Pentecost and the Inside-Out Church

But I guess I always thought that the power of the Holy Spirit was relegated to the church building. Whenever we talked about a “move of the Holy Spirit,” we were talking about a church service or a week of meetings with a special speaker.

I never heard Pentecostal people say that the Holy Spirit was moving powerfully in their offices, in their neighborhoods, in their living rooms, or on their campuses. It didn’t really occur to us that the gifts of the Holy Spirit were for Monday through Saturday as much as they were for Sunday morning and Sunday night. It was as if we thought the Holy Spirit slept on a cot in the basement of the church during the week.

But the Book of Acts clearly shows that the Holy Spirit is “out there,” beyond the walls of the church building, eager to touch the poor, the hurting, and the unsaved. In fact, if you read the Book of Acts with an eye toward discovering the whereabouts of the Holy Spirit, you’ll see that He seems to spend much of His time moving in power and pouring out His giftings outside of the large-group gatherings of the church. This is a great blessing, because it means that we get to be Pentecostal more than one day a week.

Let’s look at some of the evidence. Where is the Holy Spirit, anyway?

The Whereabouts of the Holy Spirit

The first person the Bible records as being “filled with the Holy Spirit” is Elizabeth, Mary’s relative and the mother of John the Baptist (Luke 1:41). Where was she when she was filled? Standing in her house in the hill country of Judah. And who was the first man in the New Testament to be filled with the Holy Spirit? Elizabeth’s husband, Zacharias (Luke 1:67). And where was he when he was filled? In his house. It’s easy to forget that God could have arranged for Elizabeth and Zacharias to have these powerful experiences with the Holy Spirit someplace else. He could have caused Elizabeth and Zacharias to come to the temple, for example; in fact, that would have been very easy because Zacharias was a priest.

God had sent an angel to speak with Zacharias in the temple. He could have filled him with the Holy Spirit there. But He didn’t. He chose to fill the elderly couple at home. And as a result, “fear came on all those living around them; and all these matters were being talked about in all the hill country of Judea” (Luke 1:65).

And what of Jesus’ first recorded filling with the Holy Spirit? Where was He when the Spirit of God descended upon Him in bodily form like a dove? Not in the temple in Jerusalem. Not in the synagogue back home in Nazareth. He was standing in a river (Luke 3:22). And as soon as He was filled with the Holy Spirit, He was led, not to the temple, but to the wilderness (Luke 4:1-2).

Again, God could have chosen to fill Jesus with the Holy Spirit anywhere. He chose to do it outside of town and to send the newly-filled Messiah into the desert even farther from the temple.

Tags: church, insideout, pentecost

Category: Living the Faith, Spring 2002