HONOLULU — Whenever the Christian Church looks at the world through the power of the Holy Spirit, something amazing is about to take place and change is on its way, a Richmond, Va., pastor told the Baptist World Congress.
Under the influence of the Spirit, the Church is empowered “to change handicaps into happy helpfulness, to change disadvantages into delightful deliverances, to change lingering lameness into leaping love,” said Lance Watson, senior pastor of St. Paul’s Baptist Church in Richmond. Watson preached Aug. 1 in the last session of the Congress.
Watson drew on the account in the Book of Acts of the Apostles Peter and John healing a lame man they encountered at the Temple gate – an incident Watson said shows the power of the Church to turn tragedy into a “triumph of amazing grace.”
The power of the Holy Spirit brings amazing changes, said Lance Watson. (Photo by Peter Traynham)
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“The Church found a crippled man who had never walked a day in his life and left that man walking, leaping and praising God,” said Watson. “It is the Pentecostal challenge of the Church and to the Church to make people, conditions and the world better than we found them. The Pentecostal effects of true religion are not merely vertical, personal and spiritual, but horizontal, political and communal.”
Peter and John were on their way to pray in the Temple, hoping to receive additional grace, when they encountered a man who needed the grace they already had, said Watson.
“It is important for us to realize that all of our chances to get more come to us wrapped up as opportunities to give what we already have,” he said. “Peter and John went up to get and found a challenge to give.”
The apostles’ opportunity to give was energized by what they had received in the past in the Temple, said Watson.
“Cripples are stranded at the door of temple,” he said. “The homeless and the hungry roam our streets. This man was crippled, but he was not dumb. He knew that what was going on in the temple should help him outside the temple. The supreme test of the effectiveness of what happens in the temple is what happens beyond the temple because of what we have experienced in the temple.”
While the lame man knew only someone who had been in the presence of God could help him, he didn’t know anything about Peter and John until they healed him, said Watson.
“The world does not know about our religious experience,” he said. “The culture does not know that we have been with Jesus and been saved by amazing grace unless we show them by what we do. … The world will not know who we are until we show them by our love.”
And to show that love, Peter and John focused their complete attention on the lame man – they “fastened their eyes on him,” said Watson.
“They looked straight at the man as if nothing in the world mattered except this man,” he said. “They gave him their undivided, unbroken and unabridged Holy Ghost attention. God will not allow you and me to look up to God without also giving us a heart to look out at humanity. Peter and John did not look past the man; they looked straight at the man. So often, we do just the opposite. We look past the pain, suffering, affliction, neglect, poverty, hunger, racism, sexism, ageism, abuse and addiction.”
The Church needs that kind of intense focus, said Watson, because “whenever the Church looks in the power of the Holy Spirit at hurting people, something amazing is about to take place. A change is on the way. A new day is about to break.”