Acts 1:8 "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."
These words are amongst the last that Jesus spoke to His disciples before He ascended into Heaven, and they allude to the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples in an awesome way. (The story of Pentecost - which we recently celebrated on 3 June - can be found in Acts 2.) Through receiving the Holy Spirit, the disciples - once fisherman and other "ordinary" people - were empowered for the work of God, standing strong for their faith against persecution and proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus with boldness and without fear.
But these are words that Jesus speaks to you and me just as much as they were for the disciples. Like the disciples, we too are called to follow Jesus in our lives. The New Testament tells of how the disciples were "witnesses in Jerusalem, and throughout Judea and Samaria", and we are now called to follow that call as witnesses "to the ends of the earth".
So, how can I be a witness today? First, I seek God and wait upon Him. Any witness in my life must come out of a relationship with God, otherwise anything I say or do is simply a nice word or action. I have received the gift of the Holy Spirit in Baptism, and have thus been set apart for God. Now, through nurturing my relationship with God, I grow closer to Him and am able to experience the Holy Spirit in new ways. It is not me, but the Holy Spirit working in me, that will witness to others.
And so, when I am living for Jesus, the witness of my faith will naturally flow out of my life.
The disciples preached to kings and lords and rulers, but their most intimate witness was to the people who came into their lives. Some people searched for love, some for faith, some for hope, but they all saw in the disciples something different that pointed towards the things they sought. People today search for the same things, and the answer is still the same.
I have found love, faith and hope in Jesus, and want to share that with others. I witness to my faith not in distant pagan lands, but in the world in which I live. I am called to share my faith with those around me. Whether I am at school, work or on a sporting field, it is the way that I speak and act towards others that will reveal the light of Christ within my life. By simply living how Jesus calls me to live, I am being a witness in my world. And if Christians everywhere are witnesses to their faith, together we will be God's witnesses "to the ends of the earth".
