Getting Caught Up

Sorry for getting behind on this blog. Here's a couple of things.

First off, many thanks to Carol Bowman for teaching the classes for the two weeks I was away. From all reports I've heard, she did a great job (which is no surprise to me or any of us). I appreciate her gifts and willingness to take on the daunting task of leading two hour and a half sessions. You should know that the material presented was her's. What I mean by that is that I did not give her my outline and say go and teach this. What she put together and shared was her own work. Of course, it is ultimately God's material, and she was passing on to you things that God taught her through her own training and experience. Well done!

Secondly, this past session we started the discussion on the Gifts of the Spirit. For those for whom this is your first intro to gifts, or for those who may have studied gifts via some other book, course or teacher, you may very well find the approach we are using somewhat different. If so, or if you want to go deeper in this teaching, I very strongly encourage you to sign out one of the CD teaching sets by Arthur Burke, to which I referred in class. I have taught spiritual gifts for over 20 years, then stopped for awhile because I felt something was missing. This CD set supplied what was missing, and is, in my limited opinion, the very best teaching on foundational gifts available today. It is a must listen. We will have some copies available in class for you to sign out.

Thirdly, related to this is a series of articles that Tim Doering wrote while he was on staff with us on the foundational gifts. I had a limited number of this with me in class and they were quickly picked up. I have uploaded the articles (called Foundational Gifts Booklet) under Some Other Neat Stuff in the right margin of this blog. Feel free to print one for yourself. I will also have some more with me in class next week.

Fourthly, I also uploaded a Gift Grid prepared by Tim that is helpful in our understanding of how the Foundational Gifts work.

More later,
Galen

Baptism and Filling (Session Four)

We had a great discussion last evening on the meaning of Baptism and Filling, in reference to the work of the Holy Spirit. Today I found a web site that expressing something close to what I believe (check out the link under Some Other Neat Stuff on the right side of the blog).

The link takes you to a page that is part of a larger web site from the Iranian Baptist Church in Texas. I do not know anything about this church and have not checked out their other teachings, so I do not suggest any kind of endorsement. However, I did appreciate their approach to this topic. Check it out. (Don't worry about the sections that are in Arabic; I can't read them either!)

They make the point, as I did last evening, that our experience with the Holy Spirit should not be limited to one or two encounters with him, regardless of how you define those encounters. No doubt some encounters with the Spirit are more dramatic than others, but each one moves us forward spiritually.

Have a great week.

Session Three

Well, this week was a great class with good discussion. I was exhausted afterward, but in a good way.

We are now beginning to move into discussions around the various ways in which we experience the Holy Spirit on a daily basis. It will be good stuff. Each of us has experiences, sometimes difficult to understand and for sure hard to put into words. But we want to understand, and we want to see how our experience relates to someone else's, and most of all, if our experience has biblical support. As we move forward with our class, it will be fun, energizing and, maybe, a bit frustrating at times. All of that is OK.

As you recall, I mentioned that I will not be here for the first two weeks of November. I think I have decided on what to do for those two weeks. First of all, as we move through our learning in October, I will be outlining some practical things regarding to how the Holy Spirit leads us and how he communicates with us and how he empowers us for mission. So I will be developing some practical ways for you to experience these things. I will have a guest teacher on the two evenings that I will be away. More on that to follow.

Session Two

Thanks for being in class last evening--another great turn out. Session Two reviewed the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament, Life of Jesus, and also the uniqueness of the Pentecost event. (See the outline at the right.) I wanted to have more time to develop the idea that Pentecost is the fulfillment of God's promise to live among his people, as seen in the Old Testament via the Pillar of Cloud and Fire that accompanied the children of Israel through the Wilderness and also which came to rest in the Tabernacle and the First Temple. But we were tight on time. I placed an article on the link by the side (Other Neat Stuff) written by a Catholic Priest wherein he explores this idea. It is a good read. Also, if you have the book I recommended during Sabbatical last year, Paul the Spirit and the People of God, author Gordon Fee address this idea on pages 10-22.

Have a great day!

Pentecost

Pentecost comes from the Greek language for "fiftieth" and refers to the 50th day after Easter, or in Jewish reckoning, after Passover. Which leads to this post. For Christians Pentecost brings to mind the passage in Acts 2 where the Holy Spirit was poured out on a group of Jesus followers who were told by Jesus as he was ascending back to Heaven, that they should go to Jerusalem and wait until the Promise of the Father is fulfilled. They did, and it was, on this day we call Pentecost.

Years ago I was teaching about this in one of our churches. Afterward a young man came to me and said he never knew that Pentecost had Jewish roots. It does, called the Feast of Weeks or Shavuot. On the side bar, under "Some Other Neat Stuff" I posted a link to a very informative web site giving information about the Jewish feasts. Check it out, and think about why God would choose to birth the church on this particular day?

Names or Titles for the Holy Spirit

I was just doing a little work on the names used for the Holy Spirit in the Bible and thought you might like to see what I have found. This is not an exhaustive list--just the result of a fairly quick survey via an electronic concordance. The numbers behind some indicate the frequency (did not have time to check them all).

New Testament Names or Titles for the Spirit

the Spirit (155)

Holy Spirit (94)

Spirit of God (11)

my Spirit (Jesus speaking)

his Spirit (speaking of God)

Spirit of the Lord (4)

Spirit of Truth

Spirit of Jesus

Spirit of Holiness

Spirit of Christ

Spirit of our God

Spirit of the Living God

Spirit of his Son

Spirit of wisdom and revelation

Spirit of Jesus Christ

Eternal Spirit

Spirit of Grace

Spirit of Glory

Spirit of prophecy

Old Testament Names or Titles for the Spirit

Holy Spirit (3)

Spirit of God (13)

Spirit of the LORD (20)

the Spirit (53)

your Spirit (speaking of God)

Spirit of wisdom and understanding

Spirit of counsel and might

Spirit of knowledge and fear

my Spirit (God speaking)

Spirit of the Sovereign LORD

Session One

Well, the course is off to a good start. There were 58 in attendance last evening. Thanks for that show of support. It says something about our interest in the ministry of the Holy Spirit, and something about our sense of what God wants to do among us.

I wanted to share last evening, but forgot, that our Staff is currently reading the book Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster. The book walks through the spiritual disciplines that have proven themselves over time--like prayer, fasting, meditation, etc. The first chapter is on meditation, and we are as a staff trying to work into our devotional life some intentional times of meditation, and then sharing them with each other. As I was entering into this, I was seeking a passage of scripture to focus on during times of meditation. One morning I woke up with these words running through my mind, "The earth is the Lords and all that is in it." This is the first verse of Psalm 24, so I took that as a sign that this is the passage for me to focus on during meditation.

As I focused on this text, I realized that it had something to say to our Holy Spirit study. You know that I have said, even before being on Sabbatical last year, that I was sensing that ECOB was being called to a new experience with the Holy Spirit. (I also wrote about this in a Upward Call article which you can read via the link on the side of this blog--"Why this emphasis on the Holy Spirit at ECOB?)

Anyway, Psalm 24 ends with these words:

     7 Lift up your heads, you gates;
              be lifted up, you ancient doors,
              that the King of glory may come in.
     8 Who is this King of glory?
        The Lord strong and mighty,
             the Lord mighty in battle.
     9 Lift up your heads, you gates;
             lift them up, you ancient doors,
             that the King of glory may come in.
   10 Who is he, this King of glory?
        The Lord Almighty—
            he is the King of glory.

For the Lord to enter our lives and our church in a new way we need "lift up the gates and the doors" so that he may come in. It is as simple as that--and as difficult as that. Some of the "doors" that need "lifted up" are ancient--they have been around a while--but they are keeping the fullness of the Spirit out rather than letting him in. These "ancient doors" might be personal issues, inhibitions, fears, or unbelief; or they may be corporate ones. In either way, the message I hear is that the gates and doors must be opened for he King of Glory to move among us.

Thanks for joining us on this spiritual journey of understanding and experiencing the Holy Spirit.

Pastor Galen