080511 Pentecost Sunday Worship Service including Sermon based on Acts 2:1-21 entitled "How God Kept His Promise" by Pastor Ron Smith

Come, Holy Spirit. Fill the hearts of Your faithful and kindle in them the fire of Your love. Send forth Your Spirit and they shall be created. And You shall renew the face of the earth.
O God, who by the light of the Holy Spirit did instruct the hearts of the faithful, grant that by the same Holy Spirit we may be truly wise and ever enjoy Your consolations. Through Christ our Lord, Amen.

Happy Mothers’ Day and Happy Birthday to the Church on this blessed day of Pentecost! Jesus' disciples received power to continue His ministry and 3,000 more Christians joined the church after Peter preached to the crowd in Jerusalem. Besides reversing the Tower of Babel curse and allowing people to speak and understand each other "in new tongues" as Jesus promised His followers would do (Mark 16:17).

I believe all the gifts of the Spirit were manifest that day and it’s appropriate that we look at Galatians 5:22-23: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. This was good stuff to remember last night on the capital steps up the street as the Attorney General and I led many grieve widows and mothers who would not have the happiest of Mothers’ Days today, because their husbands, sons and fathers lost their lives in the line of duty as police officers.

It’s not natural to have love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control when others controlled by their evil and wicked passions senselessly snuff good lives out. The strange and miraculous change of heart and conversion of 3,000 souls in the streets of Jerusalem over 2,000 years ago happened because the evil and wickedness could not be projected over to some nameless criminal out there. They had “met the enemy and his is us” according to the Pogo Cartoon script.

We have hope because we can stop being God’s enemy and walk in the footsteps of Jesus. We can breath with Him, pray with Him, live with Him – ever closer to the mind and heart of Jesus.

Dear Heavenly Father, forgive us for not always paying attention to Your Holy Spirit and the example of Your Son Jesus Christ.

Please help me and everyone to be Your friend and not Your enemy. May the all days be mothers days for Your Church – in the blessed name and divine purpose of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen.