In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.” vs. 17
Acts 2:14-21
From the disciples’ perspective what had happened with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit was unprecedented. All the old presuppositions about how God works in the world had been turned upside down, and from now on anything was possible. Luke uses a magnificent verse from the prophet Joel to show that the Spirit of God can be expected to show up anywhere and at any time. While we pay lip service to this notion and even enjoy telling about the Pentecost experience in Acts 2, it’s more difficult when we encounter the Spirit in real time in our own environment. Religion is all about uniformity and developing creeds and doctrines that are changeless, and we don’t like it when new things explode into our church experience. We’ve seen that in the last half century when women and then LGBTQ+ folks started showing up asking for full inclusion in the life of our congregations. This outpouring of the Spirit seemed strange and even wrong to may believers, and deep divisions appeared in the Body. This kind of change was just too much and many questioned whether this really was of God or some sort of cultural aberration. And it is true that not everything new is Spirit-driven–but sometimes we just plunge in and trust that blessings will follow!
Thought for the Day: How do we know when a change is Spirit driven?
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