Pastor’s Musings

In my last post, I suggested that conversational intimacy – two or more persons disclosing themselves to one another in close proximity – is a significant part of with relationships. Because of this, we often long for it to be a part of our relationship with the Holy Spirit. But to have this kind of intimacy with the Spirit would actually place a limit on our relationship with him. Instead, Jesus tells his disciples that the Spirit will be in them. There is a deeper relationship in view, and the good news is that Christians – by God’s grace at work within them – are already experiencing this relationship. The task remains for us to learn how to recognize the Spirit’s leadership and grow in our relationship with him.

Jesus’s words in John 15 are crucial in understanding the nature of this relationship. “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing” (15:5 NIV). Now the vine and the branches are distinct – a branch can be removed from a vine without diminishing the vine. And yet it would be inappropriate to speak of the life of the branch as somehow different than the life of the vine. Instead, we see that the vitality of the plant flows up from the roots through the vine and comes to expression in the individual branch. This must be something close to the relationship that we have with the Holy Spirit. The Spirit expresses his personal qualities (will, desire, thought, etc.) in us. You might even say – to borrow an expression from Lutheranism – that his personal qualities are expressed “in, with, and under” our personal qualities. He interpenetrates our being in such a way that he thinks through our thoughts, feels through our emotions, and senses things through our intuition. To say this all with a Pauline slant – “Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose” (Philippians 2:12-13). So we must work, and even as we are working God is working in us to bring about his purposes.

We might adapt from C. S. Lewis an analogy from music (he used it to discuss the moral law and our impulses in Mere Christianity). Imagine that all of our personal attributes (will, emotions, habits, and the like) are the keys of a piano. Now think of the Spirit as a master performer. He comes along and engages the right keys in the right tempo to bring about a beautiful peace of music. We are bringing forth the sounds – these are truly our thoughts and emotions and intuitions – and yet they are sounding out because of the personal intentions of the Spirit. He is leading us. If we grieve him with our ongoing sin, then we find that he permits us to try and play the music on our own. We might with great effort ape his performance for a time, but eventually we will begin missing notes and falling out of tune. To ignore the Spirit’s work is to play discordant music. Hence there is a contrast between the acts of the flesh (Galatians 5:19-21) and the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23).

Now it is true that sometimes the thoughts or the intuitions we have will be so startling and so seemingly other than the normal course of our experience that it will feel like the with relationships we know so well. In thinking of my own call to ministry, I remember experiencing in a time of prayer a thought that entered my mind with such force that it seemed audible. I understood this to be the Lord calling me to serve His church. Or we might experience the sudden urge to pray for someone, only to find out later that they were experiencing a significant event at that very time. But more often, I think, we will think and feel and sense things in perfectly ordinary ways. We will be doing some type of inductive Bible study, and grasp hold of the meaning of a passage. We will hear a prayer request spoken out loud and simply pray for the person because we were asked. How do we know this is the work of the Spirit? Because the fruit of our lives will be love, joy, peace, and the other things identified in Scripture as the signs of God’s work. Our life will have a sense of integrity and rightness that is deeper than circumstances and passing moods. But if things start to go out of tune, if discord and impatience and strife mark our path, then maybe we need to take the time to personally disclose ourselves again to the Spirit who lives within us. Remember – “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10). So the “full” life which Jesus promises is a sign that our personal qualities are being guided by the Spirit. The loss and devastation of life (which is different, in this case, than external suffering) is a sign that we are not cooperating with the Spirit in his work.

Therefore, be free of the burden of pursuing the elusive with relationship with the Spirit. Instead, work out your salvation (which you did not or could not earn) and trust that God is at work within you. Study Scripture. Pray. Do acts of mercy. Worship with God’s covenant people. The Spirit is leading you in these things, and he will continue to do so. As we consider the matter of being led by the Spirit, there are at least two more issues that need to be taken up. We will consider them in the next post.

What does it look like and feel like to be led by the Holy Spirit? If we believe Paul’s writings, then we find that this question is crucial to living the Christian life. He writes in Romans 8:14, “For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God” (NIV). Moreover, we find these words in Galatians 5:25, “Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.” So how do we experience this walking with the Spirit? Are we concious of this leading or does it run in the background of our lives? Does this involve audible voices or sudden eureka moments? Is being led by the Spirit different than other expressions of God’s providence?

If we are going to get a sense of the Spirit’s leading, we must begin by affirming that the Spirit of God is personal. He is a Person of the Trinity, fully possessing the Divine Nature. What is a person? A person, at least in my simple explanation, is a unique center of will, emotions, thoughts, and habits. A personal relationship involves two or more such unique centers disclosing something of these thoughts, emotions, desires, and habits to one another. So to be led by the Spirit means that we are in a personal relationship with the Spirit. We would expect then some type of personal disclosure from the Spirit, reciprocated with our personal disclosure to him.

But our relationship with the Spirit is unlike our relationship with other human persons. In a relationship with another human person, the other person remains outside of us, and we are never able to fully know the other person (as if we could fully know ourselves). Yet Jesus says, “But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you” (John 14:17b). So the Spirit is not merely with us but in us. Though we often think of intimacy with the Spirit as something like the conversational intimacy we have with loved ones, it is clear that this image doesn’t do justice to the nature of this relationship. Conversational intimacy – or even the deep intimacy pictured in Picasso’s Friendship – is ultimately only an expression of a with relationship. But we have an in relationship with the Spirit.

There is power in realizing this simple truth. If you are like me, you have wondered why you do not have the kind of conversational intimacy with God’s Spirit that you have with other friends and family members. You consider your faith deficient, and you probably look for experiences that you think will finally make your relationship with the Spirit evident. Is there a prayer practice, a charismatic service, a practical manual, or something else that can finally satisfy your longing and assuage your guilt? Be relieved of this burden. The truth is that a relationship with the Spirit is too intimate and too unique to be contained within conversational, with relationships. We may think that we desire this, but God is already working within us in deeper ways. We need to have our vision enlarged to see the work he is already doing. Next time we will explore what it looks like to be led by one who lives in us.

It is an exciting time in our congregation. There are signs of God’s work among us, bringing new growth and excitement in their wake. This leads us to ask an important question. What does church growth look like?

During last year’s study of the book of Acts, we explored several verses in Acts which point us to a model for church growth. We discovered together that there are three necessary ingredients to growth.

1. Ministry growth – This is growth in our community impact. Who are we reaching? What do people think of when they think of our congregation? What would be lost if we closed our doors tomorrow?
2. Maturity growth – This is growth in our knowledge of the faith and in our faithfulness to the Lord. How is Scripture challenging us and shaping us? Where is the Spirit producing his fruit? How are we learning from our tradition and doctrine?
3. Membership growth – This is growth in the numerical size of our fellowship? Are new people coming to worship? Are people exploring the step of membership?

When these three types of growth are taking place, a congregation is in the “sweet spot.” I can’t wait to see what the Lord is going to continue to do in our congregation!

Chain gangs are thankfully a part of our punitive past, but the image endures in the American mind. Chain gangs show up in our music and our movies. The image running through your mind right now is several men in striped uniforms bound together by ankle chains. They are sweltering in the noon day heat as they work their scythes back and forth in a field. It doesn’t seem like this image is very helpful when it comes time to think of church. But I wonder?

In Ephesians 4:3, Paul counsels the Ephesian Christians to “preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (NASB). Likewise in Colossians 3:14, love is called “the perfect bond of unity.” In both cases, the word bond comes from a Greek word which if broken down woodenly would be translated “with chain.” Somehow we don’t think that love and peace are congruous with chains. Yet Paul doesn’t seem to think that bondage is an inappropriate way to picture the unity of the church.

I find something edifying in thinking of church unity in terms of chains wrapping us up and holding us together. First, the idea of a chain helps me to think of the unbreakable strength of God’s covenant love in Jesus Christ. If you are a follower of Jesus, then you are a part of the body of Christ and nothing that you can do can change that. God preserves his true people. And even when we are pushing at the bonds and doing a really bad job of living as the church, it is impossible for us to destroy what Christ has made. Second, the image of a chain gang reminds us that the bonds are there in part because we will try to run. We all long for human community, yet in a fallen world we all are scared of it as well. Thank God that he somehow chains us together so that we cannot get away from him or from one another.

Let us then work together to strengthen these chains that hold us together. They remind us of God’s amazing love. And one day when you or I try to run away, we will need these bonds to keep us in place.

If you want to know more about strengthening this “bond of peace,” join us in worship this Sunday morning.

My father had two older relatives that he would sometimes visit as a child. The husband and wife lived on an old farm in the hills of Kentucky – in a place called Possum Holler. The buildings were old; the farm was small and muddy. The couple did not have electricity or indoor plumbing. They did not have a car, and they did their cooking on a wood stove. Most people assumed that the couple was poor. My dad certainly did. He once asked his father after a visit, “How can people live so poor?” His dad replied, “You must not be very smart. These people are rich.” Now Dad thought that Grandpa meant they were metaphorically rich. But this was a mistake. It turned out that Grandpa meant that they were actually rich – sitting on top of a half million dollars at least in the bank. They had spent their whole lives working – farming and mining – and storing away money while they lived cheaply and provided for themselves. The outward appearance of their farm and the assumptions that it caused others to make were not accurate reflections of the true wealth of these old Kentucky farmers. In a similar manner, it is sometimes easy to make assumptions about the true state and condition of the church. The doomsday prophets of religious decline have been bellowing out verdicts about the church for decades. And, of course, some of the things stated are accurate analyses in the case of established mainline congregations. Biblical and theological knowledge have severely declined. Deaths have outpaced conversions. Congregations have dissolved. It can be at times a rather bleak portrait. But the doomsday prophets – even when they are right – do not tell the whole story. Sometimes the truth about the church is hard to see from the outside. But when one has ears to hear and eyes to see, it is possible to see surprising shimmers of life and vitality even among the wreckage.

At what moments and in what ministries have you felt the life and vitality that flows from Jesus to his people, even as life flows from the vine to the branches? When have you experienced the true wealth of the church?

In one of my favorite scenes from J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Return of the King, Sam awakes from slumber, having escaped from Mordor, only to find Gandalf alive and well at his side. The old wizard asks the hobbit how he feels and Sam marvels that he himself is alive. He then asks the question, “Is everything sad going to come untrue?”

Skipping over to Sally Lloyd-Jones’s incredible The Jesus Story-book Bible, I find another deeply moving scene. Mary Magdalene has just encountered Jesus, risen from the dead. She is running to tell the disciples what he has said, and she thinks to herself, “Was God really making everything sad come untrue?”

The resurrection of Christ is God’s answer to the pain and suffering of this life. Jesus has gone to the deepest depths of suffering and grief. He has gone to the place of ultimate loss. And he has triumphed. And in his triumph, God’s ultimate plan for his creation has been set in motion and guaranteed. Resurrection is now available for us through Jesus, and God is busy applying resurrection to all things – even when the days seemed riddled with darkness and uncertainty. Yes, everything sad is coming untrue. And one day we will be with Jesus forever in a new heavens and a new earth. Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

Join as at First Presbyterian Church as we live through the trials and triumphs of Holy Week.

• Maundy Thursday Service – 4/18 @ 6:30 PM
• Good Friday Service – 4/19 @ 1 PM at the Free Methodist Church of Hillsdale
• Easter Morning Worship – 4/21 @ 10 AM