Category Archives: Holy Spirit

Today on Pentecost Sunday BE the Church God Intended

We need a refreshing touch, a new outpouring.

We need a fresh reminder of how much we need him, and how lame our efforts are without him.

We make too much noise and think it’s God. We need the NOISE of a mighty wind that makes it clear… this is God.

When Pentecost Day arrived, they were all together in one place. 2 Suddenly a sound from heaven like the howling of a fierce wind filled the entire house where they were sitting. 3 They saw what seemed to be individual flames of fire alighting on each one of them. 4 They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit enabled them to speak. (Acts 2:1-4, CEB)

The Price of Pentecost

Sunday is Pentecost Sunday. It is celebrated worldwide in the Church. Pentecostals think we’re the only ones who know anything about this. I know that was my mentality for years. Then, I find out the whole Church has a liturgy for this day!

One of the prayers for the day:

To a world dry and thirsty
God has poured out Living Water;
To a world fainting and breathless
God has stirred a mighty wind;
To a world cold and dark
God has ignited the flame
of the Spirit;
Let us worship for the Spirit has come
The Spirit has come – hallelujah!

Yet, having a liturgy for this day, or having the “corner on the market” as Pentecostals used to think, doesn’t mean a thing if it’s just a day.

The passage I will reflect on for Pentecost Sunday is Joel 2. It is packed with promise. But before the promise comes the price. For Israel, they had rebelled so much and the grievances were so great, God had to completely wipe the slate clean. It’s like a hard reboot on your phone. It’s a “wipe” on your hard drive. Just start over!

Joel 1 is ugly. Joel 2 isn’t very pretty for the first few verses. But there is PROMISE.

God is still merciful.

12 Yet even now, says the Lord,
return to me with all your hearts,
with fasting, with weeping, and with sorrow;
13 tear your hearts
and not your clothing.
Return to the Lord your God,
for he is merciful and compassionate,
very patient, full of faithful love,
and ready to forgive. (Joel 2:12-13, CEB)

He is ready to forgive. He is ready to pour out his Spirit. The price of Pentecost is repentance. When the disciples waited in the upper room, it was ten days before the Spirit was poured out. There was probably some “heart cleaning” to do.

We need to “give up to go up.” We need to release our old life of doing it our way. It’s not working! It is time to seek the Lord. It is time to ask for the Holy Spirit to empower us once again.

We Define By What We’re Not… How About What We ARE?

We are really good at defining what we’re not as believers.

“Well, I’m not Pentecostal because… But then again, I’m not a Baptist because…” and on we go. So much so we really end up saying, “Well, I’ve just arrived at something so remarkably wonderful, no one can just catch up with my wonderfulness.” ;)

When it comes to being a Pentecostal, I readily admit I’ve had to almost run from the craziness. Yet, at the same time, I am a Pentecostal. I’m not a recovering Pentecostal. I am a growing Pentecostal. I am a sacramental Pentecostal. I am grounded in my firm affirmation of the validity and authority of Scripture. It’s just who I am. I have grown learning from all the other wonderful streams of Christianity. We make a mighty river as the Church. And Pentecostals are a part of that stream. There is no reason to apologize for that, and I’m not an apologist for the crazy stuff in my stream anymore than any other stream is an apologist for the crazies in their camp.

Pentecost Sunday is coming. I am reflecting on the event of Pentecost. I have learned from some great voices in the past and present on the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

Two great voices on Christianity in our culture as they reflect on the Holy Spirit:

“If the Holy Spirit was withdrawn from the church today, 95 percent of what we do would go on and no one would know the difference. If the Holy spirit had been withdrawn from the New Testament church, 95 percent of what they did would stop, and everybody would know the difference.”  (A.W. Tozer)

The Spirit-filled life is the new-dimensional life of worship, witness, and warfare. And the key to its realization is the anointing Jesus places on your life – like heavenly oil poured over the heads of priests, prophets and kings in ancient times. And that anointing is the result of being filled with, overflowed by, and baptized in the Holy Spirit. (Jack Hayford)

Meditations on the Holy Spirit

With Pentecost Sunday upon us, I am dwelling on some great thoughts about the person and work of the Spirit.

The divine awakening produces in the soul of the perfect a flame of love which is a participate of that living flame which is the Holy Spirit Himself…this is the operation of the Holy Spirit in the soul that is transformed in love, that His interior actions cause it to send out flames…This flame wounds the soul as it is given, but the wound is tender, and, instead of causing death, it increases life; for the soul is holiest that is most wounded by love.
John Of The Cross
Dark Night of The Soul

If you have to be reasoned into Christianity, some wise fellow can reason you out of it! If you come to Christ by a flash of the Holy Spirit so that by intuition you know that you are God’s child, you know it by the text but you also know it by the inner light, the inner illumination of the Spirit, and no one can ever reason you out of it.
A. W. Tozer

Spirit filled souls are ablaze for God. They love with a love that glows. They serve with a faith that kindles. They serve with a devotion that consumes. They hate sin with fierceness that burns. They rejoice with a joy that radiates. Love is perfected in the fire of God.
Samuel Chadwick

The True Power of the Spirit

One of my favorite verses in the entire Bible is Romans 8:11

11 If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you, the one who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your human bodies also, through his Spirit that lives in you.

We truly live in the power of the Spirit. We have so much available to us… and we utilize so little. Actually, we care so little.

We are satisfied with riding our nice red tricycles because we love that tricycle! Why ride anything else? It gets us where we’re going! God dangles the key to the Porsche 911 in front of us and we think, “Good, Lord! I could get killed in one of those things!”

Get off the tricycle. When the Spirit is truly at work in your life, you may just find out what “turbo” power is all about!

The Power of the Spirit – From Confusion to Clarity

The walk through Romans 6-8 is more like a roller coaster ride. There is the power of salvation, being set free from the bondage of sin, in Chapter 6. Then, there is the confusion we have in our own lives when we struggle with what we know TO do while we fall into the temptation of doing the exact opposite.

15 I don’t know what I’m doing, because I don’t do what I want to do. Instead, I do the thing that I hate. 16 But if I’m doing the thing that I don’t want to do, I’m agreeing that the Law is right. 17 But now I’m not the one doing it anymore. Instead, it’s sin that lives in me. (Rom. 7:15-17, CEB)

It is the great struggle most of us, if not all of us, walk through. We just can’t seem to get any traction!

The power of the Spirit brings clarity. It doesn’t mean things are easy. Yet, with the Spirit, we are truly given power to overcome.

We need a new realization of the power of the Spirit. Romans 8 offers us a view that is powerful. When the Spirit is TRULY at work in us, we come to a realization of the God’s radical love for us. We realize nothing separates from that love. We realize all is ours. We are in need of that reality in the Church today. We abide in power. We are offered clarity instead of confusion.

Something or Someone WILL Own You

Slave to sin… or slave to righteousness? Either way, you’re owned. Something vies for control. Something vies for allegiance.

Christ has come to set us free. That freedom leads to new “ownership.” The terms of slavery are used, but freedom is found in the new “ownership.”

We are headed into the Pentecost Sunday. It is a celebration of the Day of Pentecost. We also need to understand the power of the Spirit in our lives. It is beyond an “event” as Pentecostals would describe it. It is about being owned. Being controlled.

Are we truly under the Spirit’s power?

6 But now we have been released from the Law. We have died with respect to the thing that controlled us, so that we can be slaves in the new life under the Spirit, not in the old life under the written Law. (Rom. 7:6, CEB)

Are You Dead Yet?

One of my favorite fun movies is Cool Runnings. It’s a comedy about the Jamaican bobsled team. When the team would crash in practice, the driver would ask, “Sanka, are you dead, mon?”

He would answer, “Yeah, mon.”

We need to remember this as believers. We need to realize we are dead to the old life. The life of sin and the flesh has been dealt with.

Are you dead yet?

12 So then, don’t let sin rule your body, so that you do what it wants. 13 Don’t offer parts of your body to sin, to be used as weapons to do wrong. Instead, present yourselves to God as people who have been brought back to life from the dead, and offer all the parts of your body to God to be used as weapons to do right. 14 Sin will have no power over you, because you aren’t under Law but under grace. (Rom. 6:12-14, CEB)


 

Quit Hanging Around the Corpse

We have a fascination with death, being dead, being undead, etc. I am not even going to attempt to categorize any of it because I pay very little attention to it and all I will get are comments about how I mis-categorized something.

My point is this: we need to quit hanging around the corpse. Once something is dead, leave it. Well, more specifically, once your life in Christ is activated, quit hanging around the corpse of what once was.

This is a place where I am intrigued by the word chosen by the Common English Bible:

6 This is what we know: the person that we used to be was crucified with him in order to get rid of the corpse that had been controlled by sin. That way we wouldn’t be slaves to sin anymore, 7 because a person who has died has been freed from sin’s power. (Rom. 6:6-7, CEB)

Romans 6-8 is one of the most powerful passages in Scripture. The emphasis from death to life is so deeply powerful. Leave the old life. Enter into the powerful life of the Spirit. Don’t let the corpse hang around!

You are born into new life. Get rid of the stinking corpse that was your old life. You may think it’s novel to have it hanging around, but it’s stinking up the place! Move on in Christ.

Don’t Move Until You Get It

Several years ago there was a movie called Searching for Bobby Fischer, about a chess whiz kid named Josh Waitzkin. In one scene, the chess tutor gives Josh a scenario and tells him, “Don’t move until you see it.”

He was telling Josh, “There is victory for you in this situation. It’s several steps away, but it’s there. See it in your mind before you make your next move.”

We need that wisdom in our own lives. Don’t just run charging into a situation. Wait. Listen. Observe. See what is ahead. Then, move.

That is Jesus’ instruction to the disciples before he ascends to heaven.

49 Look, I’m sending to you what my Father promised, but you are to stay in the city until you have been furnished with heavenly power. (Luke 24:49, CEB)

We just aren’t good at waiting. We need to see what the Father has for us, but so often we plunge ahead. We are more like Saul in the Old Testament. Who has time to wait for the old prophet to show up? Why wait for what God has that is best when we know what is good.

We allow the good to rob us of the best.

We need to move out into uncharted waters. We need to get to a place where we can’t do it on our own.

“Will God ever ask you to do something you are not able to do? The answer is yes–all the time! It must be that way, for God’s glory and kingdom. If we function according to our ability alone, we get the glory; if we function according to the power of the Spirit within us, God gets the glory. He wants to reveal Himself to a watching world.”
― Henry T. Blackaby, Experiencing the Spirit: The Power of Pentecost Every Day

We need the power of the Spirit in our lives. But don’t think that’s something you can control. If you can control it, it’s not God.

Wait for power. Wait for the presence of God. Don’t move until you get it.

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