Day 49: On The Road To Pentecost: AND IT SHALL BE

Acts 2:17-21

May I turn to John Henry Jowett again?  He writes of the experience of being filled with the Holy Spirit this way,

The Apostle Peter traces the stream of Pentecostal blessing to a tomb. This “river of water of life” has its “rise” in a death of transcendent sacrifice. And I must never forget these dark beginnings of my eternal hope. It is well that I should frequently visit the sources of my blessedness, and kneel on “the green hill far away.”      

It will save me from having a cheap religion. I shall never handle the gifts of grace as though they had cost nothing. There will always be the marks of blood upon them, the crimson stain of incomparable sacrifice.      

And it will save me from all flippancy in my religious life. When I visit the cross and the tomb, life is transformed from a picnic into a crusade. For that is ever my peril, to picnic on the banks of the river and to spend my days in emotional loitering.    

After all, my Pentecost is purposed to prepare me for my own Gethsemane and Calvary! Life is given me in order that I may spend it again in ready and fruitful sacrifice.  (My Daily Meditation, May 24)

We followers of Jesus are a people of His life, suffering, death, and resurrection.  We live with purpose and meaning.  The God of the universe has entered into His creation to set it free from the rages of sin and evil.  His community is a community in which the new life is practiced by bent and broken people.  His community is an oasis of hope in a sea of despair.  This is why we need the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit in us.  This is a God thing.  The is a heaven-on-earth thing.  This is a miracle of love and grace and mercy.  This is a table at which there is a place for all of us. 

When the Church of Jesus is doing life right, it is a community of love, forgiveness, hope joy, peace, truth, justice, and righteousness.  Do you feel overwhelmed at the magnitude of God’s call on your life?  You should.  It is bigger than you or me.  We can never take it lightly or think we are stronger than we really are.  We need the Holy Spirit to be the dominating influence in our lives.   Furthermore, Jesus, knowing the depth of our bent and brokenness, but knowing too how much we are willing to do for our children, says, “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him” (Luke 11:13).  

The Father is more willing to fill our lives with the marvelous reality of the Holy Spirit than we are to ask it of Him.  We live in a world that cares very little about the things of God but we live here embraced, filled, baptized, and equipped by the Holy Spirit.  May God help us to be a Spirit-filled people in word, truth, and deed.  May the light of Jesus shine bright in and through our lives.