INTRO–‘Are You Feeling Powerless?’Read Acts 1:4-8 & II Timothy 1:7

Have you ever felt powerless from a lost job, a broken relationship, or from addiction or obsession of some sort? You will experience instances in which you are totally helpless and incapable of changing the situation, but as a follower of Jesus you were not created to live a powerless existence. In Acts, Jesus promises to send the Holy Spirit so that all disciples would experience God’s presence and power within them, but also to display God’s transforming power to the world. Read Acts 2:37-41.

• Describe a time you really felt powerless. Did that affect your view of life at all?


• Name one way you have experienced God’s power in your life?

STEP #1–‘God's Limitless Plans’Read Jeremiah 29:11

Since you were created in God’s image and now have the Holy Spirit in your life, you have great potential and purpose. The problem is that many people think they have been disqualified from living in the power of the Holy Spirit because of sin, bad life choices, unworthiness, or plain defiance to God. However, no matter how bad you’ve screwed up or how far you have run away from God, God has this limitless supply of incredible plans for your life, AND… the power to make it happen. Read Romans 8:28.

• Have you ever felt that you had really blown it for your life purpose with God? Has God renewed your sense of purpose?


• Can you name at least one plan that God has for your life? What steps are you taking now to fulfill that?

STEP #2–‘God's Limitless Power’Read II Corinthians 12:9-10

Not only does God have unlimited plans and potential for you, God also has unlimited power to display through you. The great lie you probably encounter in your mind is that you feel you are too weak or incapable of fulfilling what God has for you to do. But real power is not defined by what you can do in your own strength. Real power is defined by what God can do through you that you know you are too weak to do on your own. It is when you are weak that you become strong and the Holy Spirit is unleashed to work out God’s plans and purpose for your life.

• How would you describe your attitude about relying on God’s strength versus relying on your strength?


• Name the times you regularly rely on the Holy Spirit’s power instead of your own? How do you think you limit the Holy Spirit in your life?


• When have you seen God work through you, even when you felt weak or totally incapable?

STEP #3–‘God's Limitless Mission’Read Acts 1:8

With great power comes great responsibility and with the Holy Spirit’s power unleashed in your life you have a responsibility to share God’s changing power to the world. You might have asked yourself how can one person come close to changing the world, and the answer is one life at a time. God doesn’t expect you to change the world by yourself. But God does expect you to take Jesus to those people around you who need him. And through God’s power the message of Jesus you began in one person will spread like a wild fire reaching and changing many people in many places all over the world.

• How has God’s power changed your life recently?


• Name a person whose life has been changed by God because of your work with them. What did you do?


• What will you commit to do now that you know you have the Holy Spirit’s power already in your life?