As I write this 17 people, teens and youths, mainly Muslims, have been arrested in Toronto and charged with allegedly plotting terrorist acts within the city but attacking the country itself. What's behind this? Some 3000 pounds of potential bomb making chemical were discovered in their possession, far more than was used in the Oklahoma Federal Building bombing.

Were they politically motivated, religiously incited, mad at the world, lonely and looking for a place to belong, a purpose and mission in life? Does it all filter down to the need to fill an empty void with power, or at least a sense of power.

Whoever we are we all have an innate desire for fulfillment, purpose, and power. Every human being needs to know experientially that their existence is not simply a biological accident but has been willed by God. God wants each of us to discover, in conversation with Him, that there can be a meaningful plan for life.

When you come to Jesus, you will come to know that purpose. When you discern His plan for you, you will know what your life is all about. Only then will your quest be realized.

There is something great that you will never do unless you come to Jesus, the Master Builder, something wonderful that God will never be able to accomplish through you until you surrender to His will, something of ultimate importance that God wants to achieve through you.

When Jesus died on the cross to save you from sin, He did so to make you into a person who could do magnificent things for others in His name, to work through you and accomplish things that He wants to have done in our world.

Jesus wants to eliminate the hunger of many people through you, to deliver the oppressed into freedom and bring justice to the downtrodden .....

He wants you to be one of those through whom such important things can be done, an agent for His revolution in the world, to bring about some of the changes that are essential if He is to make this world into the kind of world He created it to be.

How I wish those 17 would have known this!

Power, like dynamite, can either be used constructively or destructively. Improperly handled, it can hurt, maim, and kill. Properly set and monitored toward a predetermined objective it can set off a chain of events that results in positive change.

Jesus engaged His culture in the power of the Holy Spirit.

God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him. (Acts 10:38)

The whole makeup of God, everything that makes God who He is (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) is seen as being actively involved in the healing processes of mankind and against the evil personified that seeks to destroy the betterment of the human race.

Since God in His fulness wants people healed in every area of life, why aren't we cooperating with Him towards this goal? Why do we ignore or deny Him His rights? Why are we content to go it alone when there are resources unlimited and untapped?

The success that Jesus bore witness to in His life was the anointing and power of the Holy Spirit. At Creation's dawn the Spirit of God hovered over a world that was "formless and empty". The Holy Spirit of God descended into the darkness that covered "the surface of the deep" to bring order out of chaos and to shine light into dark places. And again, to bring about the recreation of mankind the Holy Spirit hovered and descended upon Christ to prepare Him for His work.

The Holy Spirit is essential not just for church life but at the core of life, where we live, work, learn, and recreate. We tend to forget that. We think we can manipulate the raw material of life and bring order out of anarchy. But we don't have the wisdom or strength to shape life's raw material into something wondrous and beautiful.

Shortly before His Passion Jesus spoke extensively about the coming and mission of the Holy Spirit, preparing His followers to follow in His steps and do what He had done. From His discourse in John's Gospel, chapters 14 - 16, I'd like to draw my thoughts.

The Holy Spirit is a fascinating Person, at least to me He is. Jesus said, And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor, who will never leave you.

Grab onto that, He's an 'another'. He is an 'another' of what Jesus was to His followers; another of the same kind. In Greek the word is Paraclete and means One called alongside of; or Comforter, Encourager, Advocate, Helper. The Holy Spirit, therefore, is Jesus' Other Self.

The Holy Spirit always was, and always presently active. But a change was to take place after Jesus' death, burial and resurrection. Jesus would ascend to His heavenly position and send His Spirit as His personal representative; the Spirit would represent Jesus to His followers, in His name, in His character, in His authority and power. It would be as if Jesus had never left. Only now it would be His spiritual presence, not His physical presence.

An added dimension to this was that the Holy Spirit would never leave them. Physically, Jesus could only be with the people locationally, one by one, one group at a time. Jesus instructed that by His returning to Heaven and sending the Holy Spirit He would be with each and every one personally, universally, never to leave.

Also to this is, there's just one thing that keeps God from us: sin. And there's just one way to a relationship with God: Jesus. Christ paid the price for sin on the cross, and now, because the barrier has been removed, we have the abiding presence of God, the Holy Sprit, constantly.

The Holy Spirit would come in fullness, in abundance, no hold backs; like gushing rivers of thirst quenching living waters breaking forth from our innermost being, up unto God in prayer, praise and worship, and out to a dry and barren wasteland of human misery, loneliness, and need.

Yes, the Spirit is with us, as One called alongside to help. Never miss that; even when we feel alone or abandoned, we are not. When assistance is needed He is there. We are not left orphans, He has come.

Not only is He with us daily, He lives within us hourly. He's in us by the second. Jesus made a wonderful comparison: When I am raised to life again, you will know that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.

Then, the Holy Spirit comes or rests upon us as an investiture, an enduement, of power. With this power the early Christians did the same things that Jesus did, even greater things, if not in quality than in quantity. With this Holy Spirit power they went everywhere in the world and told the Good News to people, and the Lord helped them. The Lord proved that the Good News they told was true by giving them power to work miracles. (Acts 1:8, Mark 16:20)

Through the Holy Spirit you and I can experience God's presence every moment of the day. When we have the Holy Spirit guiding us each day, we will not only experience the presence of God in our own lives, but we'll also be able to show His presence to others, as we live God's way, displaying the fruit of the Spirit which are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. (Galatians 5:22,23)

When we cannot pray - sometimes for lack of energy, sometimes life deals us such a blow that we cannot even talk, much less pray, sometimes there's too much pain, or our depression is too deep; sometimes praying seems impossible - the Spirit helps us with our weakness. We do not know how to pray as we should. But the Spirit himself speaks to God for us, even begs God for us with deep feelings that words cannot explain. (Romans 8:26) The Holy Spirit knows what's going on in our lives and He takes over for us.

Through the Spirit of God we become a witness to the reality of Christ in our own life, a sharer of our faith. We speak of that which we know; what we have heard, seen, and felt. It's personal, it happened to me. It's real. And it's worth talking about! Witnessing is also doing what Jesus did in acts of mercy and service; practical deeds but also works of supernatural power bestowed by the Spirit. The Spirit's anointing is for service. (1 Corinthians 12)

We have access to truth. Jesus often referred to the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Truth. Not a fashionable idea today. Truth has fallen in the streets. We are led to believe there are no absolutes, everything is relative to the occasion. How wrong and empty a philosophy. There are absolutes in the universe and all around us.

Everything about God is about truth, ultimate truth. God does not reveal Himself through Buddha or any of the other world religions, icons, or religious figures past, present or future. They may have beneficial teachings which contain some truth, but in and of themselves do not have, or claim exclusivity to ultimate truth alone. I believe it was Ghandi that said, "I am still seeking."

Only through God Himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit do we realize true truth. And when God gave us the Bible, He gave us something to believe in. It has the voice of truth. The Gnostic gospels and books like The Da Vinci Code and The Jesus Dynasty fall flat because they don't ring true. They do not have the voice of truth.

The Holy Spirit has come. He is with us today, helping us in the 21st Century to engage our culture, society, and world much in the same way that He assisted those in the first century. We have the same Spirit, faith and power, dressed in modern garb to address and meet the needs of the modern world.

The Spirit of God has often come with refreshing winds to rekindle the dying embers of faith. The coming of the Spirit will always have a continuity with the past and a flare for the future. The Spirit is not held to the past, not limited by the past, not stuck in the past. He is in the NOW, our NOW. Jesus said, He will tell you what is yet to come. Therefore we should expect the Holy Spirit to come to us robed with his majesty but in the relativeness of modern man.

He has come to us. I hope we will come to Him.