Scripture
And everyone present was filled with the Holy Spirit.…Acts 2:4
“In the last days,” God says, “I will pour out my Spirit upon all people.” Acts 2:17

Observation
Most of us have a bathroom mirror experience of God for we see only how he affects our own individual life. When we have an encounter with the Lord we think of how it affects us and benefits our lives but not often of others.

God doesn’t see his touch on our lives in an individualistic way. Selfishness is unknown to God so he expects nothing less from us. The Lord vision is for all the members in a church to simultaneously experience the fullness of the Holy Spirit. Simultaneous experience was the way he worked at first in Jerusalem, then with Cornelius’ household in Ceasarea and finally at Ephesus. Communal experience of the Holy Spirit is God’s ideal.

So why is our corporate experience of God sometimes so ho-hum that we turn to worshipping God in the mirror of our self-centeredness?  We need to take lessons from the first Christians to be open for more.

For starters, they gathered together in Jerusalem, Casearea and Ephesus. We need to do more than just ‘go to church’ but make a choice to dissolve our importance and become part of the church. We are in this thing of following Jesus together so we will all get there together.

There was a sense of openness, vulnerability and approachability at Jerusalem, Casearea and Ephesus. In all three experiences God’s people were ‘all ears’. They were unexperienced and unaffected. They simply wanted more. What would happen if we could drop all of the theological hopscotch about the way the Holy Spirit works and simply come to church open and predisposed to say ‘yes’? Probably more would happen than we would expect.

They were obedient to take action with what God had given them to use. They spoke for God. They acted for God. They loved for God. There were no spectators. There were only participants. It is only as all of us in the congregation use what we have been given that a local church will come close to what God has in mind for them to achieve.

Application
I want more than an experience of the Holy Spirit, I want to be part of a congregation that corporately and continually is filled with the Spirit.

Prayer
Father, I come to you open and ask that you would navigate my life among those open to more of you. Amen.