October is baseball playoff season. For roughly 3 weeks, the 8 teams who survived the regular season battle it out to become the champions of the World Series. That final 7-game series is where men become heroes or goats, where legends are made. Some of the most memorable and unbelievable moments in sports history occur in that series. And what is really remarkable to me is that the men who get their teams to that series in the first place are not always the heroes of those final 7 games. Men who played the regular season in relative obscurity are often the ones who shine in those crucial moments when the championship is on the line.

Acts 4 was a crucial moment in the life of the early Church and one would have thought that it called for extraordinary talent. Let me set the stage for you: God had just healed a man who had spent his life lame—over 40 years—and the religious leaders of the people arrested the two men God had used to do it. The leaders asked Peter and John where they got the power to perform such a feat. Peter, always impetuous but after the arrest of Jesus and prior to Acts 2 very much afraid, spoke up, giving credit to Jesus Christ and testifying to His being the cornerstone rejected by these same leaders and the only One through Whom salvation could be obtained.

What is fascinating is what follows this statement. Acts 4.13 says: “When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus.” The leaders saw that they were “ordinary men.” Though we think of Peter and John as “Super-Christians,” in their day they were seen as ordinary men—just like you and me. And that’s the point. Jesus picked ordinary people like you and me and used them to turn the world upside down. Ordinary people like you and me were and are the heroes of the crucial moments in Church history. The question is this: what makes heroes of ordinary people?

Note 2 things from the verse and its context. First note that the leaders took note that they—Peter and John—had been with Jesus. You and I, too, can “be with Jesus,” daily. We can spend time in his Word and time on our knees, discovering His will and power for our lives. But the disciples had been with Jesus for 3½ years and did not know the power and courage of Acts 4. What changed?

Verse 8 gives us the answer: “Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them…” Peter was filled with the Holy Spirit. Peter and John had not only been with Jesus, now they were indwelt and filled with the same Holy Spirit that filled and empowered Jesus, the same Holy Spirit that Paul tells us in Ephesians 5.18 can and will fill us: the idea there is control. Peter was totally surrendered to and controlled by God’s Holy Spirit. Our challenge is to surrender ourselves to and be controlled by that same Holy Spirit.

It’s playoff time, in baseball and the Church. Are you one of the ordinary people God will make a hero? Will you speak up for His glory in His power? Will you be filled with his Holy Spirit? Think about it… and do it!

– Pastor Jim