Experiencing God's Presence #122

Suddenly, there was a sound from heaven like the roaring of a mighty windstorm, and it filled the house where they were sitting.

Acts 2:2

How many millennia had God waited for this moment? How intently were the angels focused on this event? The Spirit who had moved and hovered over the waters at the dawn of creation, whose breath had sparked the first life in creatures of dust, and who had worked and moved among God’s people throughout their history, was now coming to inhabit them. This was more than a fireworks display on Sinai or a glory cloud in the Temple. This was a redefinition of the Temple itself and a re-creation of those made in God’s own image. It was the implementation of a new kind of Being.

This Spirit was the fulfillment of a promise Jesus gave before He ascended. His followers were to wait in Jerusalem for power. He had sent them on a mission, but they were not to begin it until the gift had come. He had earlier warned them that they could do nothing apart from Him. He had promised He would come to them, that His Spirit would fill them with His Presence. Now the moment had come.

This wasn’t the first manifestation of God’s Spirit in Scripture, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. But it was a defining one, marking the beginning of a new age. And simply by its inclusion in Scripture, it’s an invitation to all who follow Jesus to be empowered in perceptible, life-altering ways. Many people were changed that day; you can be too. And it isn’t a onetime event. The Spirit comes again and again. Ask Him to fill you more powerfully, more perceptibly than you’ve ever been filled before. He has waited long for such moments.

Spirit, fill me and empower me in such concrete ways that I know I’ll never be the same again. Have Your way in me.

From the book