Four key beliefs we need at the core of our faith today

Four key beliefs we need at the core of our faith today

What is the message of Pentecost and how should it impact us today? At one of ELS’s most popular sessions, guest speaker David Hall from Adelaide in Australia explored the foundational beliefs we all share

“The first church service was Pentecostal. It was wild!,” guest speaker David Hall told an enthusiastic audience at the Elim Leaders Summit in May.

“They’re gathered in an upper room, the power of God falls, people start speaking in tongues and get drunk in the Holy Spirit.” Speaking about the message of Pentecost and the life-giving power of the Holy Spirit, he used the example of Jesus and the early church to explore four key beliefs we need at the core of our faith today.

“There wasn’t a non-Pentecostal church back then – they were all miracle-working, and seeing supernatural signs and wonders. Jesus went to funerals and they turned into revival meetings… he had to walk on water to get away from people wanting to come to his meetings! My prayer today is that we don’t lose the fire of the Holy Spirit in our ministries.”

The devil may be going all-out to neuter the message of Pentecost but God wants to fire us up with a fresh anointing of the Spirit, he said.

“I don’t believe that Jesus is coming back for a church less powerful than the one he left. I believe the church Jesus is coming back for is going to be alive with Pentecostal power, with anointing and with grace.”

So what are some of the foundational beliefs of that church?

Pentecostals believe the Bible “I had a guy come up to me a while ago. He said: ‘Do you really believe there was a guy called Jonah?’” David said.

Was there a guy who disobeyed God, got on the wrong boat, a fish gobbled him up and released him in Nineveh, he asked?

“‘Yes!’ I said.”

That’s because Pentecostals believe the whole Bible.

“I believe there was a Moses, a David,” he continued. “I believe there was an Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and a ram caught in a thicket.

“I believe in the baptism in the Spirit. I believe Jesus walked this earth and walked on water, healed the sick, healed all kinds of diseases, cast out devils.

“And do you know what else we believe? We believe he’s the same yesterday, today and forever!”

The Bible is alive, full of power and able to breathe life into our hearts and spirits, he said.

So what do you do if you don’t see that reflected in your church? If you feel your church is a bit dull and you struggle to get people excited?

“If there’s no fire in the pew just get a little bit in the pulpit,” said David. “Preach the stuff that stirs your faith. We’ve got to turn the Bible loose and let it work. I don’t want just to see the Bible as a source of information – this thing is alive!”

Pentecostals believe in the baptism of the Holy Spirit “I don’t know where I’d be if I hadn’t been baptised in the Holy Spirit,” said David.

“Jesus commanded the disciples not to leave Jerusalem but to wait for the promise of the Father. It wasn’t a suggestion, it was a command.”

David described the process of pickling cucumbers – blanching them in boiling water then immersing them in vinegar, totally changing them from the inside out – to demonstrate this promised life-changing Holy Spirit power.

“This is my prayer: pickle me, Jesus!” he said. “I want to leave here totally pickled. I never want to be the same again.

“I don’t want to be a crusty old cucumber getting up on a Sunday morning. I want to get up under the anointing of heaven, changed from the inside out, filled with the Holy Spirit’s power.”

He described a vital lesson he learned after a youth conference in New Zealand.

“By the end of the conference I was tired,” he said. “I was ready to go home, but this girl stopped me and said, ‘Will you pray for me?’

“I was trying to be nice and pastoral but I also wanted to go home, so I put my hand on her shoulder and prayed one of those ‘Father bless her, touch her, minister to her, catch you tomorrow in Jesus’ name’ sort of prayers. As I turned to leave she said, ‘Was that it?!’

“She told me, ‘My dad is terminally ill, he and my mum have major trouble in their relationship, I have depression and anxiety’, then she listed off all these physical challenges she had.

“She said, ‘I came here believing for a breakthrough’, so I prayed again ‘in the name of Jesus’ and she hit the ground under the power of God.”

Later, David felt the Holy Spirit say to him, “Every Sunday people come into your church needing a breakthrough from God and leave asking, ‘Was that it?’

“That changed everything for me,” he said. “I don’t want people to leave asking, ‘Was that it?’

“I want them to leave fully satisfied because of Jesus.”

Pentecostals believe in the coming of Jesus “In 1 Thessalonians 4:16-18 the Bible says ‘the Lord himself’ – not an angel, not some guru, not some spiritual person claiming to be him – ‘the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.

“‘After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.’”

There’s a lot we don’t know, David said – what day Jesus is coming back, when the rapture will happen.

“What we do know is that Jesus is coming back!

“I can’t wait for the day when we’re stepping out of this life into the next. I can’t wait to be in Heaven where the streets are paved with gold.

“No matter what your view of the end times might be, we all know he’s coming back from a position of victory and authority.

“We serve a living God and we’ve got to preach this gospel like we know Jesus is coming back. Get a sense of urgency! We believe in the coming of the Lord. I can’t wait for that day!”

Pentecostals believe in miracles Commentators have taken Mark 2:17 and called Jesus the Great Physician, said David.

“He’s a miracle-working Jesus. The book of John tells us there’s not enough scrolls in all the world to contain the miracles he did. There’s not one person who ever walked up to Jesus in faith and had him reply, ‘I see your faith, but it’s better that you stay sick!’”

Not only was Jesus the Great Physician, but he equipped his disciples then and now to do as he did.

“The Bible says that through the hands of the apostles signs and wonders were done. You’ll lay hands on the sick and they’ll recover.”

Then and now, Jesus is a miracle-worker specialising in every kind of medicine, said David.

“You’ve got something broken? He can fix it. He’s a miracle-working Jesus.

“He still heals in 2024. He turns things around. He makes a difference.”

He gave the example of a time his evangelist father was preaching in Texas.

“He was doing the salvation altar call and… as he’s doing it, this lady comes from the side of the auditorium and starts dancing.

“He says, ‘Sister can you just sit down and let me finish this altar call and then feel free to go back to dancing before the Lord’. She replies, “No! I’ve been paralysed in that wheelchair for 24 years and the Lord has just healed me!’

“As that happens, another woman from the other side of the building runs out and says, ‘I’ve been in a wheelchair for 11 years!’ The power of God was in that place.

“I grew up watching this stuff and I want to see my kids see the same miracles. We’ve got to take what we have to the next generation.”

This was something he enjoyed seeing while preaching at Kensington Temple, David said.

“Kensington Temple is old. I think the wood there came from Noah’s Ark! It’s been around for a long time. But you walk in and the anointing’s fresh, there’s life, there’s faith. Why? Because what’s in that place has been passed down from Wynne Lewis and his successors to this present day.

“Thank God for what he’s done. May we all understand that this treasure we have in our earthen vessels must be passed to the generations to come.”

This seminar was packed with humour and lots more teaching. Don’t miss it! Check out the Elim podcast for this and all the other ELS sessions.