A Harvest Of Souls

A Harvest of Souls

You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be my witnesses, telling people about me everywhere.

Acts 1:8

On the day of Pentecost all the believers were meeting together in one place. Suddenly, there was a sound from heaven like the roaring of a mighty windstorm, and it filled the house where they were sitting. Then, what looked like flames or tongues of fire appeared and settled on each of them. And everyone present was filled with the Holy Spirit and began speaking in other languages, as the Holy Spirit gave them this ability.

Acts 2:1-4

Imagine sitting down with your family for a big holiday dinner. Just as you’re getting ready to eat, you hear the roar of a tornado . . . only instead of being outside, the sound is inside the dining room! Before you’ve figured out where the noise is coming from, you look around and notice that small fires have erupted over the head of every person at the table! Then people start talking all at once, and you realize they’re speaking Italian, Arabic, Japanese, Greek—languages they’ve never spoken before!

That’s what happened fifty days after Jesus ascended into heaven. It was a Jewish holiday called Pentecost, when Jewish pilgrims from all over the known world came to Jerusalem for a feast to celebrate the harvest. But that Pentecost proved to be about a harvest much more significant than the harvest of crops. It was about the harvest of souls. On the day of Pentecost, three thousand people started following Jesus—you could say they were “harvested” for God.

When God poured out his Spirit at Pentecost, the people of God experienced an overwhelming sense of the greatness of God. That awe spilled over as courageous, passionate praise to God and as a witness to those who didn’t know Jesus. By giving people the supernatural ability to speak languages they didn’t know, God showed that his Spirit was empowering them to spread the gospel to the ends of the earth.

DISCUSSION STARTERS

What do you think it would have been like to be in that room at Pentecost?

As we think about God pouring out this kind of power for spreading the gospel, what does this tell us about his priorities?

In what ways and for what purposes does God pour out his Spirit today?