Waiting for the Spirit

"The modern church can easily get caught in the trap of ploughing ahead with programmes without waiting for the Holy Spirit"

We need to constantly remind ourselves about the fundamentals.

A fundamental for Christ Church Manchester is that we believe the Holy Spirit is vital to everything we do and everything that we are. In Acts 1 and 2 Jesus makes it very clear to the disciples that they need the Holy Spirit and that they must wait for the Holy Spirit before they attempt to do anything. When the Spirit turns up amazing things happen.

The events of Acts 1 and 2 are revolutionary. The Holy Spirit turned a scared, aimless and not particularly bright group of people into world changers. They started the church, saw incredible miracles, and reached Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and (eventually) the ends of the earth with the gospel.

We need to follow their example and wait for the Holy Spirit before we attempt to do anything. The modern church can easily get caught in the trap of ploughing ahead with programmes, events and strategies without waiting for the Holy Spirit. Without the Holy Spirits prompting and anointing the church quickly becomes formulaic and irrelevant.

In short the church needs to wait for the Holy Spirit to anoint us like the disciples and then we need to follow his prompting as we try to take the gospel to Greater Manchester.

This is a brief summary of Tim Simmonds’ preach from Sunday 16 August.

Waiting for the Spirit

We need to constantly remind ourselves about the fundamentals.