Welcome Holy Spirit,
Season’s Greetings and Happy Sabbath, Willowdale! This Sabbath begins a year-long journey with the overarching theme of Pentecost 2025. It is incorrect to assume that the Holy Spirit has been restricted to the calendar year of 2025 or the year of its magnificent introduction in Acts chapter 2. The Holy Spirit has been continually present and active in Scripture since its “hovering over the waters” declared in Genesis 1:2. We believe as Seventh-day Adventist Christians that God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit constitute the eternal Godhead that is spoken of in Genesis 1:1 when scripture declares, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” and is also included in the Shema of Deuteronomy 6:4, “Hear O Israel. The Lord our God, the Lord is one!” This majestic proclamation emphasizes the essential oneness and plurality of God using plural pronouns in the original Hebrew language. Even with sound Biblical support, the Holy Spirit is the least talked about, least understood member of the Godhead. This year, if we expect a Pentecostal revival, then we must understand that a revival will not take place in our church and, more importantly, in our personal lives without the acceptance, presence, and power of the Holy Spirit.
Today, in our worship service, we will sing of the ministry of the Holy Spirit in song. We will also unpack the arrival of the Holy Spirit in all its fullness to the praying and waiting early church, as found in Acts 2:1-4. If the early church needed the Holy Spirit to calm combative personalities and unleash a passion for service and evangelism, how much more does Willowdale need the Holy Spirit in 2025? I am so glad that our leadership in the General Conference and North American Division has emphasized this for 2025. Willowdale, along with three thousand churches in the NAD, will be hosting an evangelistic series in 2025. Church statistics reveal that following the Covid-19 pandemic, “the church welcomed more than 1,465,000 new members in 2023,” according to David Trim, Director of the GC Office of Archives, Statistics, and Research (Adventist World, December 2024). Trim sadly continues, “At the same time, more than 836,000 left the denomination in 2023.” The shameful truth is for every one hundred members who join the church, 43 people will leave the church through the back door. Keeping this tragic statistic in mind, we must redouble our efforts to tackle the challenges that confront the command from Jesus to “make disciples of all nations.” Our continued task, according to the prophet Isaiah, is to “strengthen our cords, while also lengthening our cords” (Isaiah 54:2). This is an impossible task without the Holy Spirit leading us.
Finally, “10 Days of Prayer,” this Adventist World Church initiative, will begin next Wednesday evening (January 8) at 7 p.m. The 10 Days of Prayer meetings will be hosted nightly via Willowdale’s Zoom account until January 18, 2025. Our prayer ministry team has been planning for this series, and it promises to be a great blessing for those serious about plugging into the Holy Spirit’s power. We must earnestly desire to be a praying church that desires to copy the early church’s experience of “being in one accord.” This is the beginning point for getting the work accomplished that we have been assigned by Jesus, before his soon arrival. Maranatha!
Pastor Glenn DeSilva