A gift for everyone 

Do you regularly get the opportunity to stay at the Hilton Hotel whenever you travel the world? Do you take two or three cruises each year?  Do you own a Rolls and a Bentley? Do you have more than three houses worth over a million each? If not, then you’re not one of the ‘select few’ who do. Many of us have to make do with ‘run-of-the-mill’ or plain ordinary, or just do without these kind of things altogether.

The people of the Old Testament thought much the same about their faith and about the Spirit of God – that he could only be approached by the ‘select few’. And receiving some kind of spiritual gift from God – well that was strictly reserved for the biblical heavyweights; Gideon, Samuel, Isaiah, Ezekiel and others.

And yet this goes against what God so desperately desires for us; that we should have a loving, personal relationship with him, and that we should be able to accept the spiritual gifts he gives to us to use in his name to make this world a better, more wholesome place.

This is what occurred on that day of Pentecost, the gift of the Holy Spirit was given to ‘ordinary’ people and not just to a select few.

The same is true today for us in the fact that God isn’t remote and detached, but is real, living and much closer than we think.

And the same is also true that the gift of the Holy Spirit can be given to, and received by, us ‘ordinary’ folk; encouraging, teaching, leading, guiding, empowering and provoking us in our journey of faith. And in receiving that gift from God, we do then become the ‘select few’, the select few who will go out in to the world and help to build the Church of God. And that’s a gift far more precious than a year’s stay at the Hilton, a dozen cruises, a fleet of Rolls and a Bentleys or a handful of mansions any day!

This year, at Pentecost, open your heart to the living presence of God’s Holy Spirit and become one of the millions of ‘select few’.

With every blessing,            Paul