Happy Birthday Church!

Today we celebrated Pentecost Sunday. We started by going into the "upper room", actually the baby's room that happens to be the highest room in the house. We sat on the carpet and read the story about the coming of the Holy Spirit and the disciples talking in other tongues so that the visitors to Jerusalem could understand in their own languages. We discussed the trinity and what part the Holy Spirit plays in the life of the church. The roles of the Holy Spirit is to convince the world of sin, teach and reveal to us through the scriptures and to use us to share the message of Christ to others.

We talked about the divisive issue of tongues in the Church today and about how different denominations view the gift of tongues. Tongues has always been a sensitive spot with the Church of the Nazarene where I was a pastor and, though I never wanted to squelch the work of God in ways I may not understand, I wondered what I would do if someone came in the church talking in tongues. I finally hit on the answer though I never had to use it. I read Paul's instruction that if any talked in tongues they should have an interpreter or keep it to themselves. However in this passage it isn't a concern as the word tongues is the simple Greek word for "languages" and does not refer to "tongues of angels" or "unknown tongues". We talked about how it was perfect timing for the Spirit to be given in this way as the large number of converts from other nations allowed a jump start for the church to grow throughout the world.

We ended the study with prayer asking God to help us live in the Spirit, to let us see God add to the church those who are being saved, and to help us be in one accord.

We then followed the study with dessert ... Birthday cake! This isn't the same cake but it looked just as exciting (at least to the children)!