When the Spirit Moves: Finding Wonder in Our Walk
Edited directly from the sermon transcript of Matthew Miller’s message at Highland Hills Church of Christ on January 18, 2026. Adapted for length and readability while preserving his voice and message.
What leaves you in wonder? I don’t mean wondering what we are going to eat later, though I know that is on many of our minds. I mean a moment when something beautiful captures you so fully that the usual swirl of thoughts falls away.
We have all known that, because we were all children once, despite what some of our children may think. If you want to see a child living in wonder, give them a cardboard box. Whatever gift came inside it, the box may be the best part. It can become a spaceship, a house, or a doorway into the imagination.
As we grow older and encounter the hard edges of life, wonder can become calloused. God has placed countless wonders before our eyes, yet we can become disenchanted. Acts 2 invites us to look again.
This account gives us an extraordinary view into the birth of the church. Acts continues the story of what Jesus is doing, now through his people. His ascension is his enthronement. The king of heaven and earth sends his ambassadors into the world to speak of the good news and the wonders they have seen.
At the end of Acts 1, the disciples are waiting. They want to know whether Jesus will now restore the kingdom as they expect. He tells them that the times belong to the Father and that their task is to wait for the promised power.
Waiting is difficult when we want a breakthrough. But their waiting is expectant. They trust that God will act, even though they cannot yet picture what he will do.
Then Pentecost comes. The disciples gather in one place, and suddenly a sound like a rushing mighty wind fills the house. Tongues like fire rest on them. They are filled with the Holy Spirit and begin speaking as he enables them.
People from many nations are in Jerusalem. They gather at the sound and hear the disciples speaking in their own languages. They marvel: these speakers are Galileans, yet people from all these places hear them declaring God’s wonderful works. They ask what it means.
To understand that moment, we need to go back further than the prophets, all the way to Genesis. Sin brought discord and broke the beauty of God’s created order. At Babel, people with a common language sought to magnify their own greatness. Their unity served a project centered on themselves.
God dispersed them and confused their language. They could no longer understand one another as before.
At Pentecost, we see a different kind of astonishment. People are amazed because they can understand. And what they hear celebrates the mighty works of God. A new humanity begins to come together around Jesus and the Spirit’s work.
What had been fragmented is being restored. People share a new bond in Christ. The Spirit brings together those who have been divided.
Where is God at work? First, the church begins through his initiative. These disciples did not develop a strategic plan powerful enough to launch this movement. God sends the Spirit and begins his work. When we truly see his activity, it fills us with wonder.
How are his people being formed? Ordinary people become powerful witnesses. They have been with Jesus, and that makes all the difference. They are willing to wait, anticipate, and trust his word. Fear gives way to bold proclamation. Astonishment becomes worship.
This has purpose and direction. God’s people are being formed as they witness his work and turn their attention toward his beauty.
What does this mean for the church? We see that the Spirit can disrupt our expectations before directing us along a new path. The disciples anticipate God’s action, but Pentecost is certainly beyond what they could have planned.
We should expect God to work while remaining open about how he will do it. That is often where faith becomes difficult. We want him to act, but we also carry a prescribed idea of what his answer should look like.
Think of Abraham. God tells him to leave his country, rather than laying out every stage of his life in advance. Abraham steps forward and continues trusting. Faith takes the next step without possessing the whole map.
God also forms a diverse people. From the first day, the church brings together people from different places and languages. Paul later says that distinctions of Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female do not divide those who are one in Christ. The walls are coming down as God’s kingdom breaks into the world.
And God supplies power for the church’s purpose. Jesus has given a mission extending from Jerusalem through Judea and Samaria to the ends of the earth. Two thousand years later, that work continues. People are still translating Scripture into languages that do not yet have it and carrying the gospel into places that have not heard it.
We do not undertake that mission alone. The Spirit’s coming at Pentecost continues to animate the work to which we are called. Acts shows us what the Spirit does through people who trust him and remain open to his work.
Is that the kind of church we want to be? What comes next for us?
Ordinary people are empowered for God’s purposes when the Spirit moves. Our next step is to make space for the wonder of his work. It is hard to see what we are not looking for.
Sometimes I wonder about Moses in the wilderness and the burning bush. That is a thought, not something Scripture tells us, but it prompts a question: how often is God opening something before us while we are too caught up in the space between our ears to notice?
We make room through prayerful listening, reading his word, and paying attention to what he is doing around us.
Think of sailing. I have never sailed myself, but I remember watching two beginners struggle to get their boat out into the Atlantic and raise the sail. Then the wind caught it, and off they went. That may not be the ideal way to learn sailing—a trial by sea—but it gives us a useful picture.
We put the boat in the water and raise the sail in expectation. We prepare to move when the Spirit leads. Faith raises the sail even when we cannot see the entire route.
Sometimes faith begins with admitting that we believe and still need help with our unbelief. We take the step that expresses trust while working through our uncertainties.
As we live with prayerful expectation, consult God’s word, and look for his work around us, our lives become part of something wonderful. We may hope to ask Moses about the Red Sea one day. Perhaps he will also ask how we held to faith and walked with God through the trials of our own lives.
Jesus invites us to open ourselves to the Spirit’s work. Set your sail. Make room to notice what God is doing, and be ready to take the next step with him.
