Hello again, it’s another week done and another week closer to coming home. It has been quite an eventful week, seeing us spend 4 days sailing through a monsoon. Which was very rough weather. Life on a ship in such rough seas is not fun! It’s like being on a roller-coaster 24 hours a day. But we sailed through it to some nice calmer seas. I was going to write this week’s blogs on storms, but then something happened on Wednesday night and I changed my mind.
I live in a room (which we call a mess deck) with 2 other guys, we sleep in bunks and at times it is very cramped. But I don’t mind as last time I was on this ship in 2003 I had to share a room with 31 other people packed in like sardines.
On Wednesday night two of us were asleep in our bunks and the other guy was up in the bar watching a film. At some point during the night one of the bunk lights in our mess set on fire! Of course as the amazingly trained Naval Fire Fighters we are we calmly and quickly put the fire out…………oh wait, no we didn’t we stayed fast asleep!
Luckily the fire burnt itself out and didn’t reach the bedding below it; otherwise it would have been a totally different story. The first thing we knew about it was when we woke up to find burn marks about a ft high above a very black and melted bunk light and a horrible smell in the air.
It is hard to believe that 2 of us slept through such an event, happening literally just 2 ft from us. I think we were very fortunate that it was not worse. But it did set me thinking about my spiritual life and the Holy Spirit.
I remember being at Congress last year, I am sure anyone who was there in the Royal Albert Hall would agree it was an amazing time. It also fell on Pentecost, so of course the song “Send the Fire” was sung. I remember General Linda Bond talking about Pentecost and how we should pray constantly for revival and for the Holy Spirit to come upon us.
I love the Book of Acts; I would go as far as to say that it is one of my favourite books in the Bible. Mainly because it describes what a few scared, normal men and women, from different backgrounds could do when aided by the Holy Spirit. When we read about the first Pentecost, its seems like such an amazing world changing event.
Acts 2:1-4 (NIV)
The Holy Spirit Comes at Pentecost 1 When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. 2 Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3 They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.
Here we see the followers of Jesus filled with the Holy Spirit, this changed them from scared people into Spirit filled warriors ready to go and tell the world about Jesus. We see in the rest of the Book of Acts, how they did this. Enabled by the Spirit they stood firm against tough opposition and even death. Aided by the Holy Spirit the Church grew at a rapid rate. On that first day alone, aided by the Holy Spirit Peter stood up and preached and 3000 we saved!
The events of Wednesday night made me think and ask myself some big questions. What is the Holy Spirit doing in my life? Or more to the point, what am I allowing the Holy Spirit to do in my life? In what areas of my life am I resisting the work of the Spirit?”
But that was not all I thought. I found myself thinking how much do we actually pray for revival in our Church and in our World? Is it something we only do at Pentecost? And when we do pray for it do we really believe that it will happen? Do we trust the Holy Spirit to work through us to bring others closer to Jesus?
I think the Holy Spirit is working all around us and in all of us. However I often think we are asleep to His work; just like me and my friend were when our room was burning! I think to stay awake and alert to the Holy Spirit and his work, we need to ask ourselves the kind of questions above every now and again, and answer them honestly. If we trust in the Spirit and allow Him to transform us, there is nothing to say that we could not become like the Spirit Filled warriors of the Book of Acts. But to do it we need to open up to the Holy Spirit, allow Him to change us to make us more like Jesus, allow it to lead us out of our comfort zones to take the Gospel out into our communities. If we do this I believe we really would see massive changes in not just our own lives but the lives of those all around us.
The Sailing Salvationist
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