Without theological vision, a vision that wrestles with what it means to be God’s people, in God’s world, under God’s rule, the church inevitably loses both its identity as God’s possession and its purpose as the people and place where God’s glory is displayed in the gospel and God’s praise is declared.
Michael Lawrence

CXVII. Power from the Holy Ghost.

ACTS i. 8.
“Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come
upon you. And ye shall be witnesses unto Me.”

I. THE reference is to the Holy Ghost. Do we dwell
sufficiently on His work and office. He is the originating
power of the ministry, and it is His perpetuated grace by
which the ministry is crowned with success.
II. Those who receive Him and live under His influence
will come in possession of power. Of all God’s attributes
men are most covetous of power. He is the source, and
the only source of the gift of power.
III. The purpose for which this gift of power is com-
municated, is that the Church may testify to the world.
It is to be used for Divine ends. Wherever God gives
power, there is use and motion for that power. The truth
as it is in Jesus, imperial in the past, the ages have not
dawned yet upon the fulness of its triumphs.
W. Morley Punshon, D.D.