TOPIC:“You Can Be What You Should Be”
“But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you
shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the
end of the earth” (Acts 1:8, NKJV).
I want to speak today on a subject that I believe is desperately needed by a vast majority of those of us who profess to be genuine followers of Jesus Christ. It is this truth: You can be what you should be. You can be a Christian. You can be a victorious Christian. You can be a lovable Christian. You can be a faithful Christian. You can be a fruitful Christian. You can be a Spirit-filled Christian. You see, my friend, you can be what you should be. That's the truth that the risen Christ is trying to get across to those defeated and fearful disciples of His there in the Upper Room. And it is this same truth that Christ is trying to get across to each one of us today.
Now, certainly, if any bunch of people needed to hear the words of our Lord as set forth in the text it was those early disciples of His who failed Him so miserably and fled from Him so cowardly. How desperately and urgently they needed to know that it was possible for them to be what God passionately desired them to be - radiant in their living and dynamic in their witnessing. Was not this what Jesus was implying in the beginning of His ministry when He said to that big fisherman, Peter, in John chapter 1 verse 42: “Thou art Simon, the son of Jonah; thou shalt be called Cephas, which is by interpretation, a stone”? You can be, Peter, what you should be.
Our Lord recognized more than any other person that in order for these disciples of His to live victorious lives, to face the coming persecution, and to fulfill the task of world evangelization, they needed to experience what He was talking about in the words of our text - a divine Person, a dynamic power and a dedicated purpose. Let us now come to grips with the truth that we can be what we should be.