One of Jesus’ last promises to His church is in Acts 1:8: “But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me . . . to the end of the earth.” (NKJV). When He ascended to the Father, Jesus supplied divine power to His people. “Therefore being exalted to the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He poured out this which you now see and hear.” Acts 2:33 (NKJV).

“The Holy Spirit was the highest of all gifts that He could solicit from His Father for the exaltation of His people. The Spirit was to be given as a regenerating agent, and without this the sacrifice of Christ would have been of no avail. . . . Sin could be resisted and overcome only through the mighty agency of the Third Person of the Godhead, who would come with no modified energy, but in the fullness of divine power. It is the Spirit that makes effectual what has been wrought out by the world’s Redeemer. It is by the Spirit that the heart is made pure. Through the Spirit the believer becomes a partaker of the divine nature. Christ has given His Spirit as a divine power to overcome all hereditary and cultivated tendencies to evil, and to impress His own character upon His church.” Desire of Ages, 671.

God is willing to do the same for us today as He did for His people in the first century. We need the Holy Spirit to be poured on us so we can proclaim Jesus’ soon coming in the clouds of glory. May we talk about it, pray about it, and prepare our hearts for it—and may the Spirit’s regenerating power transform our lives!