Pentecostalism - Feeling the Holy Spirit

Today, our minister spoke of the Holy Spirit. He equated the Holy Spirit with the third rail that can be found on a subway. He spoke of the Father and the Son being the two main rails, but the Holy Spirit being the energizer. As he spoke a different visualization came to my mind. I thought of a canister of helium getting blown into a balloon. God being the canister, the balloon being Jesus, and the helium being the Holy Spirit. Thinking on it a little more, perhaps the balloon should be us, but I’m not exactly sure how I would carry out the analogy from there. I think the reverend was right in one aspect, we, our Methodist / Congregational – united mix, does not think on the Holy Spirit much. We associate being moved by the Holy Spirit as being too radical. There is no jumping up in my church or calling out as the Spirit fills you. We are fairly orderly and reserved. Certainly, we could all think more on our relationship with this part of the trinity. As he spoke, I had to contain myself from jumping up and saying “Amen, Brother!”. And there are times when I feel moved to do something like that, but I reserve myself. I can count the number of times I have experienced people getting physically moved by the Spirit. I have always felt slightly uncomfortable when it has happened, but also I have looked on the people a bit admiringly because clearly they had allowed God into both their mind and body.

Pentecostalism is now the largest growing segment of Christianity, according to the book Our Religions.

I thought it rather interesting that when I came home Pentecostalism came up again when I got home as the news was abuzz with vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin’s religious background. You guessed it – Pentecostalism. I was certainly glad that I had already been introduced to this segment of Christianity, so that I didn’t see it quite as differently as I once did.