TEACHING

MAY 21, 2023
10:30 AM (+ communion)
FIVE SHIFTS OF TRUE REVIVAL + REFORMATION
A reformation is a period of recalibration and course-correction. Any community around for as long as the church will experience inevitable drift over time. Yet the Spirit has worked again and again throughout history to draw the church back toward its center. Key moments come when particular ideas and practices are rethought and core truths are rediscovered.
Rapid cultural and technological change, clergy scandals, church divisions, and political turmoil have resulted in a period where “deconstruction” is the buzzword. Many Christians find themselves rethinking their faith, and many outside the church dismiss Christianity as having nothing true or relevant left to say to the world.
​THIS SUNDAY: Shift 4 THE FIREPLACE INSIDE YOU
​Acts 1:1-8, Acts 2:1-4, 1 Corinthians 12:12-14
​The fire inside you impels you to act. In this day, followers of Jesus need to have an encounter with the spiritual fire of God more than ever. We are called to learn again from the early church the Pentecostal Christianity that empowers us. The fourth element of this new move of God is: “A clarified purpose and a fresh empowerment The Holy Spirit empowers us to partner in God’s work of reconciling all things.”

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Teaching Notes:

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Scripture
Acts 1:1-8, Acts 2:1-4, 1 Corinthians 12:12-14
​May 18th, Ascension of The Lord (Th)

Experiences Matter
The mystical life is normal Christian Life... “Mystical experiences are not foreign to scriptural tradition but are the norm within scriptural tradition. These mystics found in Scripture—and I only mentioned ten, there are many more—are witnesses to the possibility of mystical experiences in our own lives.… By ‘mystics,’ we simply mean a person who seeks, and at some level attains, a direct experience within the mystery of God.” (Zahnd, WETOF, 125).

​Management or Manifestation? Control or Order?

Jesus’ Gospel

• Acts 1-2 “When the disciples ask Jesus if he is going to restore the kingdom, they specifically ask if it would be restored to Israel. Not to the world. Their imagination centered on Israel as a formal nation-state. They hoped their kingdom, their political power would be restored. This isn’t the only time the disciples struggle with ethno-nationalism. All throughout Acts, we see the Jewish disciples wrestling with the inclusion of gentile converts, debating the imposition of purity laws, and even racially segregating communion.”

 

• “Pentecost is about the advent of a kingdom without borders, one that tears down divisive boundaries and gathers people around the peace of Christ. At Pentecost, the Spirit makes this kingdom work “concrete,”[1] as missiologist Alan Roxburgh says. We can see and taste the kingdom as the Spirit moves. But Pentecost also challenges previous understandings.”

“Like the disciples, we have a habit of looking in the wrong places, waiting on the sky when the kingdom is already all around us, emerging from dry bones and mustard seeds from fallow ground as the Spirit breathes it to life.”

Application - Now What?

• Pay Attention:
  • “‘These men are drunk!’ How often do we miss God’s work because it doesn’t fit our preconceived notions?”

 

• Repent
  • The first works of the Spirit are not about the sins we often think of...that work comes along the way. The first work is removing the barriers to access God. 
  • You don't get the power for life-change without first removing the false holiness barrier in the way of the power of God.​
    
    

• Move Close

For Discussion and Reflection

1. What spiritual or mystical experiences have you experienced or heard of? (See the Brian Zahnd quote about the importance of experience for our faith.)
   
2. Have you ever found trusting the Spirit to be difficult? What can make trusting the Spirit challenging?
   
3. Is the Spirit revealing to you any places or areas in your life that might need to be disrupted by the Spirit’s work?
   
4. What are some moments in your life, or that of your community, where you have seen the Spirit at work?
   
5. What if we believed that the Spirit could move today, like the Spirit moved at Pentecost? How might we live differently? How might we pray?
   
6. What is an action step, prayer, or risk you can take this week to live in faith that the Spirit is moving?