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Summary: On the first Day of Pentecost, everyone heard the good news of God in their own tongue. The church has tried, through Bible translation and missionaries, to continue this work. Now we face new challenges to make God’s truth available to everyone, in his or her own tongue. |
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Summary: People need to hear that there is help available to get through the trials and uncertainties of our time. We have a power within us that allows us to perform marvelous deeds. When we have “maxed out” our credit line of giving and caring, the Holy Spirit empowers us to go that second mile. If you have it in you, then let it out |
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Summary: On the day of Pentecost, we observe God’s gift of the Spirit. This gift creates the church, and also empowers the church to effectively communicate the Gospel to a world that, for many different reasons, may find it hard to hear. |
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Summary: The Day of Pentecost is God’s announcement that the Good News is for everyone, delivered to all in our native tongues. |
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Summary: Differences in language can frustrate and confuse people and lead to conflict, a reality that the Bible speaks about in the story of the Tower of Babel. The story of Pentecost reverses this confusion of tongues, as the Holy Spirit enables the apostles to speak in languages that members of the crowd understand. This is a sign of the creation of true community centered in Jesus Christ. Because the gospel can be proclaimed in all languages, this community can be sustained and can grow. |
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Summary: Pentecost shows us that the Holy Spirit is uniquely active in the Christian community. |
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Summary: God has given the Spirit to every believer as a gift to empower all believers equally to participate in the life and ministry of the church. |
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Summary: In Hollywood versions of apocalyptic last days, all the earth is destroyed, including all that is beautiful and good. But in the prophetic vision of the last days, which Peter uses to describe the disciples’ experience on Pentecost, the last days signal the beginning of God’s activity among them. The inexplicable wind and fire that blows through the disciples also burns away the sadness of the past and gives them power and intelligibility for the future, God’s future. |
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Summary: Even though we may feel discouraged by the declining influence of the church and the ways contemporary society dismisses the church, we can take heart that even in its earliest days, outsiders made disparaging remarks about the church. Bystanders mistook the power of the Holy Spirit for inebriation. The church still claims the unexpected, unifying and empowering influence of the Holy Spirit for its life and mission. |
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Summary: Pentecost is the birthday of the church. A birth is not an end, but a beginning. There have been other “pentecosts” in the life of the church. Today we not only celebrate Pentecost. We await yet another Pentecost. |
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Summary: Pentecost is, above all else, a gracious surprise.
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Summary: The Holy Spirit gives us the ability to share the Gospel despite our differences. |
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Summary: Somewhere in the chaos of the violent wind and the tongues of fire are the wonderlands where God is moving in our lives. |
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Summary: Our churches today are in a low point of declining membership, diminished interest, shrinking attendance, and we wonder with anxiety what we shall do. Acts 2 tells us that, in good time, the Spirit will move us. In the experience of those first disciples and apostles, we get a glimpse of how it happens. |
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Summary: The dramatic descent of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost is one of the few biblical texts in which the Spirit is front and center. Usually the Spirit seems to work behind the scenes. But that work can be sudden and unexpected, bringing about genuinely new things. The Spirit is the creator of all life and, in the mission of Jesus and his church, works to bring about the fullness of life in communion with God. |
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Summary: Our Christian celebration of Pentecost — remembering the Holy Spirit and the infant church — turns a harvest of death, the old way of living, into a harvest of life, an alternative way to live and love. |
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Summary: Experiencing the Holy Spirit is a community event, not a moment of private spirituality. Communication requires community participation, both of speakers and listeners. Speakers need listeners if they are to be understood. |
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Summary: The church has already been planted. We need not wait for it to happen again. We have been given what we need. May we go forth and proclaim it again, and again, and ....
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Summary: The experience of Pentecost shows the church receiving some things at its birth that it continues to need today. The Holy Spirit gives the church power, unity and eloquence. Despite its imperfections, the church can claim those things now as well. |
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Summary: St. Peter's way of accounting for Christ's resurrection is the first apostolic statement on the subject. And certainly, even if the point were only one of antiquarian interest, it would be full of attraction to know how the first Christians thought about the chief truths of their faith. |
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There are 20 sermons in your results. |
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