Hi friend ☀︎ we're back!

I'm gonna be real honest here. I grew up in the church my whole life and I could not have given you a good answer about Pentecost and what it did for the Church until pretty recently. I learned more about Pentecost from secular religious studies classes than from church sermons… but that’s a blog post for another day.

Of course I knew about Easter and Christmas…but Pentecost? If you'd asked 18-year-old me, I probably would've said something like "isn't that the speaking-in-tongues thing?" and quickly tried to change the subject.

If you grew up in a less charismatic tradition (Baptist, Presbyterian, non-denom, Church of Christ, Catholic, so many more..) you maybe have grown up with the same blind spot as me. Pentecost got handed to one wing of the Church and the rest of us kinda backed away from the convo.

Which is SUCH a shame!!!! Because it's actually one of the most important days in the entire Christian story. And you don't have to be a prophesying-in-the-aisles kinda believer to get something out of it.

So let's catch up because it's been a minute. And then next Sunday (Pentecost!) we'll talk about what this actually means for the way you live your Monday through Saturday.

Quick history lesson because Pentecost wasn't invented by Christians. It was already a Jewish holiday (Shavuot) celebrated 50 days after Passover. It commemorated the day God gave Moses the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai. Pentecost literally means "fiftieth" in Greek.

So the Jewish people had been celebrating this day for over a thousand years before Jesus came along. It was already a really big deal.

The Christian Pentecost happens 50 days after Easter. Jesus had risen, hung out with the disciples for 40 more days, and then ascended into heaven, telling them to go back to Jerusalem and wait for "the gift" the Father had promised.

So about 120 of them went and they waited in an upper room for ten days. And then this happened:

A few things to notice:

This was the birthday of the Church. Before Pentecost, Christianity was a small group of grieving friends hiding in a room. And after Pentecost, it was a global movement emboldened by the power of the Holy Spirit.

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I'll be so real with you. The modern Pentecostal/Charismatic movement that started in the early 1900s emphasizes certain expressions like speaking in tongues, prophecy, and healing as evidence of the Holy Spirit. And that's a real, faithful tradition with real, faithful people in it. I’m not here to knock it.

But I suspect a lot of us (regardless of what tradition we come from) can relate to that experience of getting weirded out by one bad story and deciding there was no longer fruit for us over there.

But the Holy Spirit isn't owned by one denomination. Reformed theologians, Catholics, Methodists, Anglicans, basically every Christian tradition affirms that the Holy Spirit lives inside every single believer. So we know that it's not a charismatic vs non-charismatic thing; it’s a shared faith thing.

Tim Keller, a Presbyterian pastor from New York said something about this in his book Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God that’s living rent free in my head.

Tim’s point was that the Spirit isn't just an abstract theological concept. The Holy Spirit is what makes God's love feel so real it’s no longer just an idea in your head, but it’s a confidence you feel in your bones. That’s the kind of support our God is offering us and why the Holy Spirit is called the Helper - it’s your dad holding you up where you didn't even realize you were falling.

That means He's been at work in your life the whole time, whether you grew up calling Him by name or not.

Here's what really gets me about Pentecost: the Holy Spirit didn't bypass Peter and pick someone with a cleaner track record to start the Church. He came down onto the exact same man who six weeks earlier publicly disowned Jesus three times in a row on the darkest day of Jesus’ life.

So we know the Spirit doesn't disqualify us over our worst moments either. He restores what you wrote off and hands you a megaphone you don't deserve, for a glory that was always His.

Whatever you've done and whatever season you'd rewrite if you could? Pentecost says you are exactly the kind of person God is ready to use.

He doesn't need a spotless track record. He just needs a willing room.

We're 7 days out from Pentecost. The anniversary of the moment the Spirit moved from "out there" to "in here,” making His home inside ordinary, failed, scared, regular people.

He's not waiting for you to clean up first. He's just waiting for you to make a little room.

Exhale, my friend. And start paying attention to where He’s nudging this week.

this monday's practice: Name one thing you've quietly disqualified yourself from because of a past mistake or failure. Maybe it’s a calling or area of work or a kind of conversation. Write it down somewhere only you can see. Now sit with the fact that Peter the denier became Peter the preacher in fifty days, not because of who he was, but because of Who showed up within him. So what makes us think we’re the exception? Ask God, what can You do with me in the next fifty days?

honest prayer: Holy Spirit, I don't always know what to do with You. You are the part of God I've misunderstood and underestimated for my whole life because there’s so much about Your power I don’t grasp. Forgive me for treating You like a feeling I get instead of a Friend and a Father. Come do whatever You came for and fill the rooms I've labeled unfixable. Land on parts of me I’ve written off and prepare me for whatever Pentecost brings this year. I want to be the willing room. In Your Son's name I pray, amen.