Month: May 2021

The Day of Pentecost

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Acts 2:1-21 The Passion Translation

2 On the day Pentecost was being fulfilled, all the disciples were gathered in one place. 2 Suddenly they heard the sound of a violent blast of wind rushing into the house from out of the heavenly realm. The roar of the wind was so overpowering it was all anyone could bear! 3 Then all at once a pillar of fire appeared before their eyes. It separated into tongues of fire that engulfed[ each one of them. 4 They were all filled and equipped with the Holy Spirit and were inspired to speak in tongues—empowered by the Spirit to speak in languages they had never learned!

5 Now, at that time there were Jewish worshippers who had emigrated from many different lands to live in Jerusalem. 6 When the people of the city heard the roaring sound, crowds came running to where it was coming from, stunned over what was happening, because each one could hear the disciples speaking in his or her own language. 7 Bewildered, they said to one another, “Aren’t these all Galileans? 8 So how is it that we hear them speaking in our own languages? 9 We are northeastern Iranians, northwestern Iranians, Elamites, and those from Mesopotamia,Judea, east central Turkey, the coastal areas of the Black Sea, Asia,] 10 north central Turkey, southern Turkey, Egypt, Libyans who are neighbours of Cyrene, visitors from all over the Roman Empire, both Jews and converts to Judaism, Cretans and Arabs. 11 Yet we hear them speaking of God’s mighty wonders in our own dialects!” 12 They all stood there, dumbfounded and astonished, saying to one another, “What is this phenomenon?”

13 But others poked fun at them and said, “They’re just drunk on new wine.”

Peter’s Pentecost Sermon

14 Peter stood up with the eleven apostles and shouted to the crowd. “Listen carefully, my fellow Jews] and residents of Jerusalem. You need to clearly understand what’s happening here. 15 These people are not drunk like you think they are, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. 16 This is the fulfilment of what was prophesied through the prophet Joel, for God says:

17 ‘This is what I will do in the last days—I will pour out my Spirit on everybody and cause your sons and daughters to prophesy, and your young men will see visions, and your old men will experience dreams from God.18 The Holy Spirit will come upon all my servants, men and women alike, and they will prophesy. 19 I will reveal startling signs and wonders in the sky above and mighty miracles on the earth below. Blood and fire and pillars of clouds will appear. 20 For the sun will be turned dark and the moon blood-red before that great and awesome appearance of the day of the Lord. 21 But everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’ ”

Francis Chan: Churches must bring ‘sacredness’ back to worship as increasing numbers abandon Christianity

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‘We’re seeing the world look at evangelical Christianity as an absolute joke’

Francis Chan
Pastor and author Francis Chan delivers remarks as part of the Q Commons event, broadcast internationally on Thursday, Oct. 24, 2019. | Courtesy of Q Ideas/Parker Young

As more and more people publicly walk away from the Christian faith, pastors must urge their congregations to have deep, personal encounters with God and bring “sacredness” and “reverence” back into worship, according to pastor and author Francis Chan. 

“I am seeing so many people, friends of mine who were in ministry, who are just saying they don’t believe, or they’re walking away; ‘I don’t know if I believe that anymore,’” Chan said during Exponential’s Reset Summit this week. “And I just think that’s crazy. We’re seeing people that we look up to, leaders fall. We’re seeing the world look at evangelical Christianity as an absolute joke right now … it’s every day you can just jump on Instagram … and someone is saying, ‘I’m not a Christian anymore.’”

TheUntil Unityauthor lamented that there’s a “lot of Isaiah 29:13” going on in churches and denominations across the country today. The verse reads, “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is based on merely human rules they have been taught.”

“In other words, it wasn’t an encounter [with God],” he said, explaining that true, lasting faith doesn’t come from simply hearing a message, but spending intentional, one-on-one time with God.

“Don’t get away from your own encounter with God,” he said. “We have to make sure we get people to encounter Him, and that their fear of God is not just a commandment that was taught to them by us.”

“This is a new season. And all of this, people walking away and fighting and angry about everything and so opinionated, is because they’ve spent too much time in our presence, and in our evangelical talk, talk, talk, talk presence and not enough time before a Holy God and sacred and reverent, silence and awe and just recognizing their oneness with Him.”

To have more unified horizontal relationships in the church, there must be a deeper, vertical relationship with the Father, Chan stressed.

“The world is going to get worse; persecution is going to get worse. And when they’re alone with Him, is there enough of this awe and enjoyment of Him, and a fear of Him that they can survive anything?” he asked. 

“I think this pandemic showed us that there’s just way too much of this horizontal going on. And now we’re trying to keep these people with us, and it’s more like we have to direct people to Him. We have to do a better job of bringing sacredness back into our worship.”

A recent study found that 43% of millennials stated they either don’t know, don’t care or don’t believe God exists, and 16% of millennials believe that when they die, they will go to Heaven only because they confessed their sins and accepted Jesus as their savior. Yet, 57% of millennials still call themselves Christian.

In an interview with The Christian Post, Michael Youssef, pastor of the 3,000-member Church of The Apostles in Atlanta, Georgia, warned that more and more pastors are “falling into the trap” of woke culture because it’s “popular and appeals to the flesh.”

“Bowing to woke culture allows you to avoid rejection by culture and society,” he said. “It’s a very, very popular message that is now being preached from many evangelical pulpits; traditionally Bible-believing, Gospel-preaching churches. We have gone so far that it just grieves me to the point that I literally sometimes just weep tears.”

“I’ve always believed, as goes the pulpit, so goes the pew. As goes the pew, so goes the culture,” he continued. “As a pastor, I put the full blame on us, right in our laps, because we want to be liked, loved, and followed on social media by millions of people. Pastors are the culprits. We need to be about Jesus, not about being liked, because that is deadly as far as the Gospel of Jesus Christ is concerned.”

Youssef urged those who love Jesus to be “encouraged and motivated to stand up and not to be afraid,” and compel those “teetering” to find the strength and courage to stand for the truth of the Gospel.

“We must take charge,” he said. “Christians have abandoned so many areas of society, from media and the classroom. Instead of withdrawing, we need to go and invade these areas and take them for Christ and not be afraid. We are on the right side. We have read the last chapter, and it says we will win.”

From Christian Post