Pentecost

The Word hides eternal life.  Through the Word of God you discover life and without that Word there is no salvation.  I encourage people to go back to the Word of God and don’t rely on what people say or write.  Go back to the Bible yourself and read it.

Today is Pentecost.  All corners of the world celebrate the day that the Holy Spirit came down and the first church started.  This dream day, the day that the disciples of Jesus were waiting for the promise of Jesus.  He told them to be in one place and wait for the power of the  Holy Spirit to come down.  He didn’t tell them to gather to eat, party, laugh or to enjoy but to wait for something that is going to take place. 

God left Adam and Eve in the garden and in the evening, He would come back.  God said, “I will send a redeemer “.  Then people waited years for Jesus to be born.  Without waiting, we live without hope.  Our hope builds its foundations in waiting.  When we wait, we must know what we are waiting for.  The people of that time were waiting for the messiah but when He came they did not recognise him.  They missed the point.

Jesus left and said He would send the Holy Spirit, you have to wait.  That day in Acts 2, the Holy Spirit came down from heaven.  Remember before Pentecost the disciples had the Holy Spirit because Jesus had breathed on them but this day the Holy Spirit would act outside the box.  On the day of Pentecost God opened the doors. 

People from Africa and Asia came on that day and on that hour at 9am, all those people were gathered there and suddenly they started to hear the disciples speaking in their own languages.  These people are not from our country but they can speak our languages.  How intelligent is the Holy Spirit.  He brought those people there and then let them hear messages in their own languages.  Acts 2:12, amazed and perplexed they asked one another what this means. 

What does Pentecost mean to you?  Penta means 50.  50 days after Jesus resurrection.  What does 50 mean to you?  To remember that the Holy Spirit came down?  We will see the disciples talking about salvation.  Peter preaching.  All those who came before and after Jesus have been talking about the gospel and salvation.  Why is this day special?  If someone asks you about Pentecost, what will you say?  Pentecost was not only for Christians but for the worst in the world to come back to Jesus and repent.  Why was Holy Spirit sent down?

John 14:26, to teach us things about God.  Do you want to know about God? The main reference will be the Holy Spirit.  If you want to understand the teaching, go close to the Holy Spirit and tell Him to teach you.  Don’t ask for another human being but the Holy Spirit.  Put aside my personal opinion and only learn from the Holy Spirit.  The world is confused because many people listen to good speakers and think everything they say must be true and we become fans of that pastor rather than Holy Spirit.

1 Corinthians 2: 10, but God has revealed it to us by His spirit.  The Holy Spirit can search things that are hidden, things of God, not only of human beings.  If you want to know about God, the best person to go to is the Holy Spirit.  Today we try to limit the Holy Spirit to the power He has but the Holy Spirit is more than power.  It is also more than normal intelligence because He can go deep into knowledge of God.

In New Zealand we have intelligence services and someone can read all that is on your computer.  Although Kim Dotcom was so intelligent and could use the computer properly but the intelligence services had access to all his information. Likewise, the Holy Spirit knows everything, your mind, your spirit, your body.  The Holy Spirit will be there to help you and He is not there for you to run from.  He is in us because He wants us to know Him and understand Him deeply.  We tell God that we want to understand Him, then the Holy Spirit says, “you have Me in you”.

If the Holy Spirit is in me, how do I live with him?  How do I let Him operate in me?  Before He left, Jesus said, “I will send you the Holy Spirit.  He will be there to guide you” (John 16).  If the Holy Spirit guides me, how often do I ask Him to guide me and in what do I ask for guidance?  To guide means to show, how and when.  You can’t guide someone who already knows.  If I know the way to Huntly I won’t need a guide.  The Holy Spirit is there to guide us in the things we don’t know, step by step, explaining to us how it works and how things should be, how to eat and sleep etc.  That is the role of the Holy Spirit.

King Solomon wanted wisdom and intelligence when God asked him what he wanted.  Our wisdom and intelligence today is the Holy Spirit because he searches even the mind of God.  Tell him, help me to understand things and He will take you step by step through the ways you should live.

1 Corinthians 2:11, who knows your thoughts?  Only your spirit.  My intelligence knows what I am thinking.  The spirit of human beings is only one role to manipulate.  You can see a 2 year old child trying to manipulate their parents.  That is the human spirit which is opposite to God’s spirit which is to teach us and guide us and show that Jesus is the true God.

Pentecost means 50.  What do you think when you see 50?  What does it mean for you?  A small 5 and a zero.  What does 50% mean?  Half.  This is a half: you must know that this half belongs to x and this half belongs to y.  Your life is not yours.  Although you can make a decision, remember you don’t have to make the decision by yourself.  Consult the Holy Spirit. 

My mother used to say to me at the 50^th minute of this hour, what did you do?  At the 50^th day of this year, what did you do?  After 50 minutes, it will soon be end of the hour, what will I do with remaining 10 minutes?  “Holy Spirit step in because I have been doing things for myself for the last 50 minutes”.

We only want the Holy Spirit to see miracles or to speak in tongues.  The Holy Spirit is always with you but you don’t have time to talk to Him.  It’s like me having my phone sitting next to Anna and I can be busy on my phone while Anna is there, can we talk?  Today, the world, the nature, our bodies distract us a lot and we forget about the presence of the Holy Spirit in us.  We work like people who don’t even care about Holy Spirit.  We sing for the Holy Spirit to come, “let it rain” and He will say, “I have rained already, I am here and everything is wet, it’s now up to you”.

You see people at work, university, and church, and driving using social media (texting, Facebook etc).  Tyrone wants to be a friend of Prasad and Prasad ignores him.  How will Tyrone feel?  You may give up.  God has chosen you and saved you and given His Son to die for you and the Holy Spirit is living in you but you ignore God for 20 years of him running after you.  He may give up on you too.

On the day of Pentecost, the gate was opened for the rest of the world.  This is the first church.  You and I are the church of God, how often does the Holy Spirit guide us?  If you want to know how to be guided by Holy Spirit, then read the Bible.  To know how to make Holy Spirit and Jesus your friend, all is written in Word of God and it’s just a matter of us reading it and concentrating. 

Pentecost is a wakeup call for the church.  The prophet Micah said, “at end of the day the spirit will come upon humanity”.  The Spirit of God is in our lives and we are living in the end of the days but I prefer to go to Asia to see a prophet to know about my life instead of getting guidance from the Holy Spirit (we seek human beings instead of the Holy Spirit).  You have the message from the Holy Spirit but many people are now choosing the wrong path and being misled because we put our faith and hope in human beings while that spirit can only control the intelligence of human being.

The Holy Spirit will live in you so tell Him yourself your situation then you will see God coming closer to you.  If I give my prayer requests to others, I become lazy.  We need to pray for each other but we also have the responsibility to talk to the Holy Spirit who is with us.  Asking others for advice is fine but we need to ask the Holy Spirit too.  “Holy Spirit teach me, tell me God’s plan in this situation”.

We shouldn’t take the Holy Spirit for granted.  Other religions don’t know the Holy Spirit.  We have that privilege to be Christian. The best gift God gave us is Jesus and the best gift Jesus gave us is the Holy Spirit.  Our Pentecost should be to tell Jesus, teach me how to understand the Holy Spirit and how to follow Him.

Only those that are sealed by Holy Spirit will go to heaven.  You have the visa to go to heaven.  Only those sealed by Holy Spirit will enter Kingdom of God.  If Ange is the one to guide me to Auckland and I tell her leave me alone I will do my own things, when it is time to drive to Auckland and I come back to Ange after 10 years pushing her away, Ange will refuse because the time has passed.  This means that we keep good friendship with Holy Spirit so on day that the Lord will come we won’t be surprised, we can easily go to meet with Jesus.

To live a normal life is fine but to live for eternal life is better.  Everything you do, prepare for eternal life not just this life that will finish soon. 

Let us pray and ask God how to live with the Holy Spirit.