ and impact others for Him! Great unity led to great power and that led to tremendous achievement in their mission! Where did that unity and power come from?
The unity and power came from one source and that source was that great grace was upon them all! The word “grace” means favor with God that’s not deserved but is just granted by Him! Notice that what was upon them wasn’t just grace, but great grace! God dumped an abundance of that grace on His people and they overachieved!
Those early believers set out to testify to Christ and bring people of their own free will to Christ. In Acts 2:41, 3,000 people came to Christ on the Day of Pentecost in A.D. 33! In Acts 2:47 the text says people were added to the number of the Disciples day by day, in other words people responded to Christ and believed in Him every day! Acts 5:14 indicates “multitudes” of people came to Christ! Then Acts 6:7 says the number of the disciples multiplied! The testimony of the early disciples was successful in the extreme! The key to such success is the power of God from extreme unity and that by God granting His grace in the hyper extreme!
Success in anything comes from power expressing itself in unity of purpose among people and God granting His grace to that endeavor! In fact, I’ve concluded the necessary unity of purpose among people comes from God’s grace as does the power to achieve great things! Grace from God is the necessary element!
We’ve had times in our country when we needed this power before! I’ve been around 71 plus years and have seen bad times before! You take the pandemic, the economic shutdown, the demonstrations and riots in the streets and I think it’s the worst time I’ve seen in my life! I have never seen us as divided as we are in 2020! 1968 was bad, but I think we have now eclipsed the division of that year long ago!
We need great power to fix the destruction from the COVID-19 illness, the economic destruction and the unrest leading to riots and destruction! Add to the three major problems the reality that 2020 is an election year and politics enter the scene and tend to blow up things that are already bad!
These issues impact and bring pain to families! Hard times can bring families together or tear them apart! Sadly, some families are blown up by our tough times!
The country needs power and unity from grace! Family’s need that same power from the same source! How do we get politicians, the media, and the people, with a multitude of opinions to come together in unity of purpose and solve our issues and heal our land and our families? It will take that great grace from God!
The book of Acts starts out with a 10-day prayer meeting in an upper room in Jerusalem. Imagine a 10-day prayer meeting! They had one, and it occurs to me it set the stage for the movement of God in great grace to cause tremendous unity and power to come to bear on the people of God for the achievement of the testimony they would provide!
We will find great power to heal our land and our families when God graces us with unity and the power that flows out of it! Get together with someone you know, or your church group and pray for great grace to come on our families and our country and solve the problems we have! Why not have a 10-day prayer meeting? It’s time! Tom West is a retired pastor working in advanced planning at Myers Funeral Service. You can contact Tom on his cell phone at 602.758.1168.