Weekly Devotional 17th of May, 2024
by Bruce Billington
Weekly Devotional 17th of May 2024
Pentecost Sunday
Pentecost Sunday is one of the most ancient feasts of the Church, celebrated early enough to be mentioned by Paul in Acts 20:16 and 1 Corinthians 16:8. It is the 50th day after Easter, and it supplants the Jewish Harvest Festival, which took place 50 days after the Passover, and which celebrated the sealing of the Old Covenant on Mount Sinai.
The Apostles and Mary were gathered in the Upper Room, where they had seen Christ after His Resurrection.
Acts 2:2-4 – “And suddenly there came from heaven a noise like a violent rushing wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire distributing themselves, and they rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance.”
This was the fulfilment of the promise Christ had made to the Apostles that He would send His Holy Spirit, and, on Pentecost Sunday, He came upon them. This was such a mighty force that the people there were utterly confounded and powerless to stand up under it.
Acts 2 teaches that there came a noise like the rushing of a mighty wind and there appeared tongues of fire that were distributing themselves and resting on people and everyone was bewildered and fearful.
This outpouring released the power of the gifts of the Holy Spirit and His transforming power to bring change was made available to all believers. As a result, we are now empowered to achieve things and produce results that are beyond our natural ability.
A wonderful question we should all ask ourselves is “What am I doing today that can only be produced by the power of the Holy Spirit in my life?” In the book of Acts, we see that no one who experienced the baptism of the Holy Spirit was ever the same again. It not only changed their own lives – but it also tipped the whole known world upside down.
The Holy Spirit desires and is empowered to bring transformation – to our own lives, to our families and communities, and to the world around us. He is never short on opportunities – what He lacks most is a willingness in the people of God to step out, trust Him, take some risks, and watch His power flow.
Although the teaching of the Holy Spirit is exhaustive, even a cursory study will reveal that the coming of the Holy Spirit opens us up to receive revelation, wisdom, insight and understanding of the ways of God. In 1 Corinthians 2 Paul tells us that his teaching was an expression of the power of God in all these ways, not just in what we call miracles, signs, and wonders.
His point is that through the Holy Spirit, we now have access to the mind of Christ, and we can not only access this but also impart it to others. When Paul says in 1 Corinthians 4:20 that the Kingdom of God does not consist in words but in power he is not limiting his thinking to just the gifts here. He is teaching that the power of the Kingdom of God is in its message of the cross – i.e., Christ crucified. It is so powerful, that it can take humanity from being lost and forsaken to being gloriously saved and set free. No other power can do that.
Without His work in our lives, we are stuck. It is only as we become a partaker of the Holy Spirit that we will ever be able to truly come into a knowledge of God, to truly worship Him and to walk in His ways, with clean hands and a pure heart.
Faith in God and the anointing and presence of the Holy Spirit still sets the world on fire, it can’t but do anything else – we just need to release it in and through our lives.
Through prayer and actions, we can now triumph over all the things that fallen humanity constantly stumbles over. We can offer not only hope for the future – but one for this very life right here and now. We can change the things most people can only complain about.
We are called to be a testimony and witness to this new age by expressing it in our life today – it says the end won’t come until we do that (Matthew 24:14).
God bless you.
Bruce Billington