Book Description

There have been all kinds of explanations suggested for what happened at Pentecost. When God first poured out his Spirit’s Life upon the church it became obvious that God was at work. Many explanations of what happened at Pentecost have reduced this spiritual phenomenon to a list of things we ought to be doing. What this approach to ministry forgets is that Pentecost was not about what we need to be doing. It is about what God was doing and what God continues to do by bringing Christ to dwell within God’s people. Pentecost show us that you can’t reduce the mystery of life in the Spirit to a ministry model that can be duplicated whenever we want. If it could wouldn’t that have happened by now in America? May I ask you to consider whether any ministry program has brought lasting revival to this nation? What I believe we have seen is the hope for revival being shared; and we are very passionate about that. But our passion or our programs will not produce life in us or in others. Only God can do that! What we need is a fundamental transformation of our lives and ministries. Only the Spirit of God can cause a person to be born again (John 3:5-7). Only the Spirit of God can enable a walk with Jesus (Galatians 3:1-3). And only the Spirit of God can bring about the awakening and revival that this nation needs (Acts 4:31). Pentecost teaches us that it is not about having the right model for ministry. If anyone had a model for ministry that could not be improved upon it was Israel. God told Moses to make their ministry after the “pattern” he had seen on the Mountain as he met with God (Exodus 25:9, 40). And while this ministry was to be preformed it had no power to transform the lives of those believers who faithfully sought to maintain its ritual because their hearts could not be changed by the outward observance of any law (Hebrews 7:19). The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews puts it this way, “This is why Moses was warned when he was about to build the tabernacle: ‘See to it that you make everything according to the pattern shown you on the mountain’” (Hebrews 8:5). “But God found fault with the people and said, ‘The time is coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they did not remain faithful to my covenant, and I turned away from them. This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time, declares the Lord. I will put my laws in their minds and write them upon their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.’ By calling this covenant ‘new,’ he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and aging will soon disappear” (Hebrews 8:8-13). So it is not about getting our model for ministry right or about having the right program or is it about knowing Christ and walking as he did; but only the Spirit’s presence in our lives can do that! The book of Acts shows this over and over again. Luke had already written the gospel named after him and he refers to this as “my former book” when he starts his preface in Acts (Acts 1:1). He says that the gospel of Luke recorded, “all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day he was taken up to heaven.” He then wrote Acts which recorded what Jesus continued to do and teach, except now it is through the agency of the church as empowered by his Holy Spirit. Luke’s record is a diary of what happened as God’s presence returned to earth with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the church. Jesus was on the throne in glory but he