Thy Kingdom Come – Pentecost

PENTECOST 

‘Come Holy Spirit’

Revelation 3:22 

‘Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches.’ 

There is an African proverb which says, ‘Listening is the most difficult skill to learn and the most important to have.’ At the end of each of the letters to the seven churches at the start of Revelation we read, ‘Anyone with ears to hear must listen to the Spirit and understand what He is saying to the churches.’ The message to each church is different but the urgent command to listen and understand what the Spirit is saying is equally important for each one. 

We have prayed for our five people, loved by God. We have prayed for our churches and ourselves ‘Come Holy Spirit’ throughout these days of Thy Kingdom Come. Now the day of Pentecost is here, it’s a good time to ask, ‘What is the Holy Spirit wanting me to hear, to understand, to take to heart and to act on?’ 

When the Lord Jesus wrote to the Revelation churches through John, He wrote with a perfect knowledge of the situation, the hopes, fears, dreams, challenges, faults and failings of every church and of every believer. The letters spring from a holy love which longs for the Christians to know comfort in adversity, strength in opportunity and power in weakness. 

The Lord longs for the churches, as he longs for us, to be all we are meant to be, all we can become in the power of the Holy Spirit. 

On the first Day of Pentecost, which Luke describes in Acts chapter two, the disciples who, like us, had been praying since the day of Christ’s Ascension, 

Church Service at St John’s Cathedral, Hong Kong

got far more than they ever imagined. The wind of the Spirit carried them into the streets of Jerusalem to share the Good News of the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus. The fire of the Spirit began to change them from within, giving them new gifts and enabling them to do new things and conquer old temptations. The languages given by the Spirit were a sign that Jesus was for the whole world. 

Our world needs different languages from those spoken that first Pentecost. There are new needs, new cultures, new generations to reach, but the Gospel of Jesus never changes. He died for sins once. He rose again once. He will come again as Lord and judge. 

Like the first disciples, we live in the gap between the mountain peaks of the first and second comings of Christ. We live with that one command ringing in our ears, ‘Go and make disciples of all nations’ (Matthew 28:19). We go forward with the certainty that what the Lord commands in His word He will empower by His Spirit. We do this by being reminded of the saying that we share the word of God in the power of the Holy Spirit and we leave the results to God. 

‘Lord, help my five people to hear Your call, respond to Your love and accept the Lord Jesus. Amen’