Pastor’s Perspective

This Sunday we celebrate Pentecost and memorialize the letting loose of God’s Spirit in the world as read in the Acts of the Apostles. On this day, the Holy Spirit swept through the room of disciples and gave them spiritual gifts that empowered them for ministry. The Holy fire of truth brought change that no human being could ever reverse no matter how hard we try. Moreover, God was glorified by that transformation in and of the world.

This transformation also affects us personally and individually. We try to resist it since we don’t really want change. Still, we personally receive the Holy Spirit, and that Spirit motivates us to do new things in ministry and mission. We’ll spend the next six months studying how transformation by the Spirit makes us a church and what the Spirit led church does.

The essence of this transformation and personal motivation is that we cannot control it and that is certainly good. We need a broader imagination and vision of what might be accomplished for the good of creation and the people in it. We need something that we cannot modify. Something that reaches out farther than we can see or understand. Something that goes well beyond our individual self-interests. Reformed Protestant theology holds that every good thing we do, is not the product of our own thoughts and capabilities but the working of the Holy Spirit through us.

So, when the Spirit comes, let’s let it do its work no matter how uncomfortable that might make us. When the flames of God’s truth sweep in, let them burn! 

Godspeed,     

Allen