Fwd: Monday Morning Mail, 25th May 2015

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Greetings! Yesterday was Pentecost Sunday when we remember God sending his Spirit on the disciples in Acts 2. Here are three quick thoughts on what difference Pentecost makes.

It means that we can know God directly. The prophet Jeremiah wrote this about God's gift of his Spirit. (Jer 31:33-34)

'I will put my law in their minds
and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.
No longer will they teach their neighbour,
or say to one another, "Know the Lord,"
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest,'
declares the Lord.
'For I will forgive their wickedness
and will remember their sins no more.'

We can know God directly because he lives in us; we can hear from God directly and share his word with others.

Having the Holy Spirit in us means we can have transformed hearts. Here's God speaking to the prophet Ezekiel about the gift of his Spirit. (Ez 36:26-27)

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.

Naturally we are hard-hearted towards God; we don't show him the gratitude he deserves and we don't want to follow him, the Holy Spirit softens our hearts so that we want to follow him; he washes us on the inside as well as the outside.

So how come some people show the effects of God's Spirit much more than others? I think the key is in that word "filled" in v4. Quite a few times in the NT, people are spoken of as being filled with the Spirit. Paul even tells the Ephesians to be filled with the Spirit in Ephesians 5. Every time we're told someone is filled with the Spirit, it has the effect that they talk about Jesus. But it's something that seems to come and go; Peter is filled with the Spirit on several different occasions, but makes mistakes and so on in between.

I think the easiest way to see it is like this. Being filled with the Spirit means being fully surrendered to the Spirit. If my life is like a building, being filled with the Spirit means I give him all the keys, let him go wherever he wants, do whatever he wants, make whatever changes he wants. And I do that, sometimes. And then I find that without even thinking I've gone and changed a few locks and tried to shut him out of bits of my life again, and I need to go through surrendering them to him again. But the more of our lives we let him work in, the more he changes us and transforms us.

The Spirit also equips us for telling other people about Jesus. Here's Acts 1:8 "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses." God gives his Spirit to his people so that we can be his witnesses in word and in deed.

All the Christians who were there were given the Spirit that morning, all of them spoke about Jesus, but only a few of them preached. We don't all have to be preachers, but we are all called and equipped to share the good news of Jesus with those around us.

I wonder what obstacles are in our way? What is stopping us from telling people about Jesus? The obstacles that first Pentecost were pretty huge – people spoke different languages from Peter and the other disciples. But God, by his Spirit, gave them the gifts they needed even to speak about Jesus to people who spoke different languages. How much more can he deal with the obstacles and challenges we face!

May God equip us to know him better, fill us with his Spirit and enable us to tell the world how amazing he is this week!

All the best,

John

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