pastorjohnb

Thoughts and musings on faith and our mighty God!

Tag Archives: Holy Spirit


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Calling

Reading: Luke 14: 28-33

Jesus wants us to know that much is required before we commit to becoming a disciple.  It will require difficult decisions that often carry a cost, the courage to stand out from the world, a singular focus to listen to Jesus’ voice above all others, and a commitment to love and serve the least and the lost.  When we think we are up for the task of being a disciple, Jesus is saying, in essence, “Are you sure?  Really sure?”

No one likes to begin something they cannot finish.  To begin something that stalls out due to lack of time, energy, resources, or vision is frustrating and often embarrassing.  So to begin a major or important project, it is essential to make sure we have all it will take to complete the task at hand.

What does it take to be a disciple of Jesus Christ?  First, it takes commitment to love others more than self.  Jesus spelled this out with His answer to what the greatest commandment was.  He said we must first live God with all that we are and we also must love neighbor as He first loved us.  Throughout the Gospels we have the example of what this looks like lived out fully in the life of Jesus himself.  In the remainder of the New Testament we have numerous examples of what it looks like to live as a disciple.  So what it takes is made clear in the Bible.

This is a difficult calling.  It is a decision that requires much consideration.  But when we accept the calling, we know that we do not walk alone.  We have Jesus, our great high priest, who interceded for us before the throne of God.  We have the Holy Spirit, which comes to dwell in us and to lead and guide us.  And we have each other.  Our fellow disciples support, encourage, teach, correct, and pray for us just as we do these things for them.  As we answer the calling and walk this road of discipleship, we do not walk alone.  For Jesus Christ, for the Holy Spirit, and for our fellow disciples we say thanks be to God!


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God’s Way

Reading: Jeremiah 2: 4-13

As we go through life, sometimes our focus becomes trained on something other than God.  It can lead us down our own path and off of God’s path.  We lose our connection to God.  This misdirection can even seem to have good intentions and maybe we can even think that it is of God.  But when we cut through it all, we can look back and see we were following our own ways and plans.  God was left saying, “What about me”?

Sometimes we start a new outreach or worship experience or church plant this way.  The idea is 100% human and it seems like something that will bring God glory so we plunge forward.  We forget to pray and to discern God’s hand in it.  We are too focused with getting on with it.  When this is the case, soon enough the ‘project’ becomes our new idol, our new god.  Working 80 hours a week ‘for God’s is easy to rationalize.  But time wears on us and soon our project is not sustainable.  As we look back on the ashes, if we are lucky, we realize God was not really the architect of our grand plan.

The people of Jeremiah’s time are in the midst of a similar scenario.  They have gone their own way and have turned to false idols other gods.  They had enjoyed God’s blessings but now view the success as their own and have assumed control of the ship.  Jeremiah warns them that soon enough there will be ashes.  Soon enough the ship will run aground and their way ward course will be revealed.

Praise be that our God is a gracious and forgiving God.  Praise be that the Holy Spirit continually whispers and nudges and pulls at our hearts.  Praise be for Jesus, who will pick us up from the ashes, will clean us off, and will say “welcome home my child”.  May we be cognizant and sensitive to God’s plans in our lives.  May we respond faithfully to the guiding of the Holy Spirit and the wisdom we find in the Word of God.  May we be so in tune with God that we know God’s will for our lives and quickly sense any missteps that we take on our own.  May we pray often and regularly for the revelation of God’s will in our lived.


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Living Water

Reading: Jeremiah 2: 4-13

Where do you get your sense of worth?  Where is it from that you draw confidence, peace, and contentment?  Where do you turn in time of trial, stress, or temptation?  The answers to these questions will reveal much about your faith and your relationship with God.

Jeremiah is writing to a people who have turned away from God.  The people have strayed from God and have turned to worthless idols.  They have defiled the land with altars to foreign gods.  They have put their trust in “broken cisterns” – in their own power and might.  In this sense they have made themselves gods.

Like the people of Jeremiah’s day, we also turn to idols.  We look to our bank accounts and retirement investments for reassurance that all is well in life.  Instead of building altars to foreign gods, we park shiny new toys in our driveways and garages.  In these we see our own worth.  We see our name on the door of our office with its fancy title and think we are content.  But when a storm rolls in we turn to alcohol or drugs to dull the pain or to TV or the internet to numb the mind.  Too often God is a last resort, a desperate prayer when we have exhausted all other options.

Soon enough the shiny becomes dull, the title just isn’t what it once was, and the ways to cope don’t seem to be working anymore.  We feel lost and stuck at the same time.  All the while the Holy Spirit has been present, trying to turn us outward instead of inward, to look to the only way, truth, and life instead of everywhere else.  Even in our most self-centered moments, God does not give up, does not stop loving us, does not stop reaching out.  It is a live beyond our understanding.

At some point we all come to sense that our peace, contentment, and joy cannot come from the things of this world.  They are all temporary.  At some point we all get to this place.  It is a place of silence, of being alone.  It is a place where all else is stripped away.  It is where we meet God.  Maybe it is ‘again’ for some, maybe it is the first time for others.  It is here, in this place of solitude, that the living water seeps in through all the cracks in our brokenness.  It is here that we begin to find peace, contentment, and joy.  But our cracks remain.  We are imperfect creations.  We will lose our focus and fall back to the things of this world.  We will stray from God and our souls will become dry.  But our God is never done with us.  This living water is always seeking to seep back in, to fill us up.  Always.  It is a love beyond our understanding.

This day and every day, may we enter the silence, draw near to God, and confess our sins.  This day and every day, may we invite God in so that the living water will fill us up.


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The Circle

Reading: Hebrews 12: 18-24

Hebrews 12 offers a new perspective on God.  The God embodied in Jesus is the same God whose voice can thunder and who can be terrifying.  God is unchanging.  What changes or evolves is our understanding of God.  Stand at the window and watch and listen to the power in a magnificent thunderstorm.  Witness God’s voice booming!  Sit with a family that has just lost a loved one who they think was not saved, witness the unspoken questions and fear.  Consider the conviction we feel when we sin.  We quickly repent and seek forgiveness so that we are back in God’s love and away from the terrifying feeling of being outside of God’s love.

Through Jesus and the presence of the Holy Spirit we experience God differently.  God is now more personal, more easily accessed.  Jesus and the Holy Spirit function as more open conduits to heaven and God’s love.  In Jesus the man we saw the living God, first on earth and now in heaven.  Hebrews reminds us that Jesus is “the mediator of a new covenant” where grace and forgiveness comes through His blood sacrificed on the cross.  It is a free gift to us all.  It costs us nothing.  What a change in the previous relationship!  Jesus is also the mediator that stands between us and God and with the Holy Spirit intercedes for each of us.  This is what has changed, not God.

Faith and our response to it has also changed significantly.  Before Christ’s time on earth, faith in God was seen as an exclusive thing.  Either you were part of God’s chosen people, or you were not.  Jews were in, everyone else was out.  Faith led the Jews to care for one another, to live a life of obedience to God’s ways, and to worship God alone.  Jesus changed who was in the circle.  Through Jesus, all people are chosen people.  There are no limits or exclusions to the new covenant.  There is now no Jew or Gentile, no slave or free, …  We are to be Jesus’ hands and feet, loving all people with a servant’s heart.  We are to be Jesus’ voice, offering the good news to all peoples of all nations, ever working to expand the circle, ever seeking to build the kingdom here on earth.

What role shall we play today?  How will we each be a part of widening the circle, of helping another to step inside so they too can know God’s love?


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Prophets

Reading: Jeremiah 1: 4-10

The opening lines of Jeremiah are powerful.  The Lord is staking a claim on Jeremiah’s life.  God tells him that before he was formed in the womb the claim had been made.  And Jeremiah was not just claimed as a child of God.  The Lord informed him that he had been set apart to be a prophet to the people if God.  Powerful and encouraging words.  Intimidating and frightening words.

Webster’s defines ‘prophet’ as, “a member of some religions who delivers messages that are believed to come from God”.  For Jeremiah, who is speaking directly with God in today’s passage, the message is surely from God.  The timed certainly dictated a need for God’s intervention.  Jeremiah’s place in history was one of turmoil, fear, and threats from outside.  Nations around them were growing in power and the nation of Israel was divided.  Instead of turning to God, the Kings of Judah and Israel tried to make alliances with other kings.  In the end, because of a lack of trust in God’s protection, both nations fell and many were taken to exile in Babylon.

We live in a time when our world needs to hear the Word of God and to experience the love of Jesus Christ.  Beginning in Genesis and running through Revelation we have the inspired Word of God, found in the writings of the Old Testament and the New Testament.  We too have a message to share that comes from God.

Jesus was clear that He was just the beginning.  Starting with the disciples, empowered by the Holy Spirit, the work of Jesus was continued.  Paul, Timothy, and others joined in, filled with the same Holy Spirit.  The Word of God was proclaimed and lives were changed.  The world was changed.  Right up to today many have gone forth into the world to share their faith in Jesus with a world in need of love, hope, and light.  Brothers and sisters in Christ, fellow prophets of God’s Holy Word, we too are called.  May we each go forth, armed with God’s messages of love, hope, forgiveness, and resurrection to change lives and to change our world.


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Amazing Grace

Reading: Psalm 80: 1-2 and 8-19

In our passage today the people of God find themselves outside of relationship with God.  The vine that God planted and grew in Israel, that God allowed to prosper because of divine protection, is being attacked by their enemies.  The wall has been laid waste and the people perish.  The psalmist cries out to God on behalf of the people and asksGod to “awaken your might, come and save us”.  The Psalm ends with a promise not to turn away from God again, but it is couched in the if-you-save-us-first provision.

When the people were with God and God was with the people, life was good.  Israel grew and prospered.  But they allowed the people they conquered to influence them and soon enough Israel was bowing to false gods, to foreign idols.  And soon the Israelites looked up and realized that God was angry with them.  Maybe at the time their promise not to turn away again was sincere.  Maybe they did truly desire to return to full obedience to God.  Maybe they were desperate enough to mean what they pledged.

At times we too find ourselves in a bad spot.  As with the Israelites, it is because we have turned away and have chosen earthly idols over God.  It is because God is no longer our priority that we feel God is distant.  But God is only distant in our minds.  The living presence of God, the Holy Spirit, is still right there trying to work in our lives.  Unlike the Israelites, we have a personal connection to God through the gift of the Holy Spirit.  We also have Jesus as our great high priest in heaven.  He who became flesh knows what it is like to be human and Jesus stands between God and us.

Like the Israelites, we too stumble and we too fail.  But thanks be to God for the Holy Spirit, the power of God dwelling in us, ever drawing us to be more and more like Christ.  God’s mercies are new every morning and God’s love never fails.  Praise be to God that this sinner is still loved and still welcomed always into the family of God.  For this amazing grace we say thanks be to God!


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Pruning

Reading: Isaiah 5: 1-4

In our passage today God laments, “What more could I have done for my vineyard”?  God thinks back to the fertile land flowing with milk and honey that was handed over to Israel.  God recalls the cities they did not built that were offered as dwelling places.  God remembers how a shield was kept about them, protecting them from their enemies.  God’s people, the vineyard so carefully tended, is now producing bad fruit.  The people had all they needed to produce good fruit but have instead turned away from God.  God looks and sees bloodshed instead of justice, heard cries of distress instead of righteousness.

The passage calls us to look at and reflect on our own lives.  God has also richly blessed us in so many ways.  God has built hedges of protection around us.  God has poured into our lives the example of Jesus found in the scriptures and has given us the gift of the Holy Spirit to lead and guide us.  God has given us all we need to go forth and produce a good crop.  So we must honestly ask ourselves if we are doing so.  Are we using all of God’s rich blessings to go out and produce a crop of justice and righteousness and love?

Too often we can be like the crop God finds in Israel.  The soil is good and the leaves are healthy.  But the fruit underneath is sour.  We go to church and maybe even read our Bibles every day.  Then we go to work and exploit those with less power or cut a corner or bend a law for our own gain.  Or maybe we say and do all the right things out in public but harbor an addiction within the secret places of our lives.  We somehow think God does not know, but the pruning shears are ready to go to work.

Maybe instead we are holding onto a sin we can’t quite give to God or we are nursing a grudge or hurt from long ago and we can’t quite offer forgiveness to another.  God calls aloud for us to give up all that holds us back, to release anything that separates us from God, and to lay it at the cross.  God invites us to do this so that we can walk in a right relationship with our Lord and Savior.  God desires to prune away all that keeps us from being all God intends us to be.  Pruning can be hard but the results are a healthier plant that produced a better crop.  May we be willing to lay down all that hinders and separates us from God so that we may walk humbly and faithfully with our Lord.


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Unending Service

Reading: Luke 12:35

Jesus instructs the disciples to sell their possessions and to give to the poor.  He does so because when we trust Him and follow the call to love others, then we store up treasures in our hearts and in heaven.  These treasures are treasures that cannot ever be taken.  The feeling of helping another in need out of the love of Christ is a treasure we will always have.  In addition, doing so places our focus on heaven and on our relationship with God.

Jesus goes on to say that we must always be dressed and ready for service.  He is speaking of both our spiritual and physical readiness.  We stay spiritually ready by staying connected to God.  By spending time daily with God we keep our focus on the things of God.  This helps us to see as God sees, to feel as God feels, and to love as God loves.  We must also be physically ready.  This means we structure our priorities, our resources, our time in such a way that we can meet a need when God brings it before us.  It means we are always ready to give of our time, talents, gifts, and service when God places an opportunity before us.

The third area Jesus addresses in this passage is to keep our lamps burning.  There are two meanings or implications to this.  First, the light shines on our own path.  The light of Christ leads us on our own faith journey.  The Holy Spirit also leads and guided us in the living out of our faith.  The light allows us to keep on our journey of faith and to grow in our relationship with Jesus Christ.  The second implication is for others.  When the light of Christ shines out from us, it helps others to see Him and to sense Christ calling out to them.  We are called to bring Christ to others by being His hands and feet so that “they might see your good works and give glory to God”.  The light draws others to Christ.

This day may we be willing to offer of ourselves and our things.  This day may we be ready to meet the needs of all God brings before us.  This day may our light shine into the darkness.  May this day be the beginning of unending Service to our King.


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The Flock

Reading: Luke 12: 32-40

In a world where fear is so prevalent, Jesus’ words of “Do not be afraid little flock” bring us great comfort and reassurance.  In our lives the fear of violence, illness, and death join together with our worries about money, popularity, and appearance.  But in Jesus’ simple words we hear His desire to take us in, to keep us from harm, to protect and guide us.  Metaphorically, we are the sheep and Jesus is the shepherd.

At times in our lives we will feel fear or experience anxiety over money…  We may even begin to feel overwhelmed.  In these moments we must call upon our faith to calm our fears and worries.  God has us.  We are the flock that lives in God’s ever present love and care.  Jesus goes on to remind us of God’s desire to give us the kingdom.  It is a place of love and peace and comfort and rest. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, God is constantly st work building up the kingdom here on earth.

As followers of Jesus Christ we are invited both into the kingdom and into the work of building it.  We are invited to live in this place of peace, comfort, rest, and love and away from the things of this world such as fear.  But many do not know of this place.  Many do not have a relationship with Christ.  One of our roles is to help in spreading and building the kingdom here on earth by inviting others in by sharing the good news of Jesus Christ.  God desires that all the people of the earth are in the kingdom.  The kingdom is for all people.

With Christ in our lives, we are no longer slaves to fear, to worry, to the things of this world.  We know these things exist and they do creep in from time to time. Because we rest assured in Jesus’ love and care, we can cast all of these things upon Jesus.  This is a wonderful part of being in the ‘little flock’.  It is also a wonderful thing to share.  This day may we work alongside God, striving to add more sheep to the flock.


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Secure?

Reading: Luke 12: 13-15

The issue of greed is the central focus of today’s reading.  One brother asks Jesus to help him get his share of his father’s estate.  We do not know his status – rich, poor, comfortable, in deep need.  Nor do we know his brother’s situation.  Jesus does not seem to care about this.  He aims right at a huge issue in the day and probably for these brothers: greed.  This focus may or may not be related to the man’s request for his share of the inheritance.

Greed us certainly an issue still today.  So Jesus’ teaching on greed is still very relevant today.  It always will be so.  Just as the brother is warned to be on their guard against greed, we too are warned.  We must be on our guard against greed because it can so easily become consuming of our focus and attention.

In the parable Jesus is clear that greed is not the possessing of things but in being possessed by what we have or what we lust after.  It is entirely possible to have much and be possessed by none of it.  We can be richly blessed and be very generous in offering what we have when a need arises.  But it is hard.  To attain wealth takes some time and effort, therefore we tend to develop an attachment to our wealth.  This is hard especially in our culture.  The main message of society is more, more, more.  Society encourages us to own or have as much as we can.  This easily leads to the mindset of greed.

So Jesus is right to warn us of greed.  We must be on our guard to not be drawn into being possessed by what we possess or desire to possess.  To do so our focus must be on Christ and the treasures of His kingdom.  This is the true inheritance we must seek.  It is the only inheritance that matters.  Our possessions do not secure our future.  It is our relationship with Jesus Christ that secures our future.  He is the only way, truth, and life.  May we do all we can to seek Jesus as our all in all.  Holy Spirit work in us this day to set Jesus as our all in all.