Notes of Faith April 13, 2022

Throughout this season, Christians around the world are focusing on the gift of Salvation. Remembering the agony experienced by Jesus in His death on the Cross, crucified by Roman soldiers is so profound, isn’t it? In the final hours of His earthly time, as Jesus hung on the Cross, He made seven statements –each teaching us more about Jesus and His character. These are from four Gospel accounts, and are known as Jesus’ “seven last sayings.”

Let’s spend some time today reading (and listening) to these 7 last sayings that Jesus spoke from the Cross.

Jesus’ 7 Last Sayings in Scripture

“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

— Luke 23:34

“Today shalt thou be with Me in paradise.”

— Luke 23:43

“Woman, behold thy Son.”

— John19:26

“My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?”

— Mark 15:34

“I thirst.”

— John 19:28

“It is finished.”

— John 19:30

“Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit.”

— Luke 23:46

If you haven’t read the complete story of the crucifixion recently, this is a perfect season to revisit it.

You can also hear these final 7 last sayings of Jesus in this incredibly moving video with Blair from the Complete Audio Bible Experience.

What do Jesus’ seven last sayings from the Cross mean to you?

Let’s read the entire Gospel accounts of the story:

Matthew 26:14-27:66

Mark 14:12-15:47

Luke 22-23

John 18-19

Excerpted from The Bible Experience copyright Inspired By Media Group.

As we approach Good Friday, let’s remember that it’s a day that our flesh can’t possibly comprehend. Our holy God hung on a human torture and execution tool. On that day He was still fully God and yet He was also fully human... so His words of forgiveness, promise, protection, provision, agony, human need, completion, and consecration are that much more profound. Which of Jesus’ final statements moves you the most? Is it His forgiveness of the repentant criminal? His need? His suffering?

Pastor Dale

Notes of Faith April 12, 2022

When Jesus walked the dusty roads and fields of the Holy Land, He had just as much time as we do: twenty-four hours a day. One-hundred and sixty-eight hours a week. And fifty-two weeks each year. According to the New Testament accounts, He never seemed to be in a hurry. However, He was the Son of God on a very big mission. His life was saturated with people. He had family. Friends. Work, worship, and rest. What can we learn from Him about how we are to live our lives, not only successfully, but in a manner that pleases God?

The Gospels show that connecting with His Father was of utmost importance to Christ.

He spent time praying and studying the Scriptures, often during situations of concentrated ministry. He consulted God before He selected His ministry team—the twelve disciples. He prayed when carrying out assignments of His mission, including the feeding of five thousand famished people one afternoon. We observe the Lord praying as He primed for a trying time—whether in the throes of a crisis or before His arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane. He also withdrew to pray when ministry threatened to overwhelm Him.

Spending time communing with God to revitalize Himself was elevated to the top of His priority list—perhaps even written in bright, red permanent ink. He had hidden God’s Word in His heart. Even Satan coming against Him in the wilderness didn’t stand a chance.

Jesus reflexively quoted Scripture from memory to combat the devil and His ploys.

Is being in the presence of God—connecting through prayer and Bible study—of paramount significance to you? Does your schedule prove it? Or, are you content to check off a few quick prayer requests and do a little devo dance before busting into your day? Like waving to a high school friend in the hallway before first period, do you say, “Hey!” to Jesus in the morning but then totally ignore Him the rest of the day? I hate to admit that somedays my answer to this last question would be a big, fat yes. Sigh.

Jesus had a packed agenda while on earth, peppered with both people and purpose:

• At times His ministry involved preaching the good news to multitudes. He fed a hungry crowd or healed a woman who reached out to touch His robe amid a throng of others (Matthew 5:1–7:29; Matthew 14:13–21; Mark 5:24–35).

He had family members that included not only His parents but His four half-brothers—James, Joseph, Judas, and Simon—and his cousin John the Baptist (Matthew 13:55; Luke 1:36).

• He poured into a group of seventy-two, training them before they embarked on a harvest mission for the Kingdom (Luke 10:1–3).

• A great majority of the time, He hung out with the twelve disciples, showing them up close and personal, by His words and actions, how to live by example (Matthew 10:1–5; Mark 10:32–34).

• And the Lord even had an inner circle of those who were closest to Him: Peter, James, and John (Matthew 17:1–3; Mark 14:32–34; Luke 8:51–52).

Strangers cheeredHim. Religious leaders criticized Him. Some even plotted to take His life.

While Jesus had numerous people in His life, He also had a plan. Through it all, He never let the people deter Him from His main assignment.

The Spirit of the Lord is on Me, because He has anointed Me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

—Luke 4:18–19

It fascinates me how Jesus stayed true to His mission but knew how to manage His interactions with people. He didn’t let the crowds overcome Him. He sometimes singled out individuals such as the woman at the well (John 4:1–26), the woman with the issue of blood (Mark 5:24–35), and the rich young ruler (Luke 18:18–23). He remained consistent in His calling and yet confident in His human interactions, knowing when to pour into others and when to withdraw to rest.

Speaking of rest, Jesus was serious about the Sabbath, although He was not legalistic. He recognized our need to follow the pattern shown in creation of laboring six days and resting on the seventh. But He did take into account emergencies that might occur on the Sabbath day. He avowed that the Sabbath was made for man, not the other way around. So, if an animal needed rescuing, or an individual needed healing, He altered His normal routine and tended to them on the day of rest.

He would not be categorized as idle or lazy. He did his work with gusto and efficiency. Just take a highlighter sometime and go through the Gospel of Mark, picking out every time you see the word immediately.

Jesus was an on-purpose Person.

He wasn’t a time waster. He was the epitome of the adage, “work smarter, not harder.” We don’t see Him allowing the expectations and wishes of others to deter Him from His mission or make Him emotionally exhausted. He toggled between work, people, and rest successfully, and in a way that pleased God.

If we want to learn to be successful with both relating to our people and setting our own schedules, we first need to tackle a topic that Jesus lived out. Scads of blog posts have been written about it; scores of sermons preached about it. But do we really understand what it means to live by it?

I’m talking about priorities.

Excerpted from When Making Others Happy Is Making You Miserable by Karen Ehman, copyright Karen Ehman.

Jesus was on mission and He stayed on mission even though He took time for rest, friends, family, and even animals. He wasn’t bound by convention or stringent rules of the day; He flexed when it made sense and followed God every step of the way. Let’s look at His life and follow!

Pastor Dale

Notes of Faith April 11, 2022

 Mark 16:1-8

Living in this broken world, people know defeat all too well.

Everyone has experienced a relationship where someone let them down, or a situation that didn’t work out the way they hoped. These moments of disappointment or frustration reveal the tragic fact that this world is deeply flawed. Even though believers live in the hope of the resurrection and the victorious life that Jesus promises through His Spirit, he still calls us to live in this world, where we experience death, brokenness, mourning, and pain (in contrast to the coming Kingdom: Revelation 21:4).

Jesus’ resurrection reveals to believers the true way to life.

Those who think that the abundant life consists of finding one’s way around suffering and hardship have a misguided perception of what Jesus promised. Jesus’ life and example teach that the way to a full life consists of service, hardship, opposition, pain, and suffering. Believers look at Jesus’ life and see that God’s best plan for His Son was to stay close to Him through the most unimaginable of circumstances. The New Testament shows many times over that God was with His Son until the end, when Jesus took our sin upon Himself and suffered on the Cross.

But the good news is God didn’t leave His Son in the grave!

Because Jesus submitted to the point of death, and then defeated death, He paved the way for all people to find eternal life. By submitting Himself to death, Jesus found life.

For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for Me and for the gospel will save it.

—Mark 8:35

It’s only in surrendering to His will and His way that believers actually find the fullness of life as God intended it. Giving is the key to gaining.

In all of this, Jesus is victorious. He was, is, and will always be undefeated by sin, by death, and by the grave. His victory is found in the fact that He was, and is, a selfless servant. In graciously giving His life, He also created a pathway to the life that is truly life eternal.

Are you suffering today? God the Father is with you! He will not leave you. He will stay close to you through every moment of your troubles, every day of your life and help you as much as you will let Him. Let Jesus be the example and follow Him all the way to victory.

Pastor Dale

Notes of Faith April 10, 2022

The Lord is near to all who call on Him, to all who call on Him in truth.

—Psalm 145:18

I woke up on what I thought would be an ordinary Monday a few summers ago, but nothing was normal. I felt as if knives were mercilessly carving their way through my insides. I had never been in this much physical pain before. Waves of nausea left me convulsing and desperate for relief. I tried to step out of bed, but I collapsed. I screamed.

My family rushed me to the emergency room where we all hoped I could find some relief and help. But as panic gave way to desperation, I cried out for God to help me: “Take the pain away! Please, dear God, take this pain away!”

But He didn’t. Not that moment. Not the next. Not even the next day.

His silence stunned me. My trust in Him in those moments started to feel shaky.

I kept picturing Him standing beside my bed, seeing my anguish, watching my body writhing in pain, hearing my cries, but making the choice to do nothing. And I couldn’t reconcile that. How could God do that? How could He say I’m His daughter whom He deeply loves but let me lie there in excruciating pain?

These are the thoughts and questions that tumbled around my brain during a time of such pain and distress. I think we have all asked questions like this.

Where are You, God?

Do You see me?

Do You care?

After five of the longest and most excruciating days of my life, a new doctor came to my hospital room. He ran one last test. And finally, we had some answers.

The right side of my colon had torn away from the abdominal wall and twisted around the left side. The blood flow was completely cut off. My colon had distended from the normal four centimeters in diameter to more than fourteen centimeters.

It had been in danger of rupturing when it was around ten centimeters, at which point I would have felt relief from the intense pain. And it’s at that exact time when many others suffering with this medical situation feel that relief and go to sleep. Their bodies turn septic, and they die.

The surgeon explained that he needed to rush me into emergency surgery, and he’d be removing most of my colon. He was hoping to save enough that my body would eventually function properly again, but he wasn’t sure.

He wasn’t even sure I’d make it through surgery.

And with that daunting news, I hugged my family, prayed with my pastor, and I was wheeled into the surgical unit. Thankfully, the surgery went well, and weeks later while I was home recovering, the surgeon called me. He’d gotten the report back from the mass that was removed, and there was no further treatment needed. However, there was an alarming part of the report he couldn’t reconcile.

He said, “Lysa, I don’t really like how people throw around the term miracle. But honestly, it’s the only word I know to use in your case. The cells in your colon were already in a state of autolysis. This is where your brain has signaled your body to start the process of decomposition. It’s what happens when you die. Lysa, you can’t get any closer to death than that. How you survived this, I can’t explain.”I hung up the phone, stunned.

And I suddenly thought of those days before the surgery when I was begging God to take away the pain. I had questioned God because of the pain. I had wondered how God could let me be in so much pain. And I had cried, because I thought God somehow didn’t care about my pain.

But in the end, God used the pain to save my life.

The pain was what kept me in the hospital. The pain was what kept me demanding the doctors run more tests. The pain was what made me allow a surgeon to cut my belly wide open. The pain was what helped save me. Had God taken away the pain, I would have gone home, my colon would have ruptured, my body would have turned septic, and I would have died.

I now have a completely different picture of God standing beside my hospital bed while I was hurting and begging Him to help me. He wasn’t ignoring me. No, I believe it took every bit of holy restraint within Him to not step in and remove my pain.

He loved me too much to do the very thing I was begging Him to do.

He knew things I didn’t know. He saw a bigger picture I couldn’t see. His mercy was too great. His love was too deep. Indeed, He is a good, good Father.

He was not far off like I’d imagined as I lay writhing in pain. He was near. So very near. Just like Psalm 145:18 tells us,

“The Lord is near to all who call on Him, to all who call on Him in truth.”

He was loving me through the pain. It was necessary pain —life-saving pain I can see now with new eyes. It’s given me a whole new outlook on times when God seems silent.

God’s silence was part of the rescue.

And I pray today that you would find rescue in even the excruciating moments when God feels silent. When you want to pull away, I pray today you have the courage to press in because you have a new perspective of God in the midst of your pain.

Father, You know the heartache and pain I am facing. Help me trust and believe You are not far off but are very close —holding me, comforting me, and not leaving me by myself to figure it all out. I know You are good, and You work all things together for my good —even my suffering. I absolutely trust You with every detail of my life. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Excerpted from Seeing Beautiful Again by Lysa TerKeurst copyright Lysa TerKeurst.

God is right with you. He sees you. He cares more than you can possibly fathom! His silence if you can’t hear or see His work right now is part of the rescue. Hold on and trust. Lean in, press in. Trust Him in the details.

Pastor Dale

Notes of Faith April 9, 2022

My friend Cindy is all things amazing. She's one of those people who by her very presence makes the world better and brighter. She is so funny that she literally does stand-up comedy, and she loves Jesus. We've been friends for over 20 years, and I was so thrilled when in her mid-40s, she met the love of her life. This was the man she'd been waiting for her whole life. He doted on her and treated her like a queen. They planned the wedding, but then the pandemic hit. They decided to delay until summer, and less than two weeks before the wedding, he had a massive heart attack and died. Instead of walking down the aisle, she delivered his eulogy.

Sometimes, life is so unfair. My dear friend never deserved that, no one does. It seems so unjust, so wrong. Maybe you too, know someone for whom that never should have happened. Or maybe that person is you.

About five years ago, Leif and I moved to Utah so he could plant a church campus. I had to learn a whole new city—all the streets and suburbs, and let's just say...I'm not the best driver. And so when I move to a new place and make a new friend, I'll offer to drive us somewhere, and the person will accept, once.

And after that, I'll begin to notice a pattern where everyone says, oh no, let me drive, really. And somehow, despite this, I haven't gotten pulled over or gotten a ticket.

But I recently learned of a black man in our community who passionately loves Jesus, and who has kept a log. Over the last 10 years, he's been pulled over 37 times.

Each time when the officer approaches, he always asks, “Sir, what did I do?” Because he wasn't speeding, there's no taillight out. He always gets the same response when he asks. “You were driving too slow.”

At that point, he'll try to ask a follow-up question for clarification. But he's often cut off as the person leans forward to speak to the passenger. “Ma'am, you all right?” To which the white woman sitting in the front seat responds, “Yes sir, I'm fine. I'm riding in our car with my husband.”

37 times in 10 years. If you do the math, it's happening every few months.

And I'm just going to call it, that is so unfair. That is so unjust. I ache for my beloved brother in Jesus who should never have to go through that. No one should.

Sometimes, when I look at the pain, the loss, the suffering, the injustice of this world, I think, Oh Lord, how long? How long until You come and wipe away every tear and make all things right?

We all have areas of our lives where we cry out, oh Lord, how long?Maybe for you, it's your prodigal son or daughter. Despite praying countless prayers, your child is no closer to God or any semblance of a flourishing life. And you think, Lord, how long?

Maybe for you, it's the chronic pain in your back, your rib cage, your neck, or those migraines that force you to sit in dark rooms for days. And you cry out, God, how long?

Maybe for you it's in your marriage. You can't even remember the last time you felt loved, cherished, appreciated, acknowledged. And you wonder, Lord, how long?

Or maybe for you, it's the ways in which you've been snubbed, overlooked, dismissed, made to feel invisible or less than. And you cry out, Jesus, how long? How long until You wipe away every tear and make things right?

The Book of Revelation is written to anyone and everyone who has ever asked, Lord, how long?

As this book both asks and addresses this question, it uses a slew of strange and symbolic imagery. And if you take it all literally and in a linear fashion, the interpretation gets weird and scary really fast. Remember, Revelation is a book written in code. It's apocalyptic literature, a unique genre of writing that tells of future events without giving us all the details. And because of its cryptic nature, I love what Jerome, who translated the Bible into Latin, said: "Revelation has as many mysteries as it does words." That's why, as we dive into today's text, we must once again center ourselves on the truth, that first and foremost, this is a revelation of who? Jesus Christ. With all its strange imagery, do not get distracted from the extravagant hope that

life is not fair, but Jesus is not finished.

And He wants to do some of his greatest work through you.

Turn with me to chapter 6 of Revelation, where a series of seals open, and four riders on horses are released. Now, these are not literal horses. You’ll never open your front door and say, there is a horse from Revelation! These are not literal, they're symbolic. Of what?

Well, horses throughout the Bible were commonly used in battle. So this suggests battle language between who? The forces of good led by God and the forces of evil led by the Adversary.

Verse 2,

I looked, and there before me was a white horse! Its rider held a bow, and he was given a crown, and he rode out as a conquer bent on conquest.

Some interpret this as describing Jesus, but I don't think so. Why? He's not described as Faithful or True. Notice he's bent on conquest, meaning someone who wants to win at all costs. That sounds like an earthly ruler, not Christ. This horse symbolically delivers political injustice and oppression.

The second horse is red. And it says,

Its rider was given power to take peace from the earth and to make people kill each other. To him was given a large sword.

The horse delivers military devastation and oppression.

Now, check out the third horse. It says,

Its rider was holding a pair of scales in his hand. Then I heard what sounded like a voice among the living creatures, saying, 'Two pounds of wheat for a day's wages, and six pounds of barley for a day's wages, and do not damage the oil and the wine!

The horse brings economic injustice and oppression.

The cost of basic food supplies like bread skyrocket, so people are starving. But the food of the wealthy, the oil and the wine, remain the same price. The rich get richer at the expense of the poor. And the last horse? Well, it's kind of gross. It's pale and sickly. It says,

Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the Earth to kill by sword, famine, and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth.

This horse delivers ultimate oppression to humanity—death. Together, these horses reveal the patterns through which hell is released on earth—conquest, violence, oppression, and death. And you don't have to look too far to find people today who are battling political oppression, military oppression, economic oppression, or they're in the fight of their lives against sickness and death.

Take time to read and listen to the stories of the most vulnerable populations in the slums of Africa, the underground churches in China, those who wrestle with poverty in your community. Look at the satellite images of mass graves, photos of babies that are covered in flies with dysentery. Or simply go spend two hours at your local children's hospital or cancer ward.

The raging effects of those horses is real. And such darkness feels so unfair, so cruel, so unjust, you may be tempted to throw up your hands, walk away, and say, beam me up, Scotty! Get me out of here! There's no way we can win this.

On the edge of giving up hope, once again we encounter the great unveiling of Jesus Christ. The Lamb, Jesus opens the fifth seal. And guess who's in it? The faithful saints.

Continuing in verse 9,

I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained.

Why are they under the altar? This throne room is actually a heavenly temple. These are the faithful saints who resist evil and oppression in all its forms. Those who stand up against injustice, who help rescue children from extreme poverty, who spend time volunteering in prisons.

Those who cook savory meals and sit with friends who are heartbroken. Those who deliver groceries, drive to doctor's appointments, and volunteer to take the kids. Those who give a listening ear without judgment, those who send cards filled with handwritten prayers, those who run in when everyone else is running out. Those who proclaim the goodness of Christ and His Kingdom in word and deed until their last breath. They rise up by the Word of God and their testimony, and so can you.

The truth is, life is not fair, but Jesus is not finished. Is it going to cost you? Yeah. Yeah. It may cost you everything. But no matter how bad the score looks mid-game, Christ wins in the end. And you are part of Jesus's winning strategy.

Excerpted from Revelation, Margaret Feinberg, copyright Margaret Feinberg.

If you’re crying out, Lord, how long? in a place of exhaustion, desperation, or terrible unfairness, Jesus sees you. He is not finished yet! You are a part of His winning strategy!

Pastor Dale

Notes of Faith April 8, 2022

The word hero gets thrown around a lot. A friend who brings you coffee on a busy day might seem like a hero in that moment, but the real heroes are the ones who put themselves in danger for the good of others. We often think of police officers, members of the armed services, firefighters, and other first responders—and they are, undoubtedly, heroes.

However, there are other everyday people who become heroes in a crisis, risking their lives to help. Volunteers who clear rubble after earthquakes or paddle out into floodwaters to rescue survivors are heroes. So are the doctors and nurses on the front lines battling diseases.

The good, dependable folks who go to work even in the midst of terror attacks, pandemics, and natural disasters are pretty heroic too. They rarely get honors for their service, but without them we wouldn’t be able to buy groceries, send our kids to school, have clean buses and bathrooms, buy gas, or any of the other countless things that keep our country running.

So thank an everyday hero today.

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You Are Able to Love Others

Following Jesus is not for the faint of heart.

Jesus doesn’t let us sing some hymns and go to Bible study each week and say we’re done. He challenges us to do more and be better. He dares us to be bolder and braver and to love harder. He urges us to step outside of our comfort zones to care for one another in the middle of our messy lives and emotions.

Jesus was human too. He knows how we feel and what our weaknesses are. But He also knows what we are capable of. He doesn’t ask us to do anything that we can’t do. So when the Bible tells us to “love one another” and to “outdo one another in showing honor,” we can be confident that those are things we can absolutely do.

How will you rise to the challenge today?

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You're a Miracle

Go outside tonight and look up at the stars. Count as many of them as you can. The longer you look, the smaller you will feel. Isn’t it amazing that out of the vastness of space you are standing in this exact place at this exact time? The chances of your being born, just as you are, is more than one in four hundred trillion.1 Crazy! It’s truly a miracle that you are here. So what are you, as a living, breathing miracle, going to do with your one miraculous life? You owe it to yourself to make it count. Take the time to find what you are passionate about. Dig deep and discover your purpose. Discover how you can use your unique strengths to make the difference in this world that you were born to make.

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“You are special, and so is your neighbor”—that part is essential: that you're not the only special person in the world. The person you happen to be with at the moment is loved, too.~ Fred Rogers

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Love Everyone

Each of us matters to someone. Your mailman is a beloved husband. Your child’s teacher is a cherished daughter. The barista at your favorite coffee shop is someone’s best friend. Think about your people. How would you want them to be treated by strangers?

Each of us deserves love, kindness, and respect. Life is challenging. We can all fall into thinking that our people and our lives matter most sometimes. But the truth is that we all need each other. Every person you meet deserves to be treated like they are one of your people—the people you love and cherish most. If we can all remember to treat others with that kind of love, imagine what a difference it would make!

1. Dr. Ali Binazir, “Are You a Miracle? On the Probability of Your Being Born,” Huffpost, August 16, 2011, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/probability-being-born

Excerpted from You Are Essential , copyright Thomas Nelson.

Ephesians 1:16 says, “I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers...” We can love others with the love of Christ by being grateful for them and treating them with kindness, deference, and generosity.

Pastor Dale

Notes of Faith April 7, 2022

“But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish in order that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.” (Philippians 3:7-11)

What a rich text and grand perspective we receive from the Apostle Paul toward the end of his earthly life and ministry. As he reflects upon his life and ministry within the environment of his first imprisonment, he concludes that “all things” are regarded as “loss”; not just the lesser things, the low points we might say, but the high points as well.

Here is a highly educated man, having acquired significant standing within the Pharisaical community prior to his conversion, then rising to significant prominence within the Christian community, post conversion. Today he is considered by most scholars to be the greatest theologian ever. We know from scripture that he “Knew how to get along with humble means, and how to live in prosperity.” (Philippians 4:12)

But now he considers it all “loss”...in what sense, we might ask, and for what reason?

 “Compared to (or in view of) the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord...” That’s the answer to “in what sense.”

So then, for what reason? “That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings...in order that I may attain to the resurrection of the dead.”

It’s not that the experiences and blessed privileges of his life and ministry were meaningless or inconsequential to him, but compared to just truly knowing Christ, these things were “as loss” in comparison.

Paul realized very early on in his ministry that if true Christianity is anything at all, it is, first of all, a death.

“Christ and Him crucified”... “Crucified with Christ”...”For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”

These few familiar quotes from scripture are representative of the entire theme of Paul’s ministry and Christian philosophy if you will. So now towards the end of the aged Paul’s life, he reflects, rehearses, and re-establishes that which he has believed from the beginning.

As he perceives that death may be in his near future, I believe he takes comfort in the fact and encourages his own faith in the truth that his resurrection from the dead is as sure as Christ’s resurrection because “He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who indwells you.” (Romans 8:11)

Yes, this verse encourages the believer to embrace the fact that His Spirit quickens us or makes us have life while we are alive, but it also reminds and assures us that as Christians, that same Spirit will literally make us alive from death, in our resurrection.

Paul also realizes that through his persecutions, beatings, shipwrecks, and now imprisonment, he is experiencing a greater intimacy than he has ever known through “The fellowship of His sufferings.”

It is this point I want us to especially consider at this moment in time.

I pray for the persecuted church in the world today on a daily basis. We have brothers and sisters in Christ who are being persecuted, tortured, and even killed, all around the world, because of their unwavering faith in Christ.

Do we consider ourselves to be involved with Christ and these persecuted saints, in the “Fellowship of His sufferings?”

Here in America (and elsewhere) we have so-called ministers and ministries that unashamedly proclaim that Christians should never suffer...anytime, anywhere!

Their theology (or lack thereof) is illustrative of their complete ignorance of sound biblical teaching, and their insensitivity to suffering saints. I believe it also evidences a kind of elitist spiritual arrogance that is truly breathtaking! Scripture simply calls them “false teachers.”

I would like to write more of what I am thinking and feeling right now, because suffering either has been, is, or will be part of our life’s experience. Suffering comes in all sizes and shapes, as the saying goes, but it does most certainly come.

I recently read a quote from Charles Spurgeon that I believe articulates, sums up, and authenticates what we know to be true from both scripture and experience.

God’s people have their trials. It was never designed by God, when he chose his people, that they should be an untried people. They were chosen in the furnace of affliction; they were never chosen to worldly peace and earthly joy. Freedom from sickness and the pains of mortality was never promised them; but when their Lord drew up the charter of privileges, he included chastisements amongst the things to which they should inevitably be heirs. Trials are a part of our lot; they were predestinated for us in Christ’s last legacy. So surely as the stars are fashioned by his hands, and their orbits fixed by him, so surely are our trials allotted to us: He has ordained their season and their place, their intensity and the effect they shall have upon us. Good men must never expect to escape troubles; if they do, they will be disappointed, for none of their predecessors have been without them. Mark the patience of Job; remember Abraham, for he had his trials, and by his faith under them, he became the “Father of the faithful.” Note well the biographies of all the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs, and you shall discover none of those whom God made vessels of mercy, who were not made to pass through the fire of affliction. It is ordained of old that the cross of trouble should be engraved on every vessel of mercy, as the royal mark whereby the King’s vessels of honour are distinguished. But although tribulation is thus the path of God’s children, they have the comfort of knowing that their Master has traversed it before them; they have his presence and sympathy to cheer them, his grace to support them, and his example to teach them how to endure; and when they reach “the kingdom,” it will more than make amends for the “much tribulation” through which they passed to enter it. – (Morning and Evening-March 8, Charles Spurgeon)

These are powerful, true, and comforting words that assure us of His plans and purposes for our lives, His faithfulness to see us through (even in the midst of difficult circumstances), and His guarantee of resurrection power that transports us from death to life eternal!

“We are saved by grace through faith.”

Heaven is already our home and soon we will go there to dwell eternally!

But in the in-between called “life”’ we struggle and often suffer.

It is however in the midst of adversity, trial, and tribulation, that we who are “In Christ” actually draw upon a greater richness, fullness and dare I say beauty, from the ever increasing intimacy with our Lord and Savior resulting from “The Fellowship of His Sufferings.”

In Christ,

Dallas Holm

I wish I had more writings from Dallas Holm.  He is a great preacher, teacher, song writer that has a heart desiring to bring glorify to God.  When I receive an email from him I try to pass it along to you that you might enjoy it as well.  May God bless you richly today and always.

Pastor Dale

Notes of Faith April 6, 2022

“I don’t understand the Sermon on the Mount,” I said.

It was just past midnight, New Year’s Eve. I was sitting on a balcony with my son Spencer. We were eighteen floors up, as I remember. We were nursing whiskeys. Before us and below us stretched the lowlands of Miami, a city I have never loved. It’s all abandoned canyons of white stone, vast boulevards empty of pedestrians as in a plague. The alien palms look like pinioned spiders. The spiders are the size of alien palms. Sudden iguanas, giant lizards with their giant lizard eyes, stare at you from unexpected urban niches. People find alligators on their lawns and in their swimming pools. I don’t like alligators.

One morning, I saw a corpse floating in the bay. As I stood in a crowd of onlookers, watching the policemen pull the dead man into their boat, the lady standing next to me said, “Yes. That happened to me a few weeks ago. I was swimming at the beach and one floated by.” Bodies in the water are just a thing that happens here, in other words. In other words, the whole town stinks of crime and casual corruption.

Gaudy emptiness, monsters, and misconduct: it’s a city modeled on the human heart, a microcosm of the bright and shiny world.

On top of which, the good news of winter never seems to reach the place. Here it was January, the first minutes of morning, and it was only now that the muggy heat of the long day had lifted. We sat on the balcony, my son and I, and watched the year ending. Fireworks bloomed across the darkling plain of the city, first here, then there, then near, then in the distance. I felt the pleasant melancholy of far-off celebrations.

My wife, my son, and I had come here for the holidays. We were visiting my daughter Faith, her husband, and their new-made son. During daylight hours, we would dawdle in the young family’s apartment or go out to visit some tourist site or other when we could tolerate the heat. After the baby’s bedtime, we visitors would retire to our rented high-rise apartment to let the parents rest. Finally, after my wife went to bed, Spencer and I would pour ourselves drinks, sit out on the balcony, and discuss religion, philosophy, and literature, the things we loved.

“I understand the words of the Sermon, obviously,” I went on. “But I can never see the sense of it clearly. And even when I do, I’m not sure I believe in any of it or agree with it. The Beatitudes read to me like: ‘Blessed are you when your life is awful, because in Heaven, trust me, it’s gonna be great.’ I feel life is more essential than that. It’s not a trivial throwaway. It’s not a sentence you suffer in the flesh until you get to the good part when you’re dead. Or what about, ‘Don’t resist an evil person?’ Or, ‘Love your enemy’? Or, ‘Turn the other cheek’? I mean, we’re so used to believing these are high moral commandments. They’re the foundation stones of Western civilization, in a way. But would you actually do any of them in real life? Should you do them? Turn the other cheek? If an evil person attacked you, would I stand by with some prissy smile on my face, loving him and not resisting him? Congratulating myself on my piety? I’d rip his head off. I’d do my best to. If he attacked Mom, I’d kill him, then bring him back to life and kill him again just for the pleasure of it. And that would be the right thing to do, wouldn’t it? Not stand there like some simpering parson. Does pretending to believe something is good when you can’t live by it realistically — does that even mean anything? ‘If you lust after someone, you’ve already committed adultery.’ Well, no, you actually haven’t. All right, I can come up with a way to think about that so that it has some truth to it. But it’s not really true — not true like truth is true. So what’s the point of it all?”

My son was studying for his doctorate in Classics at Oxford then. He knew more about almost everything than I did — except life, I guess, my being over sixty. He was a true scholar, like his mother’s father before him, while I... I may fairly say that I had read just about everything there was to read in the world, everything worth reading anyway. I was a dogged completist in such matters. But I could never remember a word of anything I read. Images, descriptions of events, ideas — they all just seemed to pour themselves into some hobo bisque bubbling away in my brainpan until the steam of it rose behind my eyes as a visionary atmosphere, a general way of understanding things and seeing them. I was a novelist, in other words, an artist, a barefoot teller of tales, as I liked to say. When I looked out on the exterior landscape, I saw mostly what I imagined to be there. Like a blind man then, I found reality by the touch of it. I felt my way.

By this method, about a dozen years before, at nearly fifty, I had become a Christian. It was a bold decision, in one sense, a stroke against the unbelieving tenor of the times.

But it was tentative too. I told myself I could always revert to being a secular Jew if Christ turned me superstitious or small minded or otherwise screwy. In the event, however, to my wonder and delight, it was all the other way around. Baptized, I had acquired a new realism. My deepened relationship with God augmented my talent for living. I would never call myself an easy creature, even now. I have always been an oversized and thumpy character who made the knickknacks rattle when I walked around. But accepting Christ had transformed me into a weirdly peaceful monster, joyful in every little thing. Not happy in everything — that would have just made me a loon. But alive to the life of the moment, and twice alive to the people and the things I loved: my family and my friends, my work and a good whiskey, a good book and the loveliness of enchanted venues, almost everywhere, in fact, that was not literally Miami.

Also, I had noticed this: each time I reached a deeper understanding of some passage in the gospel, each time I learned to adapt my mind just a little more to the mind of Christ, it was like swallowing a spoonful of crazy happy sauce. It made my joy increase, and I don’t mean in the moment only but ever after, all the time.

So to founder on the Sermon on the Mount was a real frustration to me. It was like I had a great big jar of crazy happy sauce right in front of me and couldn’t get the lid off. I wasn’t going to explain away what made no sense to me — I hate that. I wouldn’t quote back to myself some tidy piety from some book or sermon — I hate that too. And you know what else I hate? Windy nothingness: grandiose oratory that purports to elucidate gospel wisdom and then blows on out of your mind, leaving life just the same as always.

No. I believed in the Gospels now. I truly did. But I wanted to know what I believed, what exactly. If Jesus was the Word made flesh, let Him speak to me. If He was God made man, let Him speak to me man to man.

I said to my son, “The thing is, I have this intense feeling that it all does actually make sense somehow. It’s like a beautiful picture, but it’s blurry to me. I feel if I could just turn the lens a little bit this way or that, it would all come suddenly into focus. But I can’t seem to do it.”

Whereupon Spencer sipped his whiskey, watched the panorama of fireworks below, thought about it for a while, and said,

“Maybe the problem is that you are trying to understand a philosophy instead of trying to get to know a Man.”

In that I recognized this is the single smartest thing anyone had ever said to me.

I hope that your read this to the end and made the same discovery!

Pastor Dale

Notes of Faith April 5, 2022

Article by Marshall Segal
Staff writer, desiringGod.org

Life in the Spirit can feel ordinary at times. It really is one of Satan’s greatest feats.

If he cannot keep God from breaking in and reviving a once-dead soul, he will do what he can to downplay what has happened. He’ll seed thorns that disrupt our sense of safety and rest (2 Corinthians 12:7). He’ll try to veil the glory of God in us and around us (2 Corinthians 4:4). He’ll flood us with cares and riches and pleasures to distract us from spiritual reality (Luke 8:14). He’ll seize on any glimpse of sin: “See, you’re exactly who you were before” (Revelation 12:10).

Satan can convince us that a life invaded by the presence, help, and joy of God — by the Holy Spirit — isn’t really all that different from any other life. He convinces us to perceive and define our lives by what’s left of the curse, rather than by the inbreaking of the new creation.

Yes, life in the Spirit — for now — often feels ordinary. We eat and drink, work and sleep, toil and spin, and then do it all again tomorrow. But none of now is the same as it was, not even our morning coffee or our afternoon snack. “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). This glory doesn’t skip meals; it invades them. And who empowers us to eat and drink and do everything for the glory of God? The Spirit.

Now, we eat with the Spirit. Now, we drink with the Spirit. Now, we work and play and sleep in the Spirit. Now, we walk by the Spirit (Galatians 5:16). A normal day may feel ordinary, but below the surface of our perceptions, God is knitting together a new, miraculous, unfinished life in us — by his Spirit.

You Have the Spirit

Do you remember that, if you belong to Christ, the Spirit of God lives in you? He doesn’t hover above you waiting to help. He’s not waiting at a desk in heaven for you to call. He’s not patrolling neighborhoods looking for souls in need. No, when God delivered you from the prison of sin and death, he not only invited you into his presence and family, but he came to live in you. He made a home for himself in your weak, broken, and forgiven soul.

“Do you not know that you are God’s temple,” the apostle Paul asks, “and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” (1 Corinthians 3:16). Do you know? Has the ordinariness of life made you forget? God is living in the ordinary, in your ordinary.

Paul writes in Romans 8:8–9, “Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you.” Even if many aspects of your life stayed the same after you came to Christ — your family, your job, your neighborhood, your car, your wardrobe, even what you have for breakfast — something fundamental changed. Someone fundamental. God flooded every familiar and unremarkable corner of your life with God — with himself, with his Spirit.

Feel the force of Paul’s wonder as he repeats himself three times in just a few verses:

You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. . . . If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. (Romans 8:9–11)

He’s captivated by a reality we often miss. God does not just love you, protect you, provide for you, and draw near to you; he dwells in you. He dwells in you. He dwells in you.

Making His Presence Felt

If we could see all that the Holy Spirit is working in us and through us, we would not yawn or groan over “ordinary” like we’re prone to. One day, we’ll have eyes and ears tuned to these miracles, but for now, we have to search for them — for him. But what do we look for?

We look for child-like dependence. Paul goes on to say in Romans 8, “You did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God” (Romans 8:15–16). Whenever we reach out in faith to God as our Father — as someone who sovereignly loves and cares for us as his children — we do so by the Spirit. Do you have an impulse to pray when you feel tempted or weak or confused or discouraged? That impulse is not ordinary or natural; it’s a work of God.

We look for an awareness of spiritual reality. Anything you truly understand about God, his word, and his will are gifts of the Holy Spirit. Anyone can read God’s words and perhaps even make sense of the vocabulary and grammar and logic, but no one grasps the realities unless the Spirit moves. “Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God” (1 Corinthians 2:12). We will never fully comprehend all God has done for us in Christ, but what we do understand now, we understand because of what God has done for us in the Holy Spirit.

“Humans die in a thousand different ways, but sin dies in just one: by the Spirit.”

We look for rejected temptations and conquered sins. “If you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live” (Romans 8:13). Humans die in a thousand different ways, but sin dies in just one: by the Spirit. We may miss the power of these deaths because we assume, somewhere deep down, that we could overcome sin on our own — but we can’t and we don’t. If sin dies by our hand, it is only because our hand has become a mighty weapon in the hands of God himself.

We look for God-like love. The Holy Spirit doesn’t only weed out the remaining wickedness in us; he also plants and nurtures a garden of righteousness. The clearest evidence that he dwells in us is not the ugliness he removes, but the beauty he creates. “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Galatians 5:22–23). In other words, he makes us more like Christ. We look for love like his, joy like his, faithfulness like his. “We all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image” — his image — “from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:18).

We look for specific giftings or insights that meet needs in the church. Everyone in whom the Spirit lives has been given abilities for the good of other believers. Paul says of the church, “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good” (1 Corinthians 12:4–7). To each — not just some or many. If the Spirit lives in you, then to you too. So how has God recently met a specific need through you? When he does, he’s reminding you that he lives in you, by his Spirit.

Most of all, though, we look for love for Jesus. “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord,’” Paul says, “except in the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 12:3). Of course, they can say it, but not with their heart — not with their faith, their joy, their hope, their love. Sustained love for Jesus only happens where the Spirit lives. Paul describes the same miracle in 2 Corinthians 4:6: “[God] has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” If we still love what we see when we look at Jesus, we see something only the Spirit could do in us.

“The clearest evidence that the Spirit dwells in us is not the ugliness he removes, but the beauty he creates.”

Do you see continued dependence on God in your life? Do you see any gifting from him, any victory over sin, any Christlike love or peace or joy? Do you still love what you see of Jesus? Then your ordinary isn’t as ordinary as you might think, because the Holy Spirit is alive and at work in you.

Prophecies of Paradise

As Christians, we have — yes, have — the Holy Spirit. “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?” (1 Corinthians 6:19). We have the Holy Spirit now, but what we experience now is only a taste of what’s to come. The Spirit, Paul says, “is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it” (Ephesians 1:14). Guarantee, meaning there’s more.

Whatever good the Spirit does in each of us now is merely an appetizer of what he will do in all of us forever.

Live for the glory of God today, waiting expectantly for the glory that is to come!

Pastor Dale

Notes of Faith April 4, 2022

The mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace.

—Romans 8:6

Holy Spirit, teach me to be Your gentle follower in all situations. ~N. T. Wright

When I was president of a large nonprofit, we had to raise a lot of money. I felt the pressure. I ached under the grind. Along the way, two donors, both with high capacity and good intelligence, saw what was going on and offered help. “Todd,” they said, “do your best, and we’ll make up the rest. We love the work you’re doing, and we will be your backstop.”

Backstop—what a freeing idea! Suddenly I felt safe. It was also inspiring. It made me and the team all the more diligent in our fundraising. Someone had our back.

God backs your act. His backing is a vital source of inner and relational peace. It means you don’t need to have your own back.

The Spirit, as various texts translate the Greek term parakletos, is the Comforter, the Helper, the Comforting Counselor, the Companion, the Advocate. Imagine those names representing God’s activity in your life—comforting, helping, counseling, companioning, and advocating. Receiving the Spirit means we can ditch the anxious energy we use to motivate our work or to protect ourselves. We can put that formerly wasted energy to peaceful use as we love and serve others.

It is through the person and work of the Holy Spirit that God upholds our life.

Thus, an ongoing, honest, and robust conversational relationship with the Spirit is crucial to Christian spirituality. A faith-filled, welcoming interaction with the Spirit is the basis a life of peace and justice. The Holy Spirit is not optional —like a tech, safety, or touring package on a new car.

The Holy Spirit is not owned or defined by a denomination or era of church history. The Spirit cannot be reduced to a religious consumer choice: “I’m really Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran, or Anglican, but I guess I’ll have a bit of the Spirit” —as if the Spirit is a side dish to the main course of denominational affiliation. The Holy Spirit is Almighty God, the third person of the Holy Trinity. The Holy Spirit deserves our love, respect, and obedience, not suspicion and cynicism. Having confidence in the work of the Spirit and taking Him seriously is vital to peace in life and ministry. Seeking the Spirit is what finds the Spirit, not just being open, as if God has something to prove to you —and you might be willing to give Him a break if He acts the way you require Him to.Whether or not we perceive it, we live, by God’s design and purpose, in the age of the Holy Spirit.

Discipleship to Jesus and our church life are meant to have at their center an interactive relationship with the Holy Spirit. Why? I put it this way: “God’s purposes in full-orbed, others-oriented, missional discipleship require a power that matches his intentions. This power comes from the person and work of the Holy Spirit.”1

This is why Jesus said to His first followers,

I am going to send you what My Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.

— Luke 24:49, emphasis mine

This definitive idea is meant to be a reality for Christian life. The power of the Spirit is central to all the good we feel called to do in the world.

The Holy Spirit moves us to be and do in the manner of Jesus. Think of the quality of life that Jesus knew, His inward experience of love, joy, and peace —this is the work the Spirit does in us.

The Holy Spirit presents Jesus to us in our minds and hearts and continues the personal presence and ministry of Jesus within the church. The Holy Spirit gives the church its sense of authorization to work on God’s behalf in the world. Jesus closely connected peace, the sentness of the church, and the power of the Holy Spirit. Among His last words to the disciples were these: ‘Peace be with you! As the Father has sent Me, I am sending you.’ And with that He breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’—John 20:21–22

Being sent is not being abandoned to our own ideas or strength. The peace of the Spirit is a grounding presence in the life and work of the church. The Holy Spirit produces fruit and transformation of character in us (Galatians 5:22–23). The Holy Spirit accompanies us, giving the church its capacity to live into the sending that came from Jesus. The Holy Spirit provides guidance along the way. The Holy Spirit bestows gifts (Romans 12:6-8; 1 Corinthians 12-14; Ephesians 4:11-12) —the abilities we need to work within our calling. This is why Paul encouraged the church to “eagerly desire the greater gifts” and to “follow the way of love and eagerly desire gifts of the Spirit” (1 Corinthians 12:31;1 Corinthians 14:1).

Jesus sought to live, teach, and do His work as He was directed to do so by the Father. This was an expression of relational reliance. The relationship between the Father and the Son is the pattern we are to practice with the Holy Spirit: we seek to live and do our work as directed by the Spirit. Following the promptings of the Holy Spirit does not set aside human thought, vision, or initiative; it means we are always delighted to bring our ideas, insights, and goals to the Spirit, asking Him to give us discernment, to direct our paths, and to inspire our words and actions.

Interaction, cooperation, and friendship are the objectives here, not that we are made into robots who have no minds or feelings of our own. Actually, our work is just a pretext and context for a greater, eternal good—namely, that the character of the Spirit will increasingly become ours effortlessly and comprehensively.

Dallas Willard wrote, “When our deepest attitudes and dispositions are those of Jesus, it is because we have learned to let the Spirit foster His life in us.”2 We can’t participate with Jesus except through the person and work of the Holy Spirit.

If you don’t know where to start in seeking a relationship with the Holy Spirit, let me guide you to Luke 11:9–13:

So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in Heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

This delightful passage casts a vision for confident asking. Don’t just be open; come to the point where you desire and ask for more of the Spirit. I ask every day, usually more than once a day. If you desire, seek, and ask, Jesus said, you will be given—you can count on it. You will notice new God-given abilities. It will be obvious that something different is animating your life. You will have fresh, instinctual love for others.

Many readers have had scary or off-putting experiences in church when it comes to the person and work of the Holy Spirit. I get it—and I empathize. Let me assure you from a lifetime of experience, you do not have to act in disconcerting or confusing ways to be filled with the Spirit. Consider this: what you saw, heard, or experienced was not the Holy Spirit per se, but the Holy Spirit within a value system, a vibe, or an ethos. But you can be free from those parameters.You can devise and live within your own value system. That is what I have done. In my best estimate, the ministry of the Holy Spirit in and through us should be expressed by:

Love. When we love, we are willing the good of others, not bringing attention to ourselves.

Altruistic edification. When the Spirit is at work in our lives, we will have a selfless concern for the well-being of others, seek the good of others, and never expect anything in return.

The Golden Rule. When in doubt, we must never fail to do the good to others we would want done to us, and never engage in any harm to others that we would not want done to us.

No overacting. The Holy Spirit will not change our tone of voice, posture, body language, or facial expressions. We just need to be ourselves. Creating hype is not helpful. What help or power could Almighty God need?

No manipulation. In a community of people who are seeking to engage with the gifts of the Spirit, it is crucial that every “word from the Lord” (wisdom, knowledge, prophecy, discerning of spirits, and the like) leaves the hearers in charge of their lives before God. If I say to someone, “I’ve been praying for you, and I think the Lord is saying “such and such,” the receiver of the word must be in charge of discerning it's legitimacy, its interpretation, and its application to their life. Gifts should never become tools for controlling others. Nor should we ever manipulate people by exaggerating claims or making false claims about one’s spiritual prowess. In the life of the Spirit, we want to act with equal measures of confident faith and humility, creating and respecting space for those we interact with.

A sense of being naturally supernatural. This was a favorite practice of John Wimber, founder of Vineyard Churches. The idea is that we want as much of the Spirit as He wants to give —the supernatural. But we want to engage with Him in a way that includes the humanity of both the giver and the recipient of a gift. No putting on appearances, no striving to make an impression. Rather, we want to exercise the gifts in a spirit of humility similar to that of a postal worker or delivery person: “I am not the package and I am not the giver; I am just a conduit for the person and work of the Spirit.”

Normal life and duty. Not everything in life and ministry has to be exciting and provide emotional stimulation. Often this is a fleshly energy we can become addicted to. The animation of the Spirit has a very different feel —a sense of peace, groundedness, quiet confidence, and stability.

Don’t fear the Spirit; rather, welcome the Spirit. Receive the Spirit as you would a treasured guest.

Begin with a simple prayer:

“Come, Holy Spirit; I welcome You to work in me and flow through me."

1.From my article “Missional Leadership for the Ordinary Pastor: Three Simple Steps,” Anglican Compass, February 19, 2020, https://anglicancompass.com/missional-leadership-for-the-ordinary-pastor-3-simple-steps

2.Dallas Willard, The Great Omission: Reclaiming Jesus’s Essential Teachings on Discipleship (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2006), 28.

Excerpted from Deep Peace by Todd Hunter, copyright Todd D. Hunter.

Let's stop and pray for a moment asking the Holy Spirit to help us be relationally reliant upon Him. The anxiety we feel everyday wasting our energy trying to protect ourselves while getting ahead will fade away knowing He has our backs!

Pastor Dale