Reading: “And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost.” Acts 2:4

Professional recruiting agencies are big business. Multi-million-dollar companies want executives with top academic qualifications, vast experience, drive, energy, and proven track records. No company wants fearful, timid, and untested leaders. But the church of Christ is refreshingly different.

The disciples of Christ who gathered for prayer in the upper room were regarded by many as ordinary, simple, uneducated people—what we might call blue collar men. Their numbers were small and they had very few resources. But they had faith (although weak) and a mutual love for each other even though they were hated by the world. As Martyn Lloyd-Jones put it, “They were just twelve men essentially and a number of others with them. They had nothing to recommend them, no great names, no degrees, no money, no means of communication or of advertising. They had nothing at all—they were nobodies.”

They were not prime candidates for a church-planting program according to the world’s standards. And yet as these very same people waited upon God in prayer they were on the verge of something that was going to turn the world upside down! In Acts 1 they prayed and in Acts 2 they were filled with power and began a ministry for God that was going to impact not only right across the Roman Empire at that time but right across the world and across the centuries that followed.

How did such a small group of people—despised in the eyes of the world—make such a dramatic impact for God throughout the world? The only answer is that these very same disciples were filled with the power of the Holy Ghost. This underscores our great need in these days. We will accomplish nothing without the power of the Holy Ghost; therefore let us pray to be filled, blessed, and used of God.