A New Thing

"One Year Bible" New Testament Passage
Acts 18:23-19:12

² he said to them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?”  So they said to him, “We have not so much as heard whether there is a Holy Spirit.”  ³ And he said to them, “Into what then were you baptized?”  So they said, “Into John’s baptism.”  Acts 19:2-3 (NKJV)

God has more for you and me.  There is always more.  We all need to keep growing in God.  The tragedy of many believers' lives is that they have stopped taking ground -- they have stopped growing.  There are always higher and heights and deeper depths for us in Christ.  That is EXCITING!

Paul came upon twelve men at Ephesus who had gotten a good start but somewhere along the way had reached a stopping point.  They were good men.  They knew the Word of God.  They had made solid commitments in keeping with the amount of truth they had learned.

They were a part of the "John the Baptist Movement."  It had been wonderful.  They had seen many people come to repentance and get their lives turned around. But, unfortunately, they had not grown beyond this great moment in salvation history.  They were stuck in a movement that had seen its best days and was now a thing of the past.

God is always moving ahead.  It is so easy for us to get stuck in what happened yesterday, and then miss what God is doing today.  For these twelve men, they had to come to a new openness to the ministry of the Holy Spirit.  They needed to receive a new level of God's presence in their lives.  

This is not an easy step for many of us.  I remember when I became aware that God was doing bigger things than the small "box" I was accumstomed to.  It took courage and faith to become open to new levels of relationship with God and His purposes.  

Periodically, God leads all of us into these places.  He says, "I am doing a new thing."  He says, "Will you not know it?" (Isaiah 43:19).  These twelve men were willing to receive the "new thing" God was doing.  Are you?