WEEKLY DEVOTION: 24 AUGUST 2026 | Holy Spirit - Same Same
Romans 8:11 “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.”
“Same-same but different” is a phrase we commonly see on T-shirts. Some people allege that it originates from Thailand as a way of explaining differences between goods to customers. This is especially true of counterfeit goods. “Not real Rolex, but no problem! Same-same but different,” a shop owner selling counterfeit watches might be heard saying.
Could our experience of the Holy Spirit be like that as well? Same-same as the original Pentecost in Acts 2, yet different because ours is “counterfeit”?
Perhaps some of us might be feeling that way. We open our lives and respond to the Holy Spirit’s infilling, yet we don’t see that seismic change we imagined. I must admit that I have felt like that at times over the years when I had responded to such calls for the filling of the Holy Spirit. Initially, I thought that perhaps I was not good enough, or perhaps I needed more filling.
However, over time I have come to the understanding that perhaps it is meant to be this way. For some of us, there is a very intimate and complex touch of God, thekind where we know beyond contestation that God has moved, touched, and filled us. Yet for others, we may feel or sense very little.
Yet, this certainly does not mean that God has not done anything! For every burning bush encounter (Ex 3:2), there were encounters of God speaking in whispers/silence (1 Kg 19:12). For every audible voice of God heard (1 Sam 3), there were encouragements to know God in stillness (Ps 46:10). For every astounding miracle of Christ, there were the mundane teachings of our Lord. We must remember - the spectacular need not always be supernatural, and the supernatural need not always be spectacular.
In fact, we must remember that a life filled with the Spirit does not mean that our troubles and temptations all disappear! It also does not mean that the Spirit simply takes over all our thinking, deciding and acting faculties such that we lose our free will! In that way, the Spirit’s filling may be similar to taking a good night’s rest after a couple of days of lacking sleep. Everything feels new, different, better and energised, yet in a very natural and “ordinary” way.
In a far more profound way, the filling of the Spirit canbe described as “same-same but different”, albeit not in a counterfeit way. Our lives are “same-same but different” because life is the same, yet everything is different. Our minds, hearts, desires, circumstances, struggles, etc may well be the same, but the difference is that renewed conviction that the Spirit lives in us! Peace, contentment, empowerment, etc is not the absence of troubles, but simply the presence of God in our lives.
So have a little faith to take hold of that promise that we have indeed been filled afresh by the Spirit! That was exactly what Paul was exhorting believers to take hold of in Romans 8:11 -- the same power that conquered the grave now lives in us. It may not be spectacular, but you can be sure it is supernatural!
Rev. Dr Jeremy-Joe Tan
