Do You Feel the Spirit?
May 20, 2007
Acts 2:17-21
The Lord will pour out his Spirit like a mighty wind. So says the prophet Joel. So says Peter. The Lord will pour out his Spirit. When that happens, our young men and women will have visions. They will have the gift of prophecy. Signs will be visible in the heaven and on the earth. Great things will happen. Miracles will abound. Events only imagined will come to pass. All people will hear the gospel and believe. Do you believe that is possible? Or do you think that the story from Acts is just that…a nice story?
Do you believe that the wind of the Spirit can bring miracles? Do you believe that God, in conjunction with the Holy Spirit can do things that we think are unimaginable? Do you believe, for example, that the Holy Spirit can cast out demons?
I would like you to remember an incident in the sixteenth chapter of the book of Acts. Paul and Silas went to a prayer meeting one day. When they got there, they found a slave girl who was possessed by an evil spirit. This particular spirit enabled this girl to tell fortunes. Her master probably set her up in business. She put a sign out front, “Fortunes Told Here.” And she made a whole lot of money for him.
Paul saw what was going on. He came up to the girl and said, “In the name of Jesus Christ, I command you to come out of her.” At that point, the evil spirit left the girl. The master was incredibly angry because he lost a steady stream of income, but the greater story is that she was free of her evil spirit. Do you believe in miracles?
Do you believe that God delivers us from danger? When Paul was in Damascus, he stirred up so much trouble that a crowd came to kill him. His friends let him down in a basket through an opening in the city wall, thus saving his life. Do you believe that God through the Holy Spirit can save us from danger?
Do you believe that God can take people who are hostile to the gospel and change them? Let’s remember Paul himself. He was on his way to Damascus to round up Christians in order to take them back to Jerusalem for persecution. God struck him down right there in the middle of the road. Then God picked him up and set him on the path to become the greatest missionary the church has ever seen.
Do you believe that God can do incredible things which, in our wildest imagination, we couldn’t even dream?
Giovanni Bernadone was born in Italy in 1182. His father, Pietro, was a wealthy businessman who bought and sold find fabrics. His mother, Pica, was French, and so after his father returned from a business trip to France, he renamed his son Francesco or “The Little Frenchman.”
Francesco was a child of luxury and grew to love the life of privilege and riches, but when civil war broke out between his birthplace and a rival city, he decided that he wanted more than anything to be a soldier. So when he was twenty years old, he joined the army, shortly after which he was captured and spent a year as a prisoner of war.
Due to the wealth of his family, Pietro was able to ransom his terribly ill son from prison. After a period of convalescence, Francesco decided that he wanted to join the Crusades and participate in winning back the Holy Land from the forces of Islam. God however, had other ideas.
Francesco was actually on his way toward the battles of Palestine when he had a vision in which God told him to return home and spend his time seeking God’s will for his life. On the return journey, Francesco continued to listen to God, and was led into a deeper and deeper sense that he was being called into a life of service.
One day, after he had arrived back home, he was meditating beside an old, abandoned church and distinctly heard God’s voice telling him to rebuild his church. At first, Francesco took that quite literally and so set about to restore the building. Later, he understood that it was a word meant to rebuild the spiritual heart of the church and especially to reach out to the poor.
One day, he went into his father’s shop, took some very expensive cloth, sold it, and gae the proceeds to the poor. Pietro was livid and took his son before the local bishop, demanding that restitution be made.
At that point, Francesco renounced his claim to his father’s estate and returned everything he had, even the clothes on his back. He stripped off his clothes, stood naked before the bishop, and spoke to his father. “Until now, I have called you father, but from now on I can say without reserve, ‘Our father who art in heaven.’ He is all my wealth and I place all my confidence in him.”
Francesco began living in complete poverty, begging for everything he needed, wandering the countryside preaching the gospel, and ministering to lepers and other outcasts. Three years later, after several thousand other young men had begun to follow his example, he traveled to Rome to ask the Pope for approval for a new monastic order.
The Pope agreed to his plan and thus began one of the greatest spiritual movements in Christian history. Francesco Bernadone was a native son of Assisi and had such a profound influence on the church that only two years after his death, he was canonized by the church, and has been known ever since as St. Francis of Assisi, founder of the Franciscan Order.
How could Francis have given up everything he knew and loved? He gave it all up for the God he loved more. Never underestimate the incredible power of the Holy Spirit to do miraculous things.
Do you believe that God acting through the Holy Spirit can do miraculous things? Here’s one more story about Francis. This is a story that I desperately want to believe. There was a huge wolf which was terrorizing the village of Gubbio. It and had killed several children and the people were so afraid that they wouldn’t venture out of their homes.
Francis immediately went to see what he could do. He walked down the road for several miles and came face to face with the wolf which bared its teeth and charged at him. Francis softly called out, “Come to me, brother wolf. In the name of Christ, I charge yuou not to hurt anyone anymore.”
The wolf lay down at his feet and Francis instructed him that he must leave the people alone. In return, the town’s people would put food out for him so that he would always have something to eat. From that day on, the wolf and the people lived peacefully. Do you believe that God can do incredible things?
In the life of St. Francis, as often happens with our heroes, stories have taken on a life of their own. We sometimes have trouble distinguishing legend from factual happenings. So, for the sake of argument, let’s put the wolf story in the category of myth. Usually when we say the word “myth” we think of stories like King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox, George Washington and his wooden teeth, or the sunken city of Atlantis.
More properly however, myth refers to truth that cannot be told in other ways. Did the wolf come to lie at the feet of St. Francis? Even if it is not historical, it is truth. God worked powerfully through the life of that poor monk so that others might come into communion with Christ and live lives free from fear as they trusted the work of the Holy Spirit. I hope that we will never be surprised at the things God can do in our midst.
William Seymour was born in 1870 down in the Louisiana bayous. The son of former slaves, he had almost no opportunity for formal education, but found his greatest strength in the traditions of black spirituality. As soon as he was able, he left the south and traveled to Indianapolis and then Cincinnati. He had trouble finding work in those cities, so moved to Houston, Texas where he became pastor of a small church.
One day, a visitor from Los Angeles came to his church and heard him preach. When this lady returned home, she told her prayer group about his ministry and they invited him to come to California.
When he arrived and began pasturing his new congregation, he felt a profound movement of the Holy Spirit. He felt that God was telling him that the nation was ready for revival. He continued to preach and teach until he was attracting huge crowds. They rented an old building on Azusa Street for worship space.
Three services a day – morning, noon, and evening – sometimes ran into each other so that the days were one long worship experience.
What was amazing for 1906 was that the color line was broken. Whites and Blacks came to worship together. Not only were they coming together, but they were going out together as well. The power of the Holy Spirit seemed at times to match the day of Pentecost.
The Azusa Street Revival lasted for three years. Literally thousands of people across the nation and around the world were influenced by this new outpouring of the Spirit. They launched a newspaper called “The Apostolic Faith” which quickly grew to 50,000 subscribers.
The son of slaves, through the power of the Holy Spirit, began a movement that is still being felt this very day. Do you believe that God can do incredible things?
How will the Spirit blow through your life? I don’t know what God has planned for your life or the life of this church. It is quite possible that we will never see someone raised from the dead. It is quite possible that wild animals will never come and lie at our feet. It is quite possible that a revival will never break out here on the south side of Fort Wayne that will spread across the nation.
Yet, I am convinced that the Holy Spirit will still work in our lives; perhaps in ways not so spectacular, but in power and might just the same.
Perhaps we need to be aware of the working of the Spirit in the little things. Perhaps the Spirit might come and bring personal renewal into a life that is barren and dry. Perhaps one of us will learn to pray with the kind of power never before imagined.
Perhaps a husband and wife will have their marriage renewed. Perhaps a son or a daughter will be reconciled with his or her parents. Perhaps we will discover new ways to be the Body of Christ right here at Calvary.
Perhaps one of the children in our Sunday School classes will be introduced to Christ in a way that makes a lasting and life-changing impression. Perhaps one of our Study Connection children will go on to do great things. Perhaps, because of the money we send to Maria Humbane in Zimbabwe, children will grow and flourish and become passionate Christians and responsible citizens to lead that country into new paths of democracy.
Do not underestimate the power of the Holy Spirit to do incredible things. Even the things that we think are quite small are no less miracles than the loosing of prison chains, the casting out of demons, the revival of a nation, or the taming of a wild animal.
Don’t ever underestimate the power of the Holy Spirit in your life and in our corporate life together. God has not stopped working. God is not finished with us yet. Let us be open to his leading. Let us be ready to believe and act when the Spirit blows.
