Thought For The Week 20 May 2018

The following is an excerpt from the Moderator’s Pentecost message.  You can read the whole thing on our website www.timarupres.org.nz

At Pentecost, the Spirit of God comes in a manner that is both reassuring and   completely alien; unless we understand this we will be doomed to look in the ‘wrong way’ for the   Spirit moving amongst us today.

The question is, where is the Spirit of God today? What is the Spirit doing today? I do not believe that the Spirit has gone into hiding. I simply think the Spirit is working strangely in a manner we do not recognise to bring about the same things – a glorifying of Christ in the world…and I do mean the world.

Perhaps the greatest misunderstanding about the Spirit’s role is that we imagine that it is confined to the Church. It is not. Yes, the gifts are given to the Church so that the Church might operate to reflect Christ but the key goal of the Spirit’s activity is to       convict and convince the world of God’s love and this is where we probably need to start looking for the next move of the Spirit. I say this because I believe that wherever the Church sets out to address the world’s needs with any kind of real intentionality, the Spirit will attend that activity. The Spirit is the Spirit of God’s mission first and foremost.

So, may you know the moving of the Spirit in your Pentecost celebrations but more so, may you be led by the Spirit to bring the healing love of Christ to the world, for through this are we more likely to witness the strange but powerful moving of God amongst us again.

Yours in Christ

Richard Dawson

Moderator Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand