Let's overcome boundaries between Christians, we need each other
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Christian Life
As a Lutheran Christian, Sari Savela is grateful to Pentecostals. This is what she learned from them.
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The 27th Pentecostal World Conference was held in Helsinki at the beginning of June. The conference gathered thousands of participants from nearly 100 countries. The Pentecostal World Conference is held every three years, the last time in Seoul and previously held once in Finland, in 1964, more than sixty years ago.
Pentecostal Christianity is growing strongly worldwide. The movement, which started in Azuza Street in Los Angeles in 1906, has grown to become the second-largest Christian denomination in just over a hundred years. Some estimations say that there are hundreds of millions of Pentecostal Christians around the world, with only Roman Catholics outnumbering them.
I became more familiar with the Pentecostal movement after being a believer for 20 years. My background is ordinary Lutheran, with no connections to a revival movement.
Deeper relationship
For a long time, the third person of the Trinity of God, the Holy Spirit, was relatively unknown to me. The teaching I had had about the Holy Spirit and spiritual gifts was relatively thin until about 20 years ago when I reached a stage in my life where I began to long for a deeper relationship with God.
God began to draw me closer to Him. For a long time, I had sensed that God could give so much more, but something in me kept me from receiving. My relationship with the Almighty was not so close anymore. I rarely read the Bible and prayed. Life was busy: There was work to do, and the children were still young.
Fellowship beyond age and church denomination was a great blessing.
A friend of mine invited me to join a Christian prayer group. We were of different ages and came from both Lutheran and Pentecostal backgrounds. Yet, fellowship beyond age and church denomination was a great blessing. The group and its members became an important spiritual support for me for several years.
Touch
I noticed that some of the prayer group members had a somehow closer relationship with Jesus and that they spoke very naturally about the Holy Spirit. For them, prayer was like talking to a close and dear friend.
At first, I thought some people had a closer relationship with God than others. But soon enough I began to long to get to know the Holy Spirit better and to discover more.
Through different phases, I experienced the touch of the Holy Spirit.
My spiritual life had already deepened before I learned to know the Holy Spirit better. Still, the Baptism of the Holy Spirit enriched it even more.
Being filled with the Holy Spirit is continuous. It is not just a single event. Instead, God wants to fill you again and again. We need the Spirit of God to fulfil God’s calling for our lives.
Gifts
The gifts of the Holy Spirit manifest themselves in many different ways. “It is one and the same Spirit, distributing as he decides to each person, who produces all these things”, says the Bible (1 Corinthians 12:11). And: “For the kingdom of God does not consist of food and drink, but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Romans 14:17). The Holy Spirit also reveals sin, righteousness and judgment (John 16:8).
Let us be humble enough to see what we could learn from a member of a different denomination.
Every believer receives the Holy Spirit when coming to faith, for the Bible speaks of the seal of the Holy Spirit being put on us (Ephesians 1:13).
I thank my Pentecostal friends for teaching me about the Holy Spirit and the gifts of grace. I wish that also in Lutheran church, there would be more teaching and preaching about the Holy Spirit – the Power of God, the Defender and the Spirit of Truth.
I think that Christians from different denominations can learn from each other. Let us be humble enough to see what we could learn from a member of a different denomination.
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