Count the days...Pentecost!
It's coming! It's coming! It's coming!
—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” 12 Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?” (Acts 2:11-12)
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Pentecost Sunday - this Sunday! - is a big deal in my local church. It is typically dubbed “the birthday of the Church," so…we throw a birthday party. Balloons, cake, singing ‘Happy birthday to us!’, dinner on the grounds, baptisms if some people are ready for that. It is a high and holy holiday. E. Stanley Jones, in his book on Pentecost says that you can…
"Draw a line through the New Testament and on one side is spiritual fumbling, hesitancy, inadequacy, defeat and on the other side is certainty, courage, adequacy, victory. That line runs straight through Pentecost." (E. Stanley Jones, The Christ of Every Road, 94)
Now, to be clear, on the fumbling, hesitant, inadequate and defeated side of the NT these disciples had a personal relationship with Jesus and been personally and intensely discipled by God Himself (in the flesh!) for many months.
Something else needed to happen.
"The Church is living between Easter and Pentecost. Easter stands for life wrought out, offered; Pentecost stands for life appropriated, lived to its full, unafraid and clearly and powerfully witnessing to an adequate way of human living. The church stands hesitant between the two. Hesitant, hence comparatively impotent.
"Something big has dawned on its thinking - Christ has lived, taught, died and risen again and has commissioned the church with the amazing Good News. But something big has yet to own in the very structure, make-up and temper of the life of the Church - Pentecost. Easter has dawned; Pentecost has not. If the church would move up from that between-state to Pentecost, nothing could stop it - nothing!!" (E. Stanley Jones, The Christ of Every Road, p. 25-26)
Dr. Bill Bright of Campus Crusade for Christ tells this story of a famous oil field called Yates Pool:
During the Depression, a guy named Yates owned a ranch that was struggling. It was nearly impossible for him to pay his mortgage, feed, and clothe his family. He was in peril of losing it all. Hand-outs from the government were his only hope.
Until one day, when a seismographic visited him and asked permission to drill. They thought that there could be some oil down there. At 1,115 feet they found not just oil, but one of the largest oil reserves ever found, ever. And sure enough, here came 80,000 barrels a day; in fact, 30 years later there was still a potential flow of 125,000 barrels of oil a day from one of the wells.
And Yates owned it all. But, even in poverty, he had still owened it all with all the oil and mineral rights. The problem is obvious, of course. He didn't know the oil was there even though he owned it.
And as Bright puts it, “Many Christians live in spiritual poverty. They are entitled to the gifts of the Holy Spirit and his energizing power, but they are not aware of their birthright.” Source: Bill Bright, "How to Be Filled with the Spirit" (Campus Crusade publication)
I just sat through a 5Q discipleship group with some guys and noticed that in Peter’s sermon in Acts 2 the Spirit is talked about being “poured out” three times. But mixed in with these pouring mentions is Peter standing up, God raising Jesus and Jesus ascending. Pour indicates a downward flow, standing and raising indicate an upwardness.
May both happen in you, your family and your local church in this the week of counting the days to Pentecost. May the Spirit be poured out on you and may you, by the grace of God, arise.