I was very, very shy kid. I would hide under the bed when visitors came because I was afraid of strangers. I didn't know what to say – I'd get tongue-tied.
Then when I was 14, I went to a Christian home group with my parents.
I gave my life to Jesus and the Holy Spirit came upon me. That shyness, fear and desire to hide – it all just disappeared in that moment.
For some people, that process of change can be gradual, but for me it was instant and definitive. And from that moment, I wanted to go and tell as many of my friends as possible about Jesus. As a small boy in highschool, bullied for my size, I just wanted to tell everyone about Jesus – even the big boys!
All because the Holy Spirit fell upon me in that moment, and it changed my life radically.
Pentecost is significant for Christians because it’s the day on which the church was born.
It was seven weeks after the resurrection of Jesus, during the Jewish celebration of Shavuot, or Pentecost. The Holy Spirit was poured out upon his first followers, gathering them as a church and empowering them to share the good news in word, deed and signs.
Luke describes an extraordinary, explosive, supernatural act of God.
Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them. (Acts 2:2-4)
In these first few verses of Acts 2, Luke describes three aspects of this remarkable event:
“When they heard this sound,” Luke continues, “a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken” (2:6). This sign at Pentecost draws a curious crowd. They are intrigued.
Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd: “Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you; listen carefully to what I say. These people are not drunk, as you suppose. It’s only nine in the morning!” (2:14-15)
Peter goes on boldly, quoting the prophet Joel before proclaiming the good news of Jesus.
Pentecost didn’t just happen once, a long, long time ago. There are, in Luke’s Acts of the Apostles, multiple times when the Spirit is poured out, amazing things happen, and people come to faith.
When Peter and John are threatened by the religious leaders for preaching the resurrection of Jesus (Acts 4), the believers gather and pray, the room is shaken, they’re filled with the Holy Spirit, and they start bravely declaring the word of God.
The same thing happens in Samaria (Acts 8) and with Cornelius (Acts 10), just to name a few.
These stories show the power of the Holy Spirit, starting at Pentecost and continuing throughout the history of the early church.
And it doesn’t stop in Acts. Throughout church history we see episodes of God’s Spirit being poured out in both big events and ordinary moments.
Even in our local contexts, we’re living the Pentecost. As theologian J.I. Packer puts it:
So Pentecost isn’t over!
All around me, I see the people continuing the story that started so long ago by sharing their faith, living boldly and sacrificially for Jesus, claiming the power of God in their lives, reaching out in love to those in need around them, and more.
I see the church continuing to hunger for renewal by the Spirit. And the thing is, the more I name this, the more I see it! I wonder where might you be seeing the Spirit active in your life?
When the Holy Spirit moves, at least four things happen.
This first Pentecost happens when they were waiting, as Jesus had told them to do.
The Holy Spirit invites us on a journey of waiting, trusting, depending.
We live in an age of instant gratification where our appetite for waiting and longing for the Holy Spirit has been diminished by the gadgets we have and the age of information that we live in.
Christian life is not always about doing something, but about learning to wait.
We need to go back to our knees and to wait, praying for a fresh wind of the Spirit on ourselves and our land. Resurrection life comes as we ask, knock and seek. Those are all words that imply hunger and longing.
One of Jesus’ teaching on prayer in Luke 11 finishes off with an interesting statement:
“If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
Notice what the gift is? The Lord promises and longs to fill us with his Spirit.
In the late 1920s a huge revival broke out in Rwanda from an Anglican mission station and led many, many people to faith.
One of the key characteristics about the revival was an acute craving for God. There was an awareness of holiness and people were repenting of their sins right in front of each other, so convicted by the Holy Spirit.
There was a hunger for prayer, a hunger for God. People went into mountains for days and weeks, fasting and longing for God.
The revival lasted decades and swept across East Africa.
In fact, I can say that I'm a product of the East African revival. My grandfather, an Anglican minister, was part of the revival. My father and mother were part of the revival. When I was growing up, they took me to those meetings where I saw people lying on the floor, crying out to God in repentance.
It was a holy discontentment – the desire for more than a mediocre Christian life.
We want more. We want a deeper relationship with Jesus.
We were made to live our lives empowered by the Holy Spirit, allowing God to breathe new life into our dry bones.
How might you express your hunger for God this week?
When there’s a Holy Spirit moment, there is extraordinary unity. We start to see the dignity in each other, not the differences. We see what each other has, not what they don’t have.
Acts 2 gives us a picture of an united community. The passage begins with unity and ends with unity. The Holy Spirit is not only given to individuals, but also, in a sense, to a gathered people.
We live in an age where some Christians are becoming more and more disillusioned with church community, questioning if it’s really necessary in the first place.
But Pentecost is a brilliant illustration of the truth that the community of God’s people is central to God’s work in the world.
Pentecost invites us to consider our own participation and renew our commitment to live as an essential member of the gathered body of Christ, using our gifts to build the church. We are often divided according to language, race, ideology, values, convictions and preferences. Pentecost challenges all of us to examine our own attitudes, to reject and repent of any prejudice or unconscious bias that creeps within us, and to open our hearts to embrace all people – even and especially those who are not like us.
Yes, I know this is not easy! But it is something that the Spirit of God will help us to do if we are willing and available.
“How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity!” David declares in Psalm 133.
The Holy Spirit, like oil poured out causes unity and where there’s unity, God commands a blessing.
Many in our communities went through a challenging time over the last few years during Covid – the affects of which may still be lingering today. It would have no doubt left some hurt, pain and frustration.
How might God be bringing healing into your community afresh through his Spirit?
There’s a team from Wellington who have been coming to minister in Golden Bay every year for a while now. And they have made enough of an impact that locals have come to anticipate them. They drew a crowd of 80 people from the community into the little church in Tākaka this year.
When they arrived to share their lives, their stories, people were drawn in.
For a long time, Western culture valued reason and apologetics – prove it and people will believe.
There’s been a huge shift, and I've seen it.
People aren’t interested in arguing about who’s right and who’s wrong. They want to hear stories of how lives have been changed and transformed. They get curious – How are you different from everyone else? Why are you so grateful when others are so cynical?
We see in Acts 2 that the events of Pentecost draw a curious crowd. There's something about the Spirit of God working within us that makes people to want to know more. When God moves, people are intrigued and want to know what happened.
Over the last few days, there’s been this global movement – “Thy Kingdom Come” – where people are encouraged to pray for five people to come to know Jesus. We’ve been doing it for a few years now, and each time it’s amazing to hear the stories people share afterwards about spiritual conversations they’ve had for the first time with their family members or neighbours.
It’s these simple, spiritual conversations and sharing of stories that spark curiosity and make a difference in people’s lives.
How could you share the story of God’s Spirit in your life with those around you?
A Holy Spirit moment causes courage to rise!
Pentecost is about transformed lives and power for fruitful ministry. This same Peter speaking to the crowd is the same one who denied Jesus.
Pentecost turned the timid, frightened, unsure followers of Jesus into the Body of Christ, impacting the world for the glory of God.
“I will pour out my Spirit on all people,” the Lord proclaims (Joel 2:28). Although this truth would not mean that every Christian would be gifted for every kind of ministry, it does mean that all believers would be empowered by the Spirit.
Pentecost is a time to ask God to fill us afresh with the Spirit so that we might join in the ministry of Christ. Are you afraid to step out and use your gifts? God wants to renew you, reignite you, rekindle his fire in you.
I have been deeply encouraged by the young people of today. Recently I heard how the youth at Easter Camp boldly shared stories of God’s work in their lives as the Spirit enabled them to pray for their mates.
Most Christians I know, including me, live in the presence and power of the Spirit, but only to an extent. We are limited by our fear, our sin, doubts or low expectations. Pentecost offers a chance to confess our failure to live by the Spirit and to ask the Lord to fill us afresh with his power.
Pentecost presents us with an opportunity to consider how we are living each day. Are we relying on the power of God’s Spirit? Are we seeking the Spirit’s guidance as we open the Scriptures in order to “hear what the Spirit is saying to the church”? Are we an open channel for the Spirit’s gifts? Are we attentive to the guidance of the Holy Spirit in the decisions we’re making? Is the fruit of the Spirit – love, joy, peace, and the rest – growing in our lives?
I’ll let you reflect on this:
And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you. (Romans 8:11)
1J.I. Packer, Knowing God, IVP, 1993.
Check out other articles in the
series below.
More articles in the
series are to come.
We have invited these writers to share their experiences, ideas and opinions in the hope that these will provoke thought, challenge you to go deeper and inspire you to put your faith into action. These articles should not be taken as the official view of the Nelson Diocese on any particular matter.
I was very, very shy kid. I would hide under the bed when visitors came because I was afraid of strangers. I didn't know what to say – I'd get tongue-tied.
Then when I was 14, I went to a Christian home group with my parents.
I gave my life to Jesus and the Holy Spirit came upon me. That shyness, fear and desire to hide – it all just disappeared in that moment.
For some people, that process of change can be gradual, but for me it was instant and definitive. And from that moment, I wanted to go and tell as many of my friends as possible about Jesus. As a small boy in highschool, bullied for my size, I just wanted to tell everyone about Jesus – even the big boys!
All because the Holy Spirit fell upon me in that moment, and it changed my life radically.
Pentecost is significant for Christians because it’s the day on which the church was born.
It was seven weeks after the resurrection of Jesus, during the Jewish celebration of Shavuot, or Pentecost. The Holy Spirit was poured out upon his first followers, gathering them as a church and empowering them to share the good news in word, deed and signs.
Luke describes an extraordinary, explosive, supernatural act of God.
Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them. (Acts 2:2-4)
In these first few verses of Acts 2, Luke describes three aspects of this remarkable event:
“When they heard this sound,” Luke continues, “a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken” (2:6). This sign at Pentecost draws a curious crowd. They are intrigued.
Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd: “Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you; listen carefully to what I say. These people are not drunk, as you suppose. It’s only nine in the morning!” (2:14-15)
Peter goes on boldly, quoting the prophet Joel before proclaiming the good news of Jesus.
Pentecost didn’t just happen once, a long, long time ago. There are, in Luke’s Acts of the Apostles, multiple times when the Spirit is poured out, amazing things happen, and people come to faith.
When Peter and John are threatened by the religious leaders for preaching the resurrection of Jesus (Acts 4), the believers gather and pray, the room is shaken, they’re filled with the Holy Spirit, and they start bravely declaring the word of God.
The same thing happens in Samaria (Acts 8) and with Cornelius (Acts 10), just to name a few.
These stories show the power of the Holy Spirit, starting at Pentecost and continuing throughout the history of the early church.
And it doesn’t stop in Acts. Throughout church history we see episodes of God’s Spirit being poured out in both big events and ordinary moments.
Even in our local contexts, we’re living the Pentecost. As theologian J.I. Packer puts it:
So Pentecost isn’t over!
All around me, I see the people continuing the story that started so long ago by sharing their faith, living boldly and sacrificially for Jesus, claiming the power of God in their lives, reaching out in love to those in need around them, and more.
I see the church continuing to hunger for renewal by the Spirit. And the thing is, the more I name this, the more I see it! I wonder where might you be seeing the Spirit active in your life?
When the Holy Spirit moves, at least four things happen.
This first Pentecost happens when they were waiting, as Jesus had told them to do.
The Holy Spirit invites us on a journey of waiting, trusting, depending.
We live in an age of instant gratification where our appetite for waiting and longing for the Holy Spirit has been diminished by the gadgets we have and the age of information that we live in.
Christian life is not always about doing something, but about learning to wait.
We need to go back to our knees and to wait, praying for a fresh wind of the Spirit on ourselves and our land. Resurrection life comes as we ask, knock and seek. Those are all words that imply hunger and longing.
One of Jesus’ teaching on prayer in Luke 11 finishes off with an interesting statement:
“If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
Notice what the gift is? The Lord promises and longs to fill us with his Spirit.
In the late 1920s a huge revival broke out in Rwanda from an Anglican mission station and led many, many people to faith.
One of the key characteristics about the revival was an acute craving for God. There was an awareness of holiness and people were repenting of their sins right in front of each other, so convicted by the Holy Spirit.
There was a hunger for prayer, a hunger for God. People went into mountains for days and weeks, fasting and longing for God.
The revival lasted decades and swept across East Africa.
In fact, I can say that I'm a product of the East African revival. My grandfather, an Anglican minister, was part of the revival. My father and mother were part of the revival. When I was growing up, they took me to those meetings where I saw people lying on the floor, crying out to God in repentance.
It was a holy discontentment – the desire for more than a mediocre Christian life.
We want more. We want a deeper relationship with Jesus.
We were made to live our lives empowered by the Holy Spirit, allowing God to breathe new life into our dry bones.
How might you express your hunger for God this week?
When there’s a Holy Spirit moment, there is extraordinary unity. We start to see the dignity in each other, not the differences. We see what each other has, not what they don’t have.
Acts 2 gives us a picture of an united community. The passage begins with unity and ends with unity. The Holy Spirit is not only given to individuals, but also, in a sense, to a gathered people.
We live in an age where some Christians are becoming more and more disillusioned with church community, questioning if it’s really necessary in the first place.
But Pentecost is a brilliant illustration of the truth that the community of God’s people is central to God’s work in the world.
Pentecost invites us to consider our own participation and renew our commitment to live as an essential member of the gathered body of Christ, using our gifts to build the church. We are often divided according to language, race, ideology, values, convictions and preferences. Pentecost challenges all of us to examine our own attitudes, to reject and repent of any prejudice or unconscious bias that creeps within us, and to open our hearts to embrace all people – even and especially those who are not like us.
Yes, I know this is not easy! But it is something that the Spirit of God will help us to do if we are willing and available.
“How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity!” David declares in Psalm 133.
The Holy Spirit, like oil poured out causes unity and where there’s unity, God commands a blessing.
Many in our communities went through a challenging time over the last few years during Covid – the affects of which may still be lingering today. It would have no doubt left some hurt, pain and frustration.
How might God be bringing healing into your community afresh through his Spirit?
There’s a team from Wellington who have been coming to minister in Golden Bay every year for a while now. And they have made enough of an impact that locals have come to anticipate them. They drew a crowd of 80 people from the community into the little church in Tākaka this year.
When they arrived to share their lives, their stories, people were drawn in.
For a long time, Western culture valued reason and apologetics – prove it and people will believe.
There’s been a huge shift, and I've seen it.
People aren’t interested in arguing about who’s right and who’s wrong. They want to hear stories of how lives have been changed and transformed. They get curious – How are you different from everyone else? Why are you so grateful when others are so cynical?
We see in Acts 2 that the events of Pentecost draw a curious crowd. There's something about the Spirit of God working within us that makes people to want to know more. When God moves, people are intrigued and want to know what happened.
Over the last few days, there’s been this global movement – “Thy Kingdom Come” – where people are encouraged to pray for five people to come to know Jesus. We’ve been doing it for a few years now, and each time it’s amazing to hear the stories people share afterwards about spiritual conversations they’ve had for the first time with their family members or neighbours.
It’s these simple, spiritual conversations and sharing of stories that spark curiosity and make a difference in people’s lives.
How could you share the story of God’s Spirit in your life with those around you?
A Holy Spirit moment causes courage to rise!
Pentecost is about transformed lives and power for fruitful ministry. This same Peter speaking to the crowd is the same one who denied Jesus.
Pentecost turned the timid, frightened, unsure followers of Jesus into the Body of Christ, impacting the world for the glory of God.
“I will pour out my Spirit on all people,” the Lord proclaims (Joel 2:28). Although this truth would not mean that every Christian would be gifted for every kind of ministry, it does mean that all believers would be empowered by the Spirit.
Pentecost is a time to ask God to fill us afresh with the Spirit so that we might join in the ministry of Christ. Are you afraid to step out and use your gifts? God wants to renew you, reignite you, rekindle his fire in you.
I have been deeply encouraged by the young people of today. Recently I heard how the youth at Easter Camp boldly shared stories of God’s work in their lives as the Spirit enabled them to pray for their mates.
Most Christians I know, including me, live in the presence and power of the Spirit, but only to an extent. We are limited by our fear, our sin, doubts or low expectations. Pentecost offers a chance to confess our failure to live by the Spirit and to ask the Lord to fill us afresh with his power.
Pentecost presents us with an opportunity to consider how we are living each day. Are we relying on the power of God’s Spirit? Are we seeking the Spirit’s guidance as we open the Scriptures in order to “hear what the Spirit is saying to the church”? Are we an open channel for the Spirit’s gifts? Are we attentive to the guidance of the Holy Spirit in the decisions we’re making? Is the fruit of the Spirit – love, joy, peace, and the rest – growing in our lives?
I’ll let you reflect on this:
And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you. (Romans 8:11)
Check out other articles in the
series below.
More articles in the
series are to come.
