Tue May 6

Listen up, little ones

Especially for the littles in your household.

Listen for the word Spirit.

Reading

Acts 1:1–8—The Promised Holy Spirit

Optional Reading

Ezra 1:5-6

Keys for kids

Also for the littles. Young households might choose, after Keys for Kids, to go directly to praise and prayer.

Questions

(some read the ?s before notes, then ask them after)
  1. What does Jesus promise here in Acts 1 that those who receive the Spirit will do?
  2. What are some other ways the Spirit works in us?
  3. Why do we need the Holy Spirit?

Notes

Ezra notes that all those whose spirit God had stirred went from Babylon to Jerusalem, at Cyrus’s decree, to build God’s house. Here in our reading today, Jesus promises to send the Holy Spirit upon his disciples. In John 14:26 Jesus tells his disciples that the Father sends the Holy Spirit in Jesus’s name.

From this text and others, we see that we are given the Holy Spirit to stir our spirit in various ways. Here in Acts 1, those who are stirred by the promised Holy Spirit will be Jesus’ witnesses. Keddie notes that Christ’s followers would be equipped for the task, for they would ‘receive power’ when the Holy Spirit came upon them (1:8). The implication, later to be confirmed in the experience of the church, is that, once come, the Holy Spirit would always remain to empower the true church while the world lasts. The church would never be left to act in her own strength, but would be enabled to follow the clear leading and working of the Spirit.

And there is more stirring work from the Holy Spirit to the spirit of God’s people. In Acts 4 they are given boldness in the face of persecution. In 1 Corinthians 12 they are given a place in the body of Christ, his church. In Romans 8 they are given freedom from sin and death and convinced in their spirits by Jesus’s Spirit that they are God’s children. In 1 John 4 they confess that Jesus has come in the flesh. And much more!

Swedish Method questions

See the Sunday reading for meaning of the symbols.

Praise

Psalm 51d, 84a

Prayer

  1. Rejoice in the Holy Spirit’s work in you.
  2. Give thanks for something from last Lord’s Day’s sermons.
  3. Pray for a member of our church, for your family, and for a non-Christian friend/family member.
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