Episode #55 Take your faith into the streets

Speaker A: 00:00:03

Welcome to the Hobo Soul Podcast of Road advised from the Bible and from me, Yvon Prehn, someone who's a little further down the road of life. I'll talk to you every Tuesday and Thursday for about 10 minutes.

And if you'd like more in depth information on walking with Jesus, you can find that my www.bible805.com website. For now, let's get started on our topic for today, which is

Episode number 55, Take your faith into the streets.

I have a little longer passage for today, as yesterday was the day of Pentecost in the church, the day when the Holy Spirit came on. Everyone let me share a few of the passages about it in Acts 2.

I recommend that you read the whole chapter when you have time, but for now I want to share some excerpts from the message translation and then I'll talk about them. Here's what it says. When the feast of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place without warning.

There was a sound like a strong wind, gale force. No one could tell where it came from. It filled the whole building.

Then, like a wildfire, the Holy Spirit spread through their ranks and they started speaking a number of different languages as the Spirit prompted them.

And then it goes on a little bit later and it says, peter said, change your life, turn to God and be baptized, each of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, so your sins are forgiven. Receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

The promise is targeted to you and your children, but also to all who are far away, whomever in fact our Master God invites. He went on in this vein for a long time, urging them over and over, get out while you can, get out of this sick and stupid culture.

That day, about 3,000 took him at his word, were baptized and signed up. They committed themselves to the teaching, the apostles, the life together, the common meal, and the prayers.

If people are at all familiar with Pentecost, they most often focused on the first part of the reading, how the frightened hiding group of Jesus followers were huddled together in an upper room and suddenly the Holy Spirit descends on them in a particularly spectacular way. Granted, that was extraordinary, and sometimes it was.

People want to reproduce that experience, one of an especially powerful time of being overpowered by the Holy Spirit and perhaps speaking in tongues as part of this. Now they know they can't actually redo Pentecost, but they want that particularly spectacular thing for themselves.

Now, I'm not to deny anyone's experiences with the Lord, and I think everyone that we have, big or little, should be thanked for and treasured big. But I think it's instructive to look at what happened next to the disciples after this incredible blessing.

They didn't stay in the upper room enjoying this heavenly experience. As wonderful and as powerful as it was, the tongues they were speaking weren't for them.

They were for the crowd of people from all over the known world who'd gathered in Jerusalem for the Jewish feast of Pentecost, the feast of first fruits.

Apparently the gathered believers were so loud in their excitement after the Holy Spirit descended that people from all over the city could hear them and gathered outside the building. What happens next is so important. The disciples didn't stay inside. With their newfound experience of the Spirit's power, they took it to the streets.

And Peter, previously the loud in impetuous coward and denier of his Lord, stands up to preach. And as one translation says, he preached a long time and he didn't talk about what a great experience they just had.

He preached about Jesus and 3,000 responded to the message of salvation.

Now an application for us, our times with the Lord, from daily peaceful and maybe sometimes even boring reading of the Word to times of incredible insight and perhaps mystical experiences. The biblical pattern isn't to hoard them, to camp out in them, as precious as they might be. There's always a temptation to do that.

But at times I wonder if we're not desiring heaven too soon. The Lord does give us sometimes extraordinarily refreshing experiences.

But to stay in them, to make reproducing them a major goal of our Christian lives, when they are never presented as the everyday diet for a healthy, growing believer, I think is misguided. It's like being on a truly wonderful vacation for a few days in an extraordinary place. For a few days it's for a refreshing and restoration.

But after a few days, the joy can deteriorate into simple self indulgence. I think we need to be aware of that in our spiritual lives. The primary motif of the Christian life now is that of spiritual warfare.

We can rest behind the lines briefly, but we aren't to camp out there like the disciples on the day of Pentecost. We need to take our experiences with God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit into the streets. We need to take our faith into the streets.

People need to hear the message of salvation. They need to see the power of changed lives.

In addition, they, as the passage goes on to say, are to be baptized as a sign of their new faith in Jesus and receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. And then note how that, how that Particular gifting is followed when it says again, they didn't just stay around and enjoy that and all that.

They committed themselves to the teaching of the apostles, the life together, the common meal and the prayers. Active changes in life are the fruits of the true empowering of the Holy Spirit.

A newfound hunger for things many may have imagined that they'd never want before. A commitment to the teaching of the apostles. They wanted to learn.

They wanted to get into the Word, they wanted to understand it, they wanted to spend time together, they wanted to pray. These are the things we ought to pursue in our Christian Life. Through my Bible805.com ministry I try to provide materials. I don't try.

I was trying to be humble, I guess there, but that's what I work so hard on.

I provide materials for you at www.bible805.com There are less and podcasts and Bible reading schedules and connections to books and all sorts of things to help you get into the Word of God, to help you in a modern day way be committed to the teaching of the apostles. But that isn't all that we are encouraged to do. Do learn, do spend time in the Word, but also spend time with people in your church.

Life together, fellowship, prayer, worship, small groups, observing communion, all these things are gifts from the Spirit for our taking at any time. No special miracles are required and the results are equally incredible.

That's all for this podcast, for transcripts, links to related material, and much more to help you learn to know, trust, apply and teach the Bible, go to www.bible805.com for now, let me end with this benediction and prayer.

May you walk each day surrounded by the gracious love of the Father, guided by the gentle wisdom of the Holy Spirit, and conscious of the astoundingly real presence of Jesus, who will walk with you until you're no more a hobo soul, no more a transient wandering heart, but at home in the kingdom prepared for you with your God forever. Amen.