Fifty Days of Pentecost Devotional Series — Saturday, May 22

Acts 1:8 (ESV)

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.

The Holy Spirit comes to give us power to be God’s witnesses throughout the world.

Having lived most of my life as a missionary in Latin America, I see Pentecost and the Holy Spirit through the eyes of the people I have been called to serve.

  • The young person who said to me, “Sister Mary, God has to heal us, we don’t have money to go to the doctor.”
  • The little girl whom the Holy Spirit miraculously hid from men who wanted to hurt her.
  • The child filled with faith and the Holy Spirit who prayed for his dad to find work and he did — leading the whole family to believe in the Lord.
  • The countless families on the brink of hunger who prayed and the Holy Spirit prompted others to provide for their needs.
  • The child who prayed for her mother to be healed of cancer and she was.
  • The children who constantly tell me of their very real experiences with the Lord as he speaks to them and guides them.
  • The fruit of the Spirit I see in the lives of ChildHope students… though they live in communities of despair and hopelessness they live with love, peace, joy…

I pray that you can experience the Holy Spirit as authentically as the children in our ChildHope schools do.

Mary Kathleen Mahon, Ph.D.
President, ChildHope

Prayer Focus

Pray for the community of ChildHope. For the children, their families, the teachers, directors, and pastors who minister to them, and for the missionaries. Pray that the Spirit will empower those who minister in the communities of poverty to be witnesses and bring light into the darkness.

Pray for the presence of God’s Spirit to the most vulnerable – to protect them, to heal them, to comfort them, and to guide them. 

Pray for yourself and those you love. That the Holy Spirit would be fresh in your lives, that you would be empowered to be His witness in the world, and pray that the fruit of His Spirit would season everything that you do. 

May God bless you this Pentecost with a fresh anointing of the Holy Spirit.

See other devotionals in this series.

Scripture quotations marked (ESV) are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.