Lord Set the Earth on Fire! Lord, Set Your Church on Fire! Lord, Set Me on Fire! We Need a New Pentecost
Published on THE STREAM
We read these words of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke, “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!” (Luke 12:49-53) Is that fire blazing in our own lives?
On the first Pentecost the followers of Jesus gathered as He had commanded them. After He was raised and before He ascended, he told them, “And behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you; but stay in the city, until you are clothed with power from on high.” (Luke 24:49) He fulfilled that promise, as He fulfills every promise. In Jesus, the Apostle Paul reminded us, all the promises of God found their “Yes.”
We refer to Pentecost as the birthday of the church in the Christian tradition for good reason. Their encounter with the Holy Spirit in that Upper Room changed them. They were filled with the same Spirit which raised Jesus from the dead and will one day even quicken our mortal bodies. (Romans 8:11)
That Holy Spirit made it possible for them to carry forward in time the Lord’s ongoing mission, as members of His Body. We are the beneficiaries of their fidelity and living, spirit filled faith. We are now invited to continue that same mission in this day. We need the same Holy Spirit to respond.
The Holy Spirit makes it possible for us to live differently, beginning now. Jesus promised, “Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father.” (John 14:12) He meant it.
In that same chapter we read these words, “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always, the Spirit of truth, which the world cannot accept, because it neither sees nor knows it. But you know it, because it remains with you, and will be in you.”
“I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me, because I live and you will live. On that day you will realize that I am in my Father and you are in me and I in you.”………….
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