The Grands Letter

Dear Grands,

Acts 1:6-8, “And so when they had come together, they were asking Him, saying, ‘Lord, is it at this time You are restoring the kingdom to Israel?’

7 He said to them, ‘It is not for you to know times or epochs which the Father has fixed by His own authority;

8 but you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.’”

Something like three hours prior to my typing this Letter, the power in my house went out! It was not yet dark, but it was less than a minute from getting my supper into the microwave. Suddenly, there were no lights, no heat, no electric power. The only things that continued to run without immediate power were my cell phone and my Apple watch. And even these derived their power from electricity.

As a child, we often had power outages. It didn’t seem so bad then. We laughed about being in the dark, and about having to wear warmer clothes because the furnace was not producing heat. But, when the television doesn’t work and all computers don’t function and digital clocks throughout the

house have to be reset, we come face-to-face with our dependence upon electric power.

All of that prompted me to consider how vital spiritual power is to our lives!

1. We need spiritual power. Sometimes we jockey through life thinking little to nothing about spiritual power or our need for it. Then, like a rocket, trouble invades us with it’s blackness and we instinctly cry out for help. Everything has gone awry! And when no one comes to answer our cry, we turn to God.

2. We cannot ourselves produce that power. Anytime we cry for help, it is an admission of self-worthlessness in the situation. When those trained and conditioned to help us are themselves as worthless as we to conquer the malady we face –that’s when things get really scary.

3. God alone produces the power we need. His Word says, “…you shall receive

power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.” The Bible teaches us that God

has made every person aware of His being, “so that they are without excuse” (Rom. 1:19-20). When any individual recognizes his need for God and cries out for Him, the LORD lovingly and graciously enters that indivual’s life in the Person of the Holy Spirit. From that

instant, that person belongs to the LORD! The Holy Spirit is the mark that identifies the person as belonging to the LORD God. The Spirit indwells the new child of God and directs his understanding of the Word of God (the Bible), enabling the new child of God to live “to the praise of the glory” of the LORD Himself (Eph. 1:14).

All this is to say two basic things: one, if you have never met the LORD personally, you are

without spiritual power. You stand in need of Jesus Christ, who gave Himself on the Cross

to die for your sins against the true and holy God.

It also says that if you know Him through the new birth, you have a responsibility to live for Him so that He is praised by your life as well as by your words. His power is resident within you because you have the Holy Spirit indwelling your life. If the Spirit’s power does not show through your life, something is seriously wrong, and you need to get it fixed quickly!

One day soon He is Coming! You will not want to meet Him unless you have been made right.

My prayers are for you if you do not know Him, and for you who do, but need His power.

Heartily in Christ Jesus,

(Dado III)

Gene L. Jeffries, Th.D.

Springdale, Arkansas 72764

United States of America

“We never know that God is all we need

until He becomes all that we have.”