At What Cost?

My brother is a hero. His friend friend and partner Ian Leong is a hero. And so is Paul Starzyk, who lost his life a hero. All three are police officers in Martinez and while eating breakfast together they received a dispatch that there was an emergency situation at a hair salon. Felix Sandoval, estranged from his wife and locked in a bitter divorce dispute, filled with rage went after his wife, who owned the salon. With his hand, Sandoval smashed the plate glass window and forced his way into the locked salon demanding the patrons and workers there tell him where his wife was. Sandoval's own teenage daughter was working at the salon and begged him not to go after her mother. Unbeknownst to Sandoval, his wife had locked herself in a closet at the salon, trying desperately to hide from him.

Spying his wife's cousin who had tried to convince Sandoval's wife to leave him because of his erratic and violent behavior slipping out the back door with a customer, Sandoval went out the back after her. His daughter tried desperately to stop him but Sandoval would not be held back. Spotting the cousin in an apartment above where she had forced her way in to hide, Sandoval raced up the stairs with his gun, broke into the apartment and found his wife's cousin there. Inside the apartment was a mother and her three children. The kids were hiding in a bedroom and their mom along with the other two women faced the crazed Sandoval as he stormed into the apartment. Sandoval shot and killed his wife's cousin and then realized the police were coming up the stairs.

Sgt Paul Starzyk was the first up the stairs. Wearing a bullet proof vest, he came down the hallway toward the apartment with his partner Ian Leong coming from behind. Sandoval, hiding behind the apartment door, shot his arm out and fired down upon Sgt. Starzyk, hitting him in the neck and severing his carotid artery. Although dying from the wound, Starzyk fired back and shot Sandoval several times before he collapsed to the ground. Officer Leong courageously stood in front of the dying Starzyk and protecting him with his own body, shot into the door and the walls and at Sandoval himself, pinning him back so that he could not shoot at his friend anymore. This hallway of horror was where Leong remained, throwing down his own life in order to hopefully save not only his friend lying on the ground but also those held hostage in the apartment. My brother by now was up the stairs with his police dog and his dog shot out after Sandoval and attacked him. Seeing him move, and still perhaps a terrible risk, my brother also fired upon Sandoval and the killer was dead.

What makes courage so amazingly subtle and shockingly lovely is that courage is not forced and cannot be imitated. It springs out of a character honed to give away, even to the point that it costs your life. I hear stories of the common bravery of the men who stormed the beaches of Normandy and without cover, lost their lives without much thought at what was happening to them because they loved more than they wanted and it is too big a thought to adequately ponder. My brother and his friends are the fabric that makes a people noble and terribly lovely. Their courage was not exemplary, it was mundane...mundane in the sense that they did not ratchet it up, they simply did what was instilled in them. Protect, lay down your life, do not flinch.

Christian faith is not lovely because of what good is in believers. Christian faith is lovely because it is instilled by Jesus who knowing the brutality and horror of the Cross pursued it and would not flinch at it's crushing blood lust. Jesus died, knowing He was giving up on a future that He could hold to if He wished but longing more for a future He could give away. Jesus died as the ultimate Courage, killing off the deadly brutality of sin by staying hung on the Cross until His heart was busted open and His life ripped from Him.

And then He conquered.

I can never be thankful enough for Jesus dying for my sins and my meager statements of gratitude will not ever be much because I cannot comprehend in the least the immensity of what Christ has done for me. Eternity awaits us all and because of Jesus, faith in Christ holds a certain promise of joy forever with God. The Grace of God is not measured, it is too sweeping to mark. We live within Promise but not a promise far off, rather it is close, close enough to spot. The blood on the ground at the foot of the Cross holds the Promise too big for us to grasp, we can only faith it.

Glenn, Ian and Paul have blood on their hands, their own blood and it marks courage that cannot be measured. Courage like theirs is too big to pin down, it is the stuff of heaven and bigger than the human heart.

Across The Hedge Concluded

There were four indications that the Christians in Corinth were living anti-God lives. They were suffering from bouts of boiling anger. They were losing their temper and getting upset. They were quarreling with one another and wrangling over points of contention. They were doing what any Non-Christian might be able to do but nothing that revealed a legitimate dependence on God power. There was nothing unique about their actions that pointed to the supernatural handiwork of Jesus. In addition to all of this, these Christians were not able to recognize God’s hand in what was happening around them; they were attributing everything to some human explanation. In other words, there was not much about these Christians that looked, or sounded anything different than the Non-Christians surrounding them. Does this have a familiar ring to it?

I am not certain when a church crosses the line, goes across the hedge and has the look and smell of flesh but I think ours is there. What have we done lately that is supernatural, that only God could have made happen? What is there in us that indicates the Spirit of God is dominating our personalities and driving our actions? Do we have the fruit of the Spirit? Is there a craving for Jesus that is more fundamental than just doing what is right? Is Christian stuff one more chore of ours or are we filled with joy when we read the Bible, pray or do acts of service? What is there about me and you that could be pointed to as a sign that the Holy Spirit is dominating how we live and act?

If I said there was a way to get past flesh driven and man generated living and be truly driven by the Spirit of God and anointed by Him, would you bite? Would you be interested in having a Spiritual personality rather than a fleshly one? There are six basic steps to developing a Holy Spirit driven character. Each is as important as the other and not one can be lightly passed over. The first step to developing a Spirit personality is clear repentance. There are sins I have that need to be admitted and renounced. I must tell God I was wrong for my angry outbursts, wrong for my critical comments, wrong for my lustful thoughts, wrong for my refusal to forgive. No one lives Spiritual unless he takes a long hard look at his sins, particularly the ones others would dismiss as inconsequential and admits to them and renounces them to God as filthy and unacceptable.

I must decide to give up any sinful attitude or behavior I know I am doing. I must tell God I have been unable to give this up so far and need Him to crucify that part of me that wants to keep doing that sin. I must openly and publically make a profession of Jesus Christ as my Savior and my Lord. I cannot be filled with the Spirit of God if I am not a blatantly public Christian. I must surrender my will to that of the Holy Spirit and do whatever God says. A Christian once told me that God clearly told him that he was to be a missionary to China but never went. I cannot make these sorts of decisions if the Holy Spirit is to fill me and make me loving, kind and full of the joy of God. No Spirit filled Christian stays oppositional to God and His will for him. I must want to be filled with the Holy Spirit as much as a thirsty man in the desert craves water. "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him." By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. (John 7:37-39 NIV)

Not many Christians honestly want to be full of the Holy Spirit, anointed by Him. It is far too easy to just accept a rather superficial and incoherent form of Christian living. But honestly it is irrational to taste Jesus and then not want Him ruling over you and filling you with all of the joy and love and peace He has to offer. This is only possible by turning ourselves over to the Holy Spirit of God and giving complete control of our lives to Him. A hedge separates you from all of the blessings of God…a hedge of desire. How badly do you want the Holy Spirit filling up your life? How much do you crave His dominance over you? What are you willing to do for the fruit of the Spirit to actually be the nature of

Across The Hedge Part 1

1 Corinthians 3: 1-7 GJW
And I brothers, I was not able to speak to you as spiritual ones but as in the flesh, as to babies in Christ. 2 Milk, I gave you to drink, not solid food because you couldn’t handle it and even now you aren’t able to handle it. 3. For still you are fleshly ones for whereas there is in you boiling jealousy and contentiousness; are you not ruled by fleshly desires and walk just like men? 4. For when a certain one of you might say, “I myself am of Paul” but another, “I am with Apollos”, are you not just like men? 5. For what is Apollos? What is Paul? They are servants through whom you believed and only as each one of you were given by the Lord. 6 I myself planted, Apollos watered but the Lord was making the growth happen. 7 Consequently, neither the one planting nor the one watering is of any consequence but only the one causing the growth, God.


In our local paper the other day was a front page story about a set of neighbors who live in a peaceful little cul-de-sac, neighbors who have been friends for years. Their property is separated by a hedge one of them planted long ago as a decorative upgrade. They have watched each other’s kids reach adulthood, gone to one another’s parties and looked after one another’s homes during vacations. One of the neighbors recently put up a yard sign calling for a “no” vote on proposition 8. His neighbors in turn put next to the hedge in their yard a sign calling for a “yes” vote on proposition 8. Last week while his neighbors were gone, the one with the “no” sign went over and cut down the part of the hedge on his neighbor’s side and forced them to move their “yes” sign from where it had been placed against the hedge.

Now what could engender such rage and frustration that a friendship lasting two decades could be ruined by dueling lawn signs? The Apostle Paul would say it is just people being people. He uses a term that that is often found in his letters to describe the part of us that just won’t do what God wants, the flesh. Some refer to the flesh as our “sin nature”, others call it our “anti-Christ personality”. We all have it. The flesh is what pushes us away from God’s character and avoids anything that smacks of real holiness. Now it is not just Non-Christians who can be ruled by their anti-God personality, Christian people also are left leaning here. Paul calls us babies when we let our flesh take the lead in how we act and live.

Paul said that many of the Christians in Corinth were acting like babies because they were forming alliances and choosing sides. Some were for Apollos, others for Paul. The points of contention were irrelevant. It did not matter why they were disagreeing, the fact that they were clearly marked them as babies. Paul uses two terms to describe the approach these Christians had to their faith. The first is “sarksinoi” and simply means that they were flesh people; in other words, the tendency to think and live outside God was part of their character. But Paul takes his diagnosis a bit further by insisting that the Christians in Corinth were “Sarksika”; they were dominated by their flesh instincts. The anti-God personality was the operating system making these Christians who they were.
This created quite a problem for Paul as he tried to lead them. He was unable to speak to them through the Spirit of God. Now how does this sort of communication work? A person dominated by the Holy Spirit can talk of anything the Spirit directs and it is made clear to the person both in how they think but how they begin to act by means of the Holy Spirit. Coercion, guilt tripping and begging are not needed to bring about the needed change. The Spirit gets the message across and coordinates the new direction. Without the Spirit of God, there is almost no Godliness, little Christian love and peacefulness and not much interest in pursuing hard after Jesus. The fruit of the Spirit described in Galatians 5: love, joy peace patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control are anything but actualized…important maybe and desired but not rooted and grounded in the person.

A Political Politic

I have in the past few weeks become accutely aware of my need for the Holy Spirit to overwhelm me and dominate my interests and desires. It isn't that I just realized my personal poverty here, it is that I was brought face to face with my longing for God to saturate me with His Presence as I went through an unexpectedly provacative book, The Work And Presence Of The Holy Spirit. What startled me was just how casually I was treating the work of the Holy Spirit in me and how little real effort I was making to let Him rule over my psyche. I have recently entered fully into the political dialogue and I do not apologize for my views nor think I am off base in how strongly I feel but I must admit the election will not alter the most crucial issue. Without Christ aligning my life, I have little to say of any value. The fruit of the Spirit is not just an alternative lifestyle, it marks the one who does know God and lives in Him. The pursuit of the filling by the Holy Spirit is dominating my will and I pray that you and I will not wilt in our craving to be overcome and driven by Him. Pray and give up your will to Christ. Pray and refuse to submit any longer to anti-Jesus desires. Pray and state unequivocally your desire to let the Holy Spirit rule over you. It is a new day!

Transformation

As some of you know we lost our kitten Saturday. I have called this little creature Beelzebub for good reason. She greets me many mornings by clawing her way up my leg if I am lucky and across my back if not. One time she lost her balance on my bare back and dug in with all her might. I did not curse...a miracle of no small proportion. Beelzebub slipped out our door Saturday morning and escaped our many attempts to recapture her. I had to take Rachel out of town so we couldn't keep trying to coral her but the rest of the family was home. Unfortunately they couldn't find her and so she was gone.

Several times during our 2 1/2 hours of driving Rachel wanted me to call home and find out if Beelzebub had been found. I couldn't reach anyone and so my little girl's stress levels continued to rise. Meanwhile, both of us prayed fervently for that little troublemaker's return. We finally got back home at 9 that night and the first thing Rachel wanted to know was if anyone had found her cat. No. Off Rachel went with a flashlight trying to find her kitten but despite all of us searching, no sign of her. We left food out on the porch to try to entice Beelzebub back and went to bed.

The next morning was Sunday and without any signs of a kitten, we all went to church. All of us were praying for the return of that little kitten and with high hopes we returned home early in the afternoon to find...no cat. Rachel hunted all around and the rest of us got lunch ready. Because we had a broken pipe and our friend Robert was coming over to work on it, I ordered Noah into the back to pick up his half a billion Megablocks scattered all over the area where Robert would be working. With much grumbling he went back and started the reconstruction of his life. But guess what he heard as he worked. A cat meowing. Searching for the sound, Noah found the kitten under a building at the school behind our house. The space was way too small to crawl through to reach that little kitten child and so Rachel and Noah spent thirty minutes trying to bribe her out with cat food. Finally, out she crept, ravenous after her twenty-four hour adventure into the dark side. With a swift swoop, Rachel grabbed the kitten and wrapped her in her arms.

Snowball had been won back. I do not know who prayed more for that kitten, Mary Jo who tries her best to avoid her, me who has claw marks all over my body to testify to Snowball's affection or Rachel, who went to bed the night before with tears in her eyes afraid she had lost Snowball forever.

I am not sure what to make of all this except I do know that prayer is more than just a religious exercise. It is the lifeblood of our adventures. And our misadventures. How does a Beelzebub become a Snowball? I guess through prayer!

And how bold and free we then become in his presence, freely asking according to his will, sure that he's listening. And if we're confident that he's listening, we know that what we've asked for is as good as ours. 1 John 5: 14-15

News From The Good Old Days

From the newsletter of the radio station KFAX, I got this interesting list of facts about the good old days...
100 Years ago...

One home in seven had a bathtub

One home in 13 had a telephone

Infant mortality was 140 per 1,000 babies, compared to 6.3 per 1,000 today

Life expectancy was 47 years (uh-oh!)

6% of adults had high school diplomas

Colleges graduated 1.5% of the students they do today

The average workweek was 52 hours

Only 8,000 automobiles were registered in the entire country

One thing does remain the same though...


Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. Hebrews 13:8

Election

I am not convinced this election is over...We face perhaps the biggest internal crisis in over 50 years as a nation and the Christian community needs to make its presence felt. It is time we pray three times or more a day for the state of our country. Regardless of the side of the fence you sit politically, dramatic changes are in store for us and it is only the person locked in on the mind of Christ who will fathom what is happening and how to respond. Nothing good can come of all of this if we are passive as the body of Christ and just act according to our will. The accusations that are about to flurry around this political contest must be met with Spiritual resistance. Hammer away these next three weeks at determined prayer and make your life count for this nation and for the Kingdom of God.

How Do You Know?

With the election looming before us, the undecided vote is becoming smaller and smaller and yet the question, "How do you know" is legitimate. How do you know how you should vote? We rely heavily upon our intuitive sense, our opinion of things and the tilt of opinion around us but how do you know which candidate should be elected and does your opinion mean you are right in your assumptions? As I was reading through the text of 1 Corinthians 2, Paul makes a comparision between two sources of understanding...the psyche which means far more than just our psycholgical make-up but rather describes the way of life of this natural world, and the spirit, which is the working of the Holy Spirit. If there was ever a time when we need to be reliant not upon our natural senses but upon the Holy Spirit and His insight into God's mind, it is now. These are grave times at multiple levels and if there is hope for insight into how to move through this, it is revelation that God's people possess as they pursue the insight of God. We do not need to think as everyone else thinks. Only the Holy Spirit opens the door to a creativity that escapes the narrow boundaries of this world and its dying values. We have through our life in Christ, the mind of God.

Vision

Last Sunday our worship service attendance was forty. But...this past week as I was praying I was unprepared for the vision that came to me. I suddenly saw our church sanctuary full and overflowing. At first I thought I had fallen asleep and was dreaming but I immediately got up and walked into our sanctuary. The vision stayed with me as I looked out across the empty seats. The sanctuary was full and people were everywhere. Then just as suddenly it all was gone and I was left with the shocking and even a bit spooky sense that God had spoken to me in a completely new way. I am not given to visions or for that matter prophetic dreams so this was overwhelming and disconcerting. I wasn't sure what to do with what I experienced; whether I should believe it was from God or not. I went back to pray and was given a great peace about it all.

Lord, you establish peace for us; all that we have accomplished you have done for us. Isaiah 26: 12

I Get It Concluded

1 Corinthians 1: 18-25 GJW
18 For the word of the Cross to the ones being destroyed is foolishness but to the ones continually being saved, to you, it is the power of God. 19 For it has been written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise ones and the intelligence of the intelligent, I will push out of the way.” 20 Where is the wise one, where is the learned one, where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For in as much as in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God took pleasure through the foolishness of the proclamation to save the ones believing. 22 And in as much as the Jews demand a sign and the Gentiles seek wisdom, 23 we on the other hand, we proclaim Christ having been crucified…to the Jews it is a stumbling block, to the Gentiles moronic. 24 But to the called ones, both Jews and Gentiles, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the stupidity of God is wiser than (the wisdom) of man and the weakness of God is stronger than (the strength) of men.


The wisdom the world does not possess and cannot acquire is the “word of the Cross”. The “word of the Cross”, is most bluntly, moronic to the world. Foolishness as it is commonly translated. It is not that the world misunderstands what we have to say about the Cross because it misinterprets the facts. Rather like the Gorilla trying to comprehend the stock market, the world has no shot at figuring out the Cross. Paul calls it the power of God but only to the ones “continually being saved.” For the others, those in a constant state of destruction, it is idiocy.

There are two ways the word of the Cross is power of God for those continually saved. First, it makes stupid every argument held against it. Verse 20 uses a term that describes a transformation; the change from being intelligent to being ridiculously foolish or more literally, moronic. Suppose we were to mix common baking soda and vinegar. The resulting chemical reaction would produce carbon dioxide gas and water. When you place the word of the Cross on the wisdom of the world, and combine the two with faith, the wisdom of the world becomes stupid. It no longer makes sense. I once thought when I was a child that I could as I grew stronger fly on my own power. Of course it hasn’t worked out but the logic of my argument as a four year old made sense then. But now, through the transformation of mental maturity, I realize it was a child’s dream, we are not made to fly that way. I once thought, before the word of the Cross, that there wasn’t enough evidence for God. Now, by the transformation brought on me by the Cross, I cannot imagine life at all without God. The logic is not in my clearer thinking, it is in the supernatural work the Cross does within me. I “see” what I did not see before Jesus made my thinking clear about Him.

As an insider to my mind, I think I came to the conclusion that Jesus Christ is Lord and Master of my life but the truth is I didn’t. The work happened supernaturally. It came by the word of the Cross. Nothing about Jesus and the life He brings makes sense outside this change. We bust our heads against a wall trying to convince people it is logical to belong to Jesus. It cannot be made logical because it is impossible to grasp. The word of the Cross alone has the power not only to persuade but also to make sense of eternal life. The opposite also is true. What seems so logical, the life without Jesus is morphed by the word of the Cross into utter stupidity. The time away from Christ becomes by that Cross a mess of foolishness and vanity. We are not convinced to follow Jesus, we are made by the Cross into followers of Him.

The second way the word of the Cross is the power of God for the ones being saved is that it is what continuously makes you saved. We aren’t saved by something we think or do but rather by the word of the Cross itself. The change has nothing to do with carefully crafted arguments or intelligent considerations. Eternal life comes by the word of the Cross and it alone has the power to make you, as Paul puts it, “continually saved”. No one is “argued into the Kingdom of God and no one convinced of it through logic. There is by the word of the Cross a literal transformation that makes me into something I can never in my own power or through any other power morph out of being. I cannot become a non child of God once I am one because it is not me that does it: it is by the word of the Cross.

Verse 21 is fascinating. It tells us that through the “foolishness of the proclamation” a miracle occurs. The nonsensical, “moronic”, idiotic if you will proclamation brings about the faith transformation. Just saying the “Christ having been crucified” opens wide a door that is completely closed, a door to an eternal life transformation. It is a bit mysterious this process because believing is not given as a means of attaining eternal life, it is the characteristic of the ones having it. It is like saying that all Walkups have big noses. I am not a Walkup because I have a big nose but there is not a Walkup running around without a big nose. Believing or faithing is what every single Christian does. It is the foolishness of the proclamation of Christ having been crucified that takes the soul into continual salvation. It is the power of the change. Believing is what you look like when the Christ crucified proclamation works in you.

Now I understand that the call of the Gospel is to “believe”. We believe though not because we get it or we think it through. We do not turn into Christians on belief. Belief is the response of the soul to the penetration of the message of Christ crucified. The power of it works in me and then I believe. This, the Bible says is grace…a gift. Romans 10:17 is a strange and near shocking twist on popular theology. It states that, “faith comes from hearing the message”. Literally, it reads that faith comes out of the hearing. We do not hear the message because of our faith. The message of Christ crucified delivers the faith into us. It is the power generating faith.

The message itself is a stumbling block to some (the Jews) and moronic to others (the Gentiles). But that doesn’t keep the proclamation of the Gospel from tearing into people and making their old unbelief completely illogical to them. Because the message of Christ crucified is sufficient in itself to make changed lives, we do not have to be skilled messengers. It does not need help from good, satisfying logic. It simply needs to be announced and then it bores in on the one being saved. Here is a scientific chemistry experiment for the church. Go before the Lord and ask Him to point out to you one you can proclaim the Gospel. Take a deep breath and then do it. Pray for God get the words out. Christ died on the Cross to give you eternal life. He rose from the dead and He is the one and only savior of your soul. The pray and step back. The proclamation is not held back by the wisdom of the unbelieving. It is corralled by the silence of the Church. One voice is all the Gospel needs. Why not make it yours.



Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ. Romans 10:17 NIV

What's It All About Introduction

Corinthians 1: 26-31 GJW
26 Now look at your calling brothers. From a fleshly perspective not many of you were wise ones, not many powerful ones, not many well-born ones. 27 But God chose the stupid ones of the world so that he might shame continually the wise ones and God chose the weak ones of the world so that he might continually shame the strong ones. 28 And God chose the commonplace ones of the world and the contemptible ones and the ones who don’t seem to exist in order that he might make useless the ones who are 29 so that each living being will not boast before God. 30 But out of Him you yourselves are in Christ Jesus who became our wisdom from God as well as the righteousness and holiness and deliverance. 31 This is so that just as it has been written, “The one boasting, he must boast in the Lord.”


One of the most difficult parts of Biblical interpretation and teaching is the stretch required to get past one’s preconceived ideas about what the Bible says and what one thinks the Bible ought to say. We are programmed at nearly every level to think of choice as the pre-eminent right of every human being. We choose all day, choose what we will eat, choose who we will email, choose our TV shows, choose to exercise or not, choose what clothes we will wear and when to take our shower. We love the right to choose our representatives in government and although there are many who “choose” not to vote, we could never imagine giving up that right by choice. We even choose our religion and choose how we will practice that religion. We are choosy and choosers. No one tells us what to do!

The passage we are looking at today makes a mess of our theology. It is, as we can see, big on choice. Our passage speaks of choosing but not once are we the one making the choice. It talks about a calling but it is not us calling, it describes a comparative analysis but not by us and not in a way that makes sense. It simply does not fit at all the paradigm we have of choice and decision-making. It is not a “Christian” passage if what we mean by Christian is what we think Christian ought to be.

I have tried to render a literal translation so that the major themes Paul had as he wrote the Corinthian church would stand out for those of us used to reading the Scriptures without an eye for the important details. The first one that pops up is found in verse 26. Paul tells us that we must pause a moment and examine closely our calling. Stare at it. Ponder it deeply. Take time to think about it and how it came to you. Don’t just slough off casually the inception of your Christian life. It is crucial to consider if you are going to know much about God and yourself.

Calling is a funny word in a sense. It implies someone else doing this. The word invitation comes to mind. The calling Paul describes is not to some sort of specialized ministry, it is the calling to salvation. That is clear because he is writing the entire church, not a specific group of leaders. In fact, if we can take the liberty of saying it, the letter is written to us and not all of “us” have a specialized ministry but all of us have a calling to eternal life. Paul is telling us that we need to look at the part of our salvation he labels a calling…the invitation. We are Christian because God issued an invitation. My daughter went to her friend’s party because she was invited…my daughter did not invite herself to it. The starting point of this discussion is that each of us who are Christian received an invitation from God and that is how we got to where we are. Jesus underscores this in John 15: 16. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit-fruit that will last. (NIV)
To Be Continued...

A Needed Change

I am excited about my new journey of faith! My sister-in-law Kitty recommended a book that she and her family are using and it has already had a fabulous effect upon me. Today as I was praying through the material, God's presence struck me and I was a bit overwhelmed by what He did with me. There is so much I want to see change in my personality and it simply is not possible without a transformation by the Holy Spirit. Last night I was amazed by the work of the Spirit in our cell group as we talked about the Bible passage, sang and prayed. I cannot say the work had anything to do with my entering this new phase but it did happen at the same time. I even had the opportunity to share the Gospel and pray with a woman who approached me when she spotted my Bible at the table. Her son is in jail and her health has suffered some difficult disease. I felt she came to me because of the inroads the Holy Spirit was making within me at the very moment she approached. The book Kitty recommended is A Call To Die by David Nasser. It is a forty day journey into being crucified with Christ. It invites everyone to spend an hour a day going through the material and taking intensive personal inventories. There also is a call to a fast of some sort whether a fast from food or from the various media types. My fast is from sports reporting and broadcasting. I know it sounds like a rather trivial fast but it has concentrated my gaze on Jesus already. One thing that struck me is how easy it is to assume that what I need is a change in circumstances when what I really need is more Jesus and greater affection for the Holy Spirit living within.