Big Idea:

The Holy Spirit fills people in power to proclaim the gospel so others would receive the gift of the Spirit as well.

Faith grows out of a subsoil of yearning, and something primal in human beings cries out against the reign of death. Whether hope takes the form of Egyptian pharaohs stashing their jewels and chariots in pyramids, or the modern American obsession with keeping bodies alive until the last possible nanosecond and then preserving them with embalming fluids in double sealed caskets, we humans resist the idea of death having a final say. We want to believe otherwise.

-Philip Yancy

The Christian church of every century (tends) to compare itself with the church of the first, to seek to recapture something of its confidence, enthusiasm, vision and power. At the same time, we must be realistic. There is a danger lest we romanticize the early church, speaking of it with bated breath as if it had no blemishes. For then, we shall miss the rivalries, hypocrisies, immoralities and heresies which troubled the church then as now. Nevertheless, one thing is certain. Christ's church had been overwhelmed by the Holy Spirit, who thrust it out to witness.

-John Stott