To assist you in spending time each day asking God for the overflowing presence of the Holy Spirit, here is the last in our series of brief devotions. They come from Nicky Gumbel, creator of the Alpha Course. If you would be interested in his daily devotional, find it here: Bible in One Year. I encourage you each day to launch from Nicky’s concluding prayer into your own time of asking the Holy Spirit to reveal to you more of Jesus, and to let His power move powerfully in your life. Today’s text begins below:
3. Be set free by the power of the Holy Spirit
If anyone was ‘wild at heart’ it was Samson. He had extraordinary strength, might and ability. But his life was hardly a model. The story of Samson’s life is bizarre, extraordinary, and perhaps a bit embarrassing.
However, Samson is highlighted in the New Testament as one of the heroes of faith (Hebrews 11:32). God uses all types of people. He uses us in spite of our sins and weaknesses.
It is amazing what can happen when the Spirit of the Lord comes upon people ‘in power’. As so often, what God did in the Old Testament in a physical way, he did in the New Testament in a spiritual way.
On three occasions in today’s passage we read that, ‘The Spirit of the Lord came upon him in power’ (Judges 14:6,19; 15:14). On the third occasion we read that ‘the Spirit of the Lord came upon him in power. The ropes on his arms became like charred flax, and the bindings dropped from his hands’ (15:14). This can be seen as a picture of release from bondage. The power of the Holy Spirit can release us from the things that bind us.
A prayer to guide you today:
Lord, today we need your power to break the bondages in our lives, to fill us with streams of living water, to satisfy our own thirst and the thirst of others. Help us also to develop fruit of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Help us to be like Jesus, who demonstrated not only the power of the Spirit, but also the fruit of the Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.