Series: Now Live

The Holy Spirit does not come primarily to empower individuals – but to build a new community, the church. The church responds by deliberately engaging in practices that support the life the Spirit brings – enabling it to increasingly become a church that Jesus can trust.

When the Holy Spirit is in you, your life looks different.  You can see hope in hopeless situations.

When the Holy Spirit is in you, your life looks different.  You can see hope in hopeless situations.

This Second Sunday of Pentecost provides the opportunity to reflect on how Jesus builds His church.  Looking at Peter’s sermon on the Day of Pentecost, it quickly became clear – the foundational reality of the church is that it makes a clear declaration in word and practice that Jesus is Lord!

Jesus gives us the gift of the Holy Spirit.  We just have to accept it, then share it.

Jesus has made it increasingly clear – He did not raise from the dead simply so they could enjoy His presence once again! This is part of a plan to save the world. He intends His disciples – us – to partner with Him by telling His story, testifying to the reality of Resurrection Life by the way we live and speak. He knows we need the same power by which He was raised from the dead – and so He instructs his disciples to wait until they are baptized into the Holy Spirit.

The risen Jesus is still revealing himself just as He did to Paul. He sees you, knows you, loves you recklessly and wants to give himself to you fully.  He is jumping off the pages of the New Testament.  He is revealing Himself in word and Spirit. 

Jesus’ resurrection reframes and redefines everything – including all our past understandings of how things have to be. In yet another playful moment with His friends, Jesus unpacks the story they have believed – but in a way that would never have occurred to them. They were missing the essential piece – pain and death as prelude to life.