Staying power

Today is the first day of the second month of the year. It’s also the first day after one of the most productive months of writing that I’ve ever experienced. In fact, I wrote just shy of 9,000 words in January. To put that in perspective, a 200-page book would have around 50,000 words, so I wrote about 20% of a book in one month.

I can tell you’re impressed, but the reality is that I’ve made a commitment to myself to write every day for the year, not just for a month. So as great as last month was, it’s also now a past month. Today is what matters now, and while I could stop and always say that I had a productive month of writing, I wouldn’t be able to say I accomplished the goal.

Interestingly enough, that highlights one of the things that I love the most about the Holy Spirit (which just happens to be something that a lot of believers misunderstand about the Holy Spirit). Most Christians think of the Holy Spirit as the occasional flame thrower. This is especially true if you tend to run in the Pentecostal and Charismatic circles like me because we tend to limit the power of the Holy Spirit to spectacular moments in once-a-week services. But Acts 2:42 shows us the true power of the Holy Spirit, and it isn’t starting power, but staying power.

Admittedly, I don’t read a lot in the King James Version. But sometimes, a verse translated in the KJV just seems to speak to me, and Acts 2:42 is one of those. It reads:

“And they continued steadfastly…”

This is after 2 pretty significant Holy Ghost moments. The first was at the beginning of the chapter when the early church experienced a Pentecost like no other and actually became the early church, and the second was in the verse right before this when that early church grew by 3,000 members on the same day it was started. As a church planter, that’s the kind of laugh day that you dream about!

These guys had every reason to stop and celebrate. They didn’t need to do anything else or prove anything else or seek anything else. They experienced a touch of heaven that many of us only read about. And yet, the follow up to those moments was fairly mundane. They just continued steadfastly to do the very things they had been doing. But now, they had staying power.

Did you know that studies show that two-thirds of unhappy marriages will become happy within 5 years if people stay married and don’t divorce? Staying power is powerful, and it’s the least talked about aspect of the power we’ve been given from the Holy Spirit.

I’ve continued steadfastly by writing on this first day of the second month in the year of our Lord 2021. What do you need to continue in steadfastly? You’ve got the power. Now, it’s your turn to simply use it to continue.

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