John Piper Devotional

The Power to Profess Christ

With great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. (Acts 4:33)

If our ministry is to witness to Christ tomorrow in some unsympathetic situation, the key will not be our brilliance; the key will be abundant future grace.

Of all people, the apostles seemed to need least help to give a compelling witness to the risen Christ. They had been with him for three years. They had seen him die. They had seen him alive. In their witnessing arsenal they had “many proofs” (Acts 1:3). You might think that, of all people, their ministry of witnessing, in those early days, would sustain itself on the strength of the past glories that were still so fresh.

But that is not what the book of Acts tells us. The power to witness with faithfulness and effectiveness did not come mainly from memories of grace, or reservoirs of knowledge; it came from the new arrivals of “great grace.” That’s the way it was for the apostles, and that’s the way it will be for us in our ministry of witnessing.

Whatever added signs and wonders God may show to amplify our witness to Christ, they will come the same way they came for Stephen. “And Stephen, full of grace and power, was doing great wonders and signs among the people” (Acts 6:8).

There is an extraordinary future grace and power that we may bank on in the crisis of special ministry need. It is a fresh act of power by which God “bore witness to the word of his grace” (Acts 14:3; see also Hebrews 2:4). The grace of power bears witness to the grace of truth.