Imagine Yourself at Pentecost—The Day the Spirit Fell with Fire and Glory
from Acts 2:1-4
Imagine you’ve only just left that hilltop—only just finished seeing Jesus disappear into the clouds—and now you’re back in the room you’d left from, earlier. This is the very same room where He’d washed all your feet, from which He’d gone to the Garden of Gethsemane; this is the room where you’ve been meeting since He rose from the dead. Your heart and mind are overwhelmed—astounded!—by His ascending up to Heaven; you fall into a chair and simply stare across the room. Your eyes slowly move across the table-top in front of you until—look at that!—you notice His cloak, lying right there. His best one. His favorite.
You pick it up and sit back in your chair again. You hold the cloak to your face. It smells like Him…
“Should we pray?” someone asks everyone.
Everyone agrees—yes, we should…
So you bow your heads—perfect silence…
“O Eternal God,” one of your friends begins, “thou art worthy of our greatest professions of love and honor and—”
He stops. Perhaps something has distracted him. Perhaps He’s missing Jesus, or feeling confused, or suddenly scared – or simply doesn’t know what to say when speaking directly to the Father.
Then the same voice begins again, but quietly:
“Jesus? It’s us. All of us.”
You are listening to the very first time in all human history when someone has approached Heaven by talking to your friend Jesus. It makes your eyes suddenly fill up with tears. We can still talk to Him! you realize, rejoicing…
And now imagine you are in that very same room, just ten days later, surrounded by all the same friends, all the same furniture, all the same feeling of wonder. For these last ten days, almost all you’ve done is talk to Jesus; it’s the only thing all of you want to do anymore! This experience in your heart and mind is almost as good as being with Him. You can all agree that talking to Him is like Heaven-on-earth…
And that’s when this wild thing begins to happen…
The sound of a violent wind within the house…
You open your eyes to see if a breeze has blown the windows open—what in the world is happening?—and that’s when you see them…
Bright dashes of an orange-and-red flame.
Little bits of heavenly fire circling the room.
They seem to be descending from above you and they hover over the heads of everyone in the room. Their presence is like a visit of Heaven itself. You’re not sure what to do—or to think…
When, suddenly, one of them disappears down upon you—and within you!—and your whole heart and mind and spirit are lit up like a flame! Warmth spreads within your inner life like fire. The whole experience of your inner world explodes with power. It’s like you used to have walls that shut up everything inside you; that fenced your heart in; that kept your life feeling nice and normal…
And now those walls are gone forever: demolished! Your inner life is just as wide-open, as wild, as His! There is nothing now to separate you from experiencing all of Jesus, all of the Father, all of the Holy Spirit!
And that’s the moment when you realize what’s happened to you…
That’s when you actually understand…
Ten days ago, before He went up to Heaven, Jesus had said: “You will be given power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you…”
This is the Holy Spirit! you realize. The Spirit of Jesus has come to live inside me!
And then the most wonderful thought—the highest and best possible thought for every man, woman and child—occurs to you:
“Holy Spirit, what does Jesus want me to do next?”
That’s the question you can enjoy for the rest of your life.
Let’s Talk About It
How would you like to talk to Jesus? What do you like to talk about?
How do you experience the Holy Spirit—in your body, or a nice and peaceful feeling in your heart, or is it something else?
How do you hear Jesus’ voice? What kinds of things does He like to tell you? Ask Him if there is something He wants to tell you today!
