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In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy (Acts 2:17-18).

Revived and filled with the breath of God, women and men, young and old dream dreams and see visions (Contemporary Testimony: Our World Belongs to God, 28).

For the next four weeks, Wilderness Wanderings will be tied more closely to life at Immanuel than it normally is. Immanuel Church has begun what we are simply calling, 28-Days of Prayer. We have developed material for this season which anyone can find @ Immanuelministries.ca.

The purpose of this season is not to launch some major new initiative nor to discern something specific. Sometimes, we Christians use such prayer seasons in hopes of manipulating God into giving us something; or even to give the appearance of super spirituality. There are no such intentions here.

We are encouraging some basic things. Prayer is an essential practice of the Christian life, and so we are motivating each other in it. Reading or singing through the Biblical psalms gives the impression that prayer is more varied then simply us talking to God, and so we are fostering experimentation in our praying. Paul teaches us to pray continually, so one might say, that we hoping to develop the muscles of obedience. We are praying for Christ’s church, his whole church, believing that she will only thrive if Christ builds her.

As pastors of Immanuel, Pastor Anthony and I will be using Wilderness Wanderings to encourage these things. If we stay true to our intentions, these devotions may tend towards the shorter side during this season, in the hopes that will leave more time to develop prayer practices.

With all that said, today’s text. Its point is simple yet profound. In the Old Testament, there were specific people on whom the Spirit descended equipping them for a specific purpose. In Exodus 31, God fills Bezalel with the Spirit to give him skill, ability, and knowledge to direct the work of building the tabernacle. In Numbers 11, God takes some of the Spirit which is on Moses and puts it on 70 elders who will help Moses in his work of leading the people of Israel. In the book of Judges, we read frequently that the Spirit of God empowered the Judges to lead Israel and to free her from the oppression of other nations.

Here is the important point: throughout the Old Testament, God’s Spirit is given to specific people for specific purposes. Now in the Numbers 11 story, the 70 elders were called to gather around the tabernacle to receive the Spirit. However, two of them stayed home. Yet, they too received the Spirit, which created a bit of a disturbance. Moses quiets things down with this comment, “I wish that all the Lord’s people were prophets and that the Lord would put his Spirit on them!” (Numbers 11:29).

Moses’ wish is made reality at Pentecost: all those who belong to Christ receive his Spirit. In the OT, the Spirit was dripping from God’s tap, drip, drip, drip; but at Pentecost God opened the tap full blast and the Spirit is pouring out. In the OT, God’s Spirit blew like a gentle breeze, but with Pentecost began to blow like a great wind.

Prophecies and visions are not about divining the future. Such things were used to guide God’s people in his ways, in the ways of obedience. We will have opportunity to reflect on that later this month. For today, remember that if you belong to Jesus, you have his Spirit and “the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans” (Romans 8:26). Ask the Spirit to lead us this season.