Sparks of the Spirit (Pentecost/May)

Pentecost / May 2024 (31 March - 4 May).

Open the Resource Pack PDF for all the information on the weekly subthemes and the daily prompts and Bible readings which shape our Daily Worship and Sunday Live services. Take a look at our Connect Bible Study Questions PDF to see the material adapted for small Connect groups or personal Bible study.

Introduction

We are Sparks of the Spirit! The Holy Spirit lit us, and tends to us, stokes us and builds us, rakes us and, with the softly glowing embers, kindles us again! So who is the Holy Spirit? How does the Holy Spirit work in us? What are the fruit and gifts of the Holy Spirit? And how do we maintain and sustain the fire given to us, passing on the torch from person to person, ministry to ministry? Group to group, generation to generation, glory to glory? (See 2 Corinthians 3:18)

Fire needs three things to function: fuel, heat and oxygen. Take away one part of the triangle and the fire won’t catch. The Holy Spirit empowers us to find the fuel, guides us to build the heat, and then breathes the flame into life! All the fuel in the world won’t spark if its cold and lifeless and a torrent of heat won’t burst into flames without oxygen.

This May we remember the chemical reaction that started at Pentecost (see Acts 2) and we’re still feeling its effect today. But the Holy Spirit is older than Pentecost and integral to God  through the Trinity with the Father and the Son. The Holy Spirit works in us from the inside out maintaining the cycle of a living fire.

Overview

Our theme is divided into four weeks and charts a cycle of an ongoing fire. Week one the fire is kindled, like the hope kindled in Jesus’s disciples in John chapters 14-16. In the second week the flames flicker into life like the vivid and haunting promises in the visions of Ezekiel 36-37. Then at Pentecost in Acts 2, the fire is blazing as we consider the Gifts of the Spirit described in Galatians 5 and the Gifts of the Spirit in 1 Corinthians 12. In our final week we come to the warm embers of the fire, which can start new fires, far from extinct, but steady and ready to be kindled again as we read through the eternal wisdom of Romans 8.

Each week of the four week theme runs Sunday-Saturday and has its own subtheme, which contains daily Bible readings and prompts for thought (see the Resource Pack PDF for more information). Check out our Bible Study Questions PDF to see the material adapted for small Connect groups or personal Bible study.