Pentecost and the Inside-Out Church

A timely reminder of the empowerment of the Spirit in our daily lives.

Not long ago a young woman I’ll call Karen asked if she could talk with me about her plans for the future. I had known Karen for several years but I hadn’t seen her in a long, long time. She said she had to make some decisions about a career path she was considering and just wanted to bounce some ideas off of me. As we sat down together, I said, “So, Karen, it’s been a while since we’ve talked. How’ve you been?” Smiling broadly, she replied, “I’m doing great, Brian.”

In that instant the Holy Spirit spoke to me and said, “No she’s not. She’s not doing great.” Almost before I knew what was happening, I said gently, “Karen, that’s not true. You’re not doing great.” As her smile quickly faded and a frown appeared in its place, I was thinking, “Well, this is a great way to get the conversation off to a booming start. What if I’m wrong? What if she really is doing great? I’ve pretty much just called her a liar. No wonder she’s frowning at me.”

But the Holy Spirit prompted me to say even more gently, “Your heart is broken.”

Suddenly, Karen began to weep. She sobbed, her shoulders heaving from some internal agony. As I reached for the box of Kleenex, she continued to cry, one hand on her eyes to hide her embarrassment and one hand on her mouth to stifle her moaning.

When the sobbing stopped and she could speak again, she said, “My fiancÃ© broke up with me yesterday. And this morning, the doctor told me I have cancer.”

She spent the next few minutes crying and pouring out her heart. I listened and responded, sharing with her the love and hope that only Jesus can provide.

I walked away from that experience completely amazed. I was amazed at the goodness of God, at His powerful demonstration of His compassion and concern, at His willingness to speak into the life of this hurting young person. I was also amazed that God had used me: I didn’t know anything of Karen’s circumstances and I couldn’t have known that she was so wounded that day. Her smile seemed so genuine. Even while God was speaking to me I was thinking, “This is crazy. What if I’m wrong? What if I offend her?”

But God was speaking and she needed to hear it. She needed to know that God knew what was happening in her life and that He cared, that she wasn’t alone. She wasn’t offended at all. Amazing. But the most amazing part of the story was where it happened: in my office on the campus of a secular university.

Ever feel like the places where you live and work are dark, lost, maybe even evil? Those are the places where the Holy Spirit yearns to be.

I think I know why I was so amazed. I was raised in a non-Evangelical, non-Pentecostal denomination. When I gave my life to Jesus as a teen-ager and was born again, I knew only a little about the Bible and even less about the Holy Spirit. When I was baptized in the Holy Spirit during the Charismatic Renewal in the late â€˜70s, Pentecostal churches were emphasizing speaking in tongues, charismatic worship, and holy living. Being saved and filled with the Holy Spirit transformed my life forever.

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.

Itâ€™s important to study the Holy Spiritâ€™s activity in the early Church because your church is being encouraged to live inside out, just like the early Church did.

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.

You might be thinking, “Well, of course God didn’t want to fill people with the Holy Spirit in the temple or in a synagogue. Jesus had come to establish a new way of living and a new way of worship: He didn’t want people to associate the filling of the Holy Spirit with Jewish worship and ritual, so the Spirit had to fill people outside of the temple until God could establish the Church.”

Let’s think about that for a moment. God’s intention and desire has always been to include the Jews, not to exclude them: Jesus said that “salvation is from the Jews” (John 4:22), and Paul wrote that the power of God for salvation is for the Jews first (Romans 1:16).

Some Gentile Christians have a tendency to view the day of Pentecost as the birthday of the Gentile Church, as God’s first determined step away from the Jews. But God has never abandoned or given up on the Jews, not before the day of Pentecost and not after (see Romans 11).

In fact, everybody who was in the upper room on the day of Pentecost when the Church was born was a Jew, through and through, as was Jesus. It was a beautifully Jewish birthday. All of those 3,000 converts on the day of Pentecost were Jews, either by birth or by conversion to Judaism. Evidently, God poured out the power of the Holy Spirit in the streets of Jerusalem instead of in the temple, not because He was abandoning the Jews but because He was trying all the more to reach them.

Never be fooled into the believing the dangerous idea that the Holy Spirit worked primarily outside the temple because He had rejected the Jews. That leads too easily to ugly anti-Semitism.

And besides, the Book of Acts plainly reveals that, even after the Church had been established and they were gathering regularly (with some local congregations including only Jewish Christians, others later on comprising only Gentile believers, and some with a glorious mixture of Jews and Gentiles), the Holy Spirit continued to move in power more outside than inside.

For example, consider the disciples who were the first to be baptized in the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. They were “all together in one place” (Acts 2:1), which I guess we could call a meeting of the Church. But the Holy Spirit immediately compelled them to leave their gathering of believers and to take the message of God’s love and of Christ’s sacrifice to the streets.

This pattern is repeated throughout the Book of Acts: whenever the Holy Spirit filled the believers in a large-group gathering (a church meeting), He gave them boldness and urgency to speak and to witness outside of that meeting place (see for example Acts 4:31).Clearly, the Holy Spirit loves the Church; just as clearly, He seems to love the Church best when it is the Church EVERYWHERE (not just all together in one building) and AT ALL TIMES (not just when church is “in session”).

The following incidents in the Book of Acts can teach us a lot about where the Holy Spirit likes to work:

Both Peter (Acts 4:8) and Stephen (Acts 7:55) were filled with the Holy Spirit while on trial before the rulers, elders, and scribes. This was exactly what Jesus had promised would happen: He said that the Holy Spirit would be with us and would teach us what to say when we stand before rulers and authorities (Luke 12:2).
The Holy Spirit filled the Samaritans, people the Jews were prejudiced against for both racial and religious reasons (Acts 8:14-17). Because of the Jews’ hatred of this people group, the Samaritans couldn’t come to meetings of the Church in Jerusalem – so the Holy Spirit went to them, just as Jesus had promised (Acts 1:8). He loves to go to the places where people are disadvantaged, discriminated against, hated, and oppressed.
Later in Acts 8, God led Philip to go out to a desert road, and the Holy Spirit instructed him to run up and join a passing chariot. The chariot’s owner was a seeker, and Philip led him to Christ. Then the Holy Spirit snatched Philip away and deposited him in another city while the seeker continued on his way back home to Africa (Acts 8:26-40). It’s important to note that the Holy Spirit could have arranged for this Ethiopian man to find a Christian in Jerusalem who might have invited him to a gathering of believers – but He didn’t. For some reason, the Holy Spirit wanted to meet that man outside.
What about the filling of the Apostle Paul? Saul of Tarsus was filled with the Holy Spirit in a house on Straight Street in Damascus (Acts 9:17). God sent a believer named Ananias to go to Paul. He could just as easily have directed Paul to go to a gathering of believers somewhere in Damascus. Evidently, the Holy Spirit likes to pour out on people in living rooms.
When the Holy Spirit was about to break the bitter, centuries-old division between Jews and Gentiles, He decided to speak to Peter about it. Where was Peter when the Holy Spirit spoke to him? On the roof of a house in Joppa (Acts 10:19).
The Holy Spirit spoke to Peter on that roof in response to the prayers of Cornelius, a Gentile who feared God. An angel appeared to Cornelius and told him to send for Peter. That angel could just as easily have told Cornelius to go to Peter; Peter could have arranged to bring Cornelius to a special meeting of the believers in Joppa. Instead, the Holy Spirit told Peter to leave Joppa and to go to Cornelius in Caesarea. As a result, Cornelius, his family, and his friends were saved and filled with the Holy Spirit in Cornelius’ house.
In Acts 19, the Holy Spirit filled a number of Ephesians. This is significant because Ephesus was known throughout the ancient world as a center of idolatry and sorcery. Ever feel like the places where you live and work are dark, lost, maybe even evil? Those are the places where the Holy Spirit yearns to be.

There are many more examples, but maybe these are enough to show us an important pattern: the Holy Spirit’s presence and power are not confined to the walls of a church building or to gatherings of believers. He is out there where seekers are looking for God, out there where believers are trying to reach the lost, out there where believers are “on trial,” in the wilderness, in the courtroom, in the living room, among the powerless and the disenfranchised, in the cities where darkness and idolatry and witchcraft seem to prevail. He is out there. Of course, the Book of Acts also reveals that the Holy Spirit was deeply involved in the Church and that His power was evident wherever believers gathered together (see, for example, Acts 15 where the Holy Spirit unifies the Church during a contentious and crucial meeting). But the Gospels and the Book of Acts indicate that the activity of the Holy Spirit was largely concentrated outside of the large-group gatherings of believers: He was continually sending believers OUT and He was going with them.

Evangelism took place everywhere. The only recorded altar calls happened in the streets, in courtrooms, and in the living rooms of unbelievers. Prophetic ministry and other supernatural giftings (like healings) took place in homes and in the streets as well as in corporate gatherings of believers. The early Church simply believed that the Holy Spirit was EVERYWHERE and that it was their job to be about His business all the time, wherever they were, not just on Sunday and not just “in church.”

A Fresh Call to an Ancient Calling

It’s important to study the Holy Spirit’s activity in the early Church because your church is being encouraged to live inside out, just like the early Church did. The call to be an inside-out church is a call back to the roots of the Church, back to the very foundation of what it means to be Pentecostal.

When Isaiah prophesied that the Messiah would be filled with the Holy Spirit, he wrote about the reasons why God would pour out His Spirit: to bring good news to the poor, to bind up broken hearts, to set captives free, to comfort the mourning, and to restore broken foundations (see Is. 61:1-4 and Luke 4:16-21). And when Jesus announced the imminent arrival of the Holy Spirit’s power in Acts 1, He reminded the disciples that the power they would receive would propel them beyond the walls of their comfortable gatherings into places like Samaria, places they had always been taught to avoid. He told them that Pentecostal power would take them, not to the end of the church service, but to the ends of the Earth (Acts 1:8).

That power is available to us. Whether we were baptized in the Holy Spirit during the Charismatic Renewal or as recently as last week, we have the power now “to do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of the faith” (Galatians 6:10).

How exciting to know that we can walk in the power of the Holy Spirit outside of the church building, in our everyday lives! This is why we have received the Baptism in the Holy Spirit. This is the ancient calling that recent revival has prepared us for. This is the vision that we must open our eyes to. The Holy Spirit is at work in our offices, in our classrooms, in our neighborhoods, in our living rooms. It’s up to us to see that He doesn’t have to work alone.