To gather with friends and family is easy for some but for others of us it is the most difficult calling of holidays.
Reconnecting is pregnant with surprises. While apart from one another we have all been changing.
But our minds and hearts trick us and usually we have frozen each other,
entombing the other in the expectations, beliefs, habits, and patterns of old.
To gather with is to come face to face with conflict and to face our own desperate desire to be understood and cherished.
To gather with is to allow for the possibility of change and the possibility of not that much change.
To gather with in Holy Days is to rely on His love to cast out our fear.
Oh Jesus you came and gathered with us full of truth and grace. Help us gather with.
John 1:14, NIV The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
1 John 4:13-21, NIV 13This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. 14And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. 16And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.
17This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. 18There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.
19We love because he first loved us. 20Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. 21And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.
Whether you are are seated amongst the crowds of the mall, along the banks of a river, or on the couch at a party, taking a moment to listen and sort through the sounds will tune your heart to thoughts pulsating with life and death.
Tuning in is not what busy people do. We tune out.
But tuning in is what loving people do.
Feet on the ground. Hands in my lap. Ears identifying the sounds.
My soul quickens. My mind sorts. Praise. Gratitude. Concern. Lament. Repulsion. A plea for God’s wisdom.
We need wisdom from heaven. So, come Lord Jesus, come. I am listening.
13Who is wise and understanding among you? Let them show it by their good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. 14But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. 15Such “wisdom” does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. 16For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice.
17But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. 18Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness.
Jesus makes it clear that our Heavenly Father knows how to give good gifts. So, He teaches his disciples to pray persistently. He wants us to keep on asking, seeking, and knocking. Then Jesus shows His followers that their Heavenly Father is more extravagant, glorious, and rich in His giving than they can imagine.
“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 re 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!” Luke 11:8-13
Do see how extravagant God is? “How much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
That’s generous! God will give to us the His Spirit who has been present when God is creating: In the beginning. Genesis 1:1-3 In the incarnation of Jesus. Luke 1:35 In the baptism of Jesus. Matthew 3:16 In the extraordinary life and ministry of Jesus. Acts 10:36-38 In the birth of the Church. Acts 2 In the ministry of each local congregation. Ephesians 2:22
Paul urges his readers in Ephesus to be filled with the Spirit. Get filled with the Spirit. Keep on being filled with the Spirit. Paul has in mind the creating work of God. Where there is darkness, chaos, and formlessness in our lives and in the world the Spirit of God is present for a God-shaping struggle. And into this darkness God can speak, “Let there be light.”
Jesus promised that His very life, ministry, death on the cross, and resurrection is to make the in-dwelling gift of the Spirit possible. His words of comfort to the Disciples gathered in the upper room the night before His crucifixion made no sense and they seemed to have felt only confusion and grief. He says to them,
“Rather, you are filled with grief because I have said these things. But very truly I tell you, it is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go I will send Him to you.” John 16:6-7
Later they understood Jesus. The way of the cross, the passion of Jesus, had opened the way of the Spirit for the creation of a new humanity. Peter would say in his exhortations to the people of Jerusalem gathered at Pentecost, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off–for all whom the Lord our God will call.” (Acts 2:38-39)
Having received “the gift” we can ask for this gift to occupy our hearts, mind, soul, and strength over and over. Be filled with the Spirit. Having received Jesus as Lord, having received the forgiveness of the Heavenly Father, having received your adoption as children of God, are you open again, today for the filling of His Spirit?
Are you asking? To be filled with Holy Spirit. Are you seeking? To be filled with the Holy Spirit. Are you knocking? To be filled with the Holy Spirit.
In Scot McKnight’s recent book, Open to the Spirit, he suggests a prayer of openness toward our Heavenly Father:
Lord, I am open to the Holy Spirit. Come to me, dwell in me, speak to me so that I may become more like Christ. Lord, give me the courage to be open. Lord, I am open to the Holy Spirit. Come, Holy Spirit. Amen.
You have been created and born again in Christ Jesus for a dynamic living relationship with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The whole movement and struggle of history is for people to be in this communion with God. So ask, seek, and knock.
If you are not sure that the narrative of Scripture is for our communion with the Father, Son, and Spirit consider this vision and exhortation from the Apostle Paul to the Galatian church:
“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who is hung on a pole.’ He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit.” Galatians 3:13-14
“…we were in slavery under the elemental spiritual forces of the world. But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. Because you are his son, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.” So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir.” Galatians 4:3-7)
This is God’s intention for you: communion with Him, not isolation from Him.
So by humble and sincere faith in the name and promise of Jesus Christ our Lord — ask again, “Fill me with your Holy Spirit.”
“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”
Jesus, Matthew 6:5-6
We have a prayer room. Its a grand experiment in carving out space for students who would like to carve out space in their lives to enter into the communion of God. If you don’t have experience stepping into a prayer room or in carving out space in your own home in order to persistently pursue communion with God, let me encourage you to designate a chair, a corner, and even a room for conversation with God. Entering into the communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the prayer room is not meant to be a communion that you leave. Rather you are to live as a walking prayer room, for in Christ, you are the temple of the Holy Spirit. The prayer room is an admission that we require daily realignment with Jesus and the Father’s heart in order to be fully occupied with Him.
Prayer rooms are places of direct encounter with God. So much of our faith, if we are not very careful, can merely amount to a succession of second-hand spiritual experiences. We listen to talks that tell us what to think. We outsource our prayer requests to others. We even read books like this one that inspire us with other people’s encounters and adventures. But alone in a prayer room we may sometimes encounter God face-to-face without a middleman. Often the Holy Spirit speaks directly to us in ways that no ministry session ever could.
Pete Greig/Dave Roberts , Red Moon Rising: Rediscover the Power of Prayer, p. 166
Those who live loved are learning to listen to Jesus Christ our Lord.
Why is my soul so resistant to the Lord when I come to pray?
Here’s a clue from Henri Nouwen:
The resistance to praying is like the resistance of tightly clenched fists. This image shows the tension, the desire to cling tightly to yourself, a greediness which betrays fear. The story about an old woman brought to a psychiatric center exemplifies this attitude. She was wild, swinging at everything in sight, and scaring everything away from her. But there was one small coin which she gripped in her fist and would not give up. In fact, it took two men to pry open that squeezed hand. It was as though she would lose her very self along with the coin. That was her fear.
The man invited to pray is asked to open his tightly clenched fists and to give up his last coin. But who wants to do that? A first prayer, therefore, is often a painful prayer, because you discover you don’t want to let go. You hold fast to what is familiar, even if you aren’t proud of it. You find yourself saying, “That’s just how it is with me. I would like it to be different, but it can’t be now.” Once you talk like that, you’ve already given up the belief that your life might be otherwise; you’ve already let the hope for a new life float by. Since you wouldn’t dare to put a question mark behind a bit of your own experience with all its attachments, you have wrapped yourself up in the destiny of facts. You feel it is safer to cling to a sorry past than to trust in a new future. So you fill your hands with small clammy coins which you don’t want to surrender.
You still feel jealous of the fellow who is better paid than you are, you still want revenge on someone who doesn’t respect you, you are still disappointed that you’ve received no letter, still angry because she didn’t smile when you walked by. You live through it, you live along with it as though it didn’t really bother you … until the moment that you want to pray. Then everything returns: the bitterness, the hate, the jealousy, the disappointment and the desire for revenge. But these feelings are not just there; you clutch them in your hands as if they were treasures you didn’t want to part with. You sit rummaging in all that old sourness as if you couldn’t do without it, as if in giving it up, you would lose your very self.
