Vineyard Church | Weekly Update December 27, 2023

“Come, Holy Spirit.” It’s a dangerous prayer. In Acts 2, the Spirit was poured out on the Church. In the 200s, the early church father Origen wrote: “…The Lord himself, the Holy Spirit himself must be entreated by us to remove every cloud…which obscures the vision of our hearts.… (Origen, De oratione. Hom. Lev. I 1).” In the 800s, a monk wrote Veni Creator Spiritus, a hymn and prayer used at Pentecost, where the first line says, “Come, Holy Ghost….” Believers in Jesus know we need the Holy Spirit’s power to do what Jesus did, and so we pray, “Come, Holy Spirit!” 

On Mother’s Day, 1980, John Wimber had a unique experience at the church he pastored in Yorba Linda, California. John was from a Quaker tradition and had invited a guest speaker named Lonnie Frisbee to teach at their evening service. Lonnie was a hippie who was a part of what became known as the Jesus People Movement in the late 1960s in Southern California. John’s church was filled with young people, and they gathered to worship as usual. Lonnie got up to speak, and at the conclusion of his message, he prayed: “Come, Holy Spirit.” That night, when that little three-word prayer was prayed, all heaven broke loose in Wimber’s community! After that gathering, deeply encountered by the Holy Spirit, young people poured into the streets, leading hundreds, then thousands, to faith in Jesus Christ. Miracles followed their simple prayers, such as healings of bodies and minds, and deliverances from addictions. Since that time, tens of thousands have come to faith in Jesus through the work of the Vineyard. Our belief in “power evangelism” – reaching people by ordinary people participating with God in the miraculous – centers us on the Holy Spirit’s profound work of drawing the heart to God. 

In 2011, Vineyard leader Don Williams said: “...God has given the Vineyard a sacred trust: a solid biblical theology of the Kingdom (living in the eschatological tension), reliance on the power and gifts of the Spirit for ministry in the context of church planting and building for mission, and the call to warfare against all the powers of darkness. …At the same time, they are given to be given. The Vineyard’s gift to the larger church will be its stewardship of the Kingdom of God message and ministry of Jesus in the power of the Spirit for today.” 

Would you join us, as we end 2023 together, in renewing our praying of the prayer, “Come, Holy Spirit”?

Adam Greenwell
Pastor  |  Billings Vineyard Church
www.BillingsVineyard.org