Encouraging Pentecost: Pentecost Sunday 2016
This past Pentecost Sunday I was invited to preach at my old parish, Light of Christ Church, a charismatic Anglican church in Marietta, Georgia. I was utterly delighted, and determined that I would not only preach Pentecost, but encourage Pentecost. The four suggested readings were all on the Holy Spirit, except for the suggested Psalm. In place of it I substituted a reading from Numbers 11:28-29, which ended: “But Moses said to him, ‘Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, that the Lord would put His Spirit upon them!’” I preached Pentecost mostly on Acts 2, the central reading of Pentecost Sunday, and accentuated the flow of God’s intention from Old Testament to New, that all His people be filled with the gifts of the Spirit.
After the sermon I invited the congregation to renew their charismatic gifts through a prayer exercise I had learned from the life of Mrs. Agnes Sanford. On one occasion she and two other women were exhausted from their work of healing evangelization in an era when cessationism reigned and opposition rampant. They asked the Lord for guidance and, and received the directive to pray for the “Holy Ghost.” They did so, two on one, two on one, two on one. They were wonderfully refreshed and filled with the Spirit. This is scriptural (2 Tim 1:6). The congregation was divided into groups of threes and fours, and laid hands on each other and prayed for a re-filling of the Holy Spirit. They too were wonderfully refreshed, and one lady was miraculously healed of a serious illness without even asking!
Here is the full article: “Encouraging Pentecost on Pentecost Sunday (What a novel idea!)”
http://anglicalpentecostal.blogspot.com/2016/05/encouraging-pentecost-on-pentecost.html
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