Interpreting the Spirit

Celeste is in surgery right now, and I'm passing the time in a waiting room. (Wi Fi -- yay!) She's having what I believe would be called an elective procedure, although it is very necessary. It is also pretty routine, or so I'm told. But it's not routine for us, of course. I should get to take her home today, and she'll be fine I'm sure. Still, prayers for her and her quick recovery are appreciated. (Let me know if you are unclear on the details; it's not a secret, but not necessarily something I'll bother to post on the internet.)

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I'm still picking my way through Acts, and I am struck (not for the first time) about the way that the Spirit seems to speak so much to the people. But I think I'm more struck by the fact that the people seem to sometimes misinterpret what the Spirit is saying, even in critical ways.

I'm looking specifically at the way the Spirit spoke to Paul and to other believers about Paul's return to Jerusalem in Acts 21. Clearly, Paul is led to return to Jerusalem, knowing that he must somehow later go to Rome. And meanwhile, the Spirit is speaking to other believers about Paul's journey.

Apparently the other believers are hearing -- correctly -- that Paul's trip to Jerusalem will not be fun for Paul. However, they interpret that message to mean that Paul should not go to Jerusalem.

That is a major misinterpretation! And not by just one person, but seemingly by many people. Apparently a group of believers in Tyre, and subsequently Agabus and others in Caesarea urged Paul not to go.

I think what surprises me most is that the Scripture seems pretty clear that the Spirit was speaking to the other believers, and some/many/perhaps all of them hear the Spirit perfectly well ... but miss the point. Fortunately, Paul gets the point, and he is not talked out of his own interpretation. He is obedient to his calling.

But I find myself wondering about all of this. After all, God can be crystal clear when He wants to be; His arm is not too short, and I do not believe His voice is too timid. So why not communicate in a clearer way, so that Paul receives confirmation from the body rather than a conflicting interpretation of the Spirit?

I'm not suggesting that we should ignore the body, become free agents, or anything like that. I'm just wondering how often the body, en masse, gets it ... wrong.

May God have mercy on us. May we hear His Spirit, and correctly understand what we're called to do.

And may we be merciful as we encounter others, whose interpretation of the Spirit is not the same as ours.

Luke 4:24-30

Finished Luke, and jumped right into Acts. In chapter 4, there is a prayer said by Peter and John -- or possibly by one or more others among the believers.

"Sovereign Lord," they said, "you made the heaven and the earth and the sea, and everything in them. 25You spoke by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of your servant, our father David:
" 'Why do the nations rage
and the peoples plot in vain?
26The kings of the earth take their stand
and the rulers gather together
against the Lord and against his Anointed One.'
27Indeed Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. 28They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen. 29Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness. 30Stretch out your hand to heal and perform miraculous signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus."

Reading this prayer, several thoughts came to mind:

• I love that they prayed scripture back to God (v25 and 26). I expect to take a Saturday in the next couple of weeks and go to a park and really try to spend some quality time with God, and I must confess that I've wondered what the heck I'll talk about if I spend more than 20 or 30 minutes in prayer. I'll file this thought away for that day.
• Fascinating to think that (as in v28) its possible for us to do so terrible a thing as torture and kill Christ, only to find that God's power and will had decided this should happen. This certainly doesn't mean that any bad thing we do must have been God's will, but it could mean that some of the challenges we face were probably in the works for us, and just like Jesus, our role is to face these challenges as God leads us.
• Do you notice that the requests made of God come at the end, and even then the first request of God is that he would empower the believers to take action? I mean, my first thought on reading that part of the text was to pray the very last part, that God would stretch out his hand to heal and perform miraculous signs ... but they only asked for that after they asked for empowerment from God to speak his word themselves.
• And how would they know his word? From the teaching, from time spent reading his word, and from prayer. Which brings me back to the first bullet above. I need to step up in these areas.

Just thought I'd share today's study time with whoever might be listening.

B

Buckle Up

I'm very excited to see what God has in store for Southlake this summer. Having just hired a preacher after a 2 year search, the elders and staff are coordinating a major undertaking for the summer. Sunday mornings will have a very different feel in several ways, and the small groups will be strongly encouraged to get out of the building and find a way to serve the community. There is a feeling of momentum like I haven't felt in a long time, and an eagerness about what will happen next.

One of the changes in Sunday mornings this summer will be an intentional move to make time for testimonies from the body, on a regular basis, about what God is doing. My understanding is that they will intentionally look for things God is doing now, and not a year ago, or 3 years, etc. In other words, the desire is not to dwell on what God used to do, or what he did, but on what he is doing ... right now.

One of the ways I think I see God moving -- and where I hope to have some testimonies of God's hand at work -- is with the band at Southlake. We may have an opportunity to lead a worship gathering at a prison this summer -- how cool is that? What's more, we've talked for several years about recording a few songs on CD, to give away to visitors, etc -- and there is real movement afoot now to make that happen. (Does talking about it out loud have the potential to jinx it? I hope not. :-)

Seriously, I think there is probably a reason why we have not recorded anything before now -- I think the timing is God's.

Don't believe me? Get this: I taught myself to play bass literally 4 months before the band played together the first time -- and without knowing that there would be a need for me to play. Nino was new to the guitar when he came. Kyle Conway had to have Nino teach him the songs (and some of the chords!) the NIGHT BEFORE the band played together the first time. And yet we've gotten positive feedback (praise God!) pretty much every time we've played together. God's hand was all over the timing in these things -- we were ready, just when he needed us to be. Just in time.

Want another example? Stephen Lemmons was our primary (read, 'only') keyboard player for quite some time. (He's amazing -- totally self-taught, if I'm not mistaken.) But one day he was asked to be a shepherd at SBC, and there's really no way he could have continued to be our one-and-only, or even our primary keys guy, and shepherd at the same time. Well -- wouldn't you know it? -- a few weeks earlier, Mikey Cunningham had shown up for the first time at SBC. (If you don't know Mikey, he's our primary keys guy for the past year or something; I think he was born playing piano, and he picked up a stack of other instruments along the way.) God brought Mikey (and his wife Janet, too!), just in time.

So what's coming? I don't know. If you know me, you know I've felt like I'm waiting for something to happen for some time now. I don't know what that is, or what it means. It might just be something I ate. (No, seriously. I should really eat healthier.) But maybe, just maybe, God has some exciting things in store.

And with the momentum seeming to pick up at Southlake ... I'm buckling up.

How is YOUR day going?

When was the last time you really snapped at someone who you perceived was doing a poor job? There's nothing quite like the 'righteous anger' we feel, when we don't believe people are doing all they can, or when they don't seem to be carrying their weight.

As part of a project at work, I had helped send information to an individual in security who was to review the information and (hopefully) send back a formal approval. We were told that in a few weeks we should get the response back. But two months passed without much response, other than that the security folks were simply overwhelmed with work.

Over the water cooler (so to speak), I spoke with people around the office about how ridiculous this was. I didn't necessarily believe that the security person was doing a poor job -- I know they are severely understaffed -- but even so, it was frustrating to have to wait so long for something that should really only take a few days worth of effort.

So today I noticed that the security person was online in our instant messenger system. I dropped her an IM, asking if she had received my email of a couple weeks ago, and asking whether she could give me an idea as to how much longer it would take.

Her response: 'I have a son at Virginia Tech ... I was out all last week'

I read her response, and all the blood drained from my face.

Over the next few minutes, I asked a few questions, and she told me (still via IM) how her son is a civil engineering major, and that she was unable to reach her son that day, and she went to Blacksburg to search for him. She said those were some of the worst hours of her life. (Honestly, I cannot even imagine.) They finally found him, safe, but he was acquainted with some of those who were killed, and he was originally scheduled to be in one of the classes that sustained so many fatalities, but had to change his schedule due to a missing prerequisite.

Do I have to tell you how quickly my little annoyance about the security review disappeared? I mean, I still hope that gets wrapped up soon, but sometimes I have to be reminded that the world doesn't revolve around me.

So the next time you are get poor service somewhere, or a rude response from someone, consider for a moment that maybe that person is having a worse day -- or week, or month -- than you.

May God be with the Virginia Tech students and their families.

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On a side note, what an amazing weekend I just had. The men's retreat was excellent -- if you haven't heard Patrick Mead speak, then you're missing out. And Michael Bridges led a couple of great worship times. Both Mead and Bridges have a way of adding humor to time with God -- I suspect that God laughed with us all weekend long!

And to have finally hired a preacher at Southlake, how cool is that? I have a sense that we are ready to see what God has in store next for Southlake.

And I have to mention the group of us who went to see FC Dallas play the Colorado Rapids on Sunday afternoon. Great fun.

In such a dark world, these have been very, very good days.

Planting Trees

Read this from Luke 17:7-10 ...

7"Suppose one of you had a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Would he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, 'Come along now and sit down to eat'? 8Would he not rather say, 'Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink'? 9Would he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? 10So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, 'We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.' "

This is an unusual passage, is it not? I mean, I'm so very accustomed to hearing about how God has called me 'friend' -- and He has certainly done that. So in reading this today I found myself thinking how opposite this is from much of what we hear today. It is as if this text were implying that we aren't God's friends after all, that we are mere servents, and we'll do what we're told.

But that's an oversimplification of this text, I think, and interpreting it this way does not seem to line up with other parts of scripture.

So I looked at it again, and looked at the context a little closer. Check out the previous two verses (Luke 17: 5-6):

5The apostles said to the Lord, "Increase our faith!" 6He replied, "If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and planted in the sea,' and it will obey you.

Jesus has just told His followers that they don't need much faith in order to do fairly amazing things. It is in the follow-up to this comment, then, that He points out that we shouldn't get a big head about using God's power. We have to be aware of the position we're in. Specifically, that God calls us to obey him, to serve him.

Of course, along the way He may call us to do some amazing things; to command a few trees to move, as it were. However, we shouldn't get confused into thinking we could ever serve him enough that He would somehow owe us a favor, or that He would let us use this amazing faith power to do things that serve ourselves, or that bring glory to ourselves.

See, God has called us friends, and He has blessed and served us in amazing ways, most notably through Jesus. But Jesus isn't speaking here of God's relationship to us. He's speaking of our relationship to God. No matter how good, how righteous we live our lives, we cannot be good enough to earn anything from God. In the end, we are unworthy servants. And if we've been obedient to God, it is because there is no other way to respond to what He has done for us.

Perhaps that's why we don't see even our most faithful brothers and sisters throwing out their gardening gloves, shovels, etc, relying instead on verbal commands to their garden plants as to where to be and grow. Jesus wasn't suggesting that God was going to give us a magic wand to serve ourselves. He was simply saying that it takes very little faith to do amazing things -- but the amazing things will be God's things, not ours, at His discretion, in His timing.

But I must confess, when I was planting a little tree in my back yard this past week, I'd sure like to have been able to just tell the tree to get in the ground.

Ready Freddie

Later the Master selected seventy and sent them ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he intended to go. He gave them this charge: “What a huge harvest! And how few the harvest hands. So on your knees; ask the God of the Harvest to send harvest hands.” -- Luke 10:1-2

Something struck me odd about these two verses.

Jesus had his pick of some number of people – for the sake of argument, let’s say he had 150 too choose from. But he only chose 70. And then he says to the 70, ‘I wish there were more of you!’

But … if he wanted more than 70, why not just choose more people? I mean, why not pick 120 people to send? Or just send all the people he had to ‘select’ from, instead of selecting some of them and leaving the rest out?

I think the reason is probably very simple. He chose all the ones who were ready.

Ready to take on the assignment. Ready to be obedient, whether we feel like it or not. By ‘ready’ I do not mean ‘perfect’ – no one is perfect except Christ. But while we won’t be perfect until we’re made perfect in heaven, I do believe there are stages to our development, and I believe that God will typically assign tasks to us based on our readiness and ability to complete the tasks.

Paul might have used a different word than ‘ready’; I think he might have said ‘worthy’. In 2 Thessalonians, Paul is writing to believers, and at one point (2 Thessalonians 1:11) Paul actually prays that the believers would be ‘worthy’ of God’s calling, and that they would accomplish every act that is prompted by their faith. I think Paul was praying that they would be ready – actively practicing obedience in order to be in the groove when they are prompted by their faith to particular actions.

You know. Ready.

So. Are you ready?

Consequences and Community

I'm reading Deutoronomy. I actually started in Matthew, but I got to Jesus being tempted in the desert, and something occurred to me. The devil is throwing these temptations at Jesus, and he responds all three times with passages from Deutoronomy. I had never noticed that before. I mean, I would have thought he'd whip out a Psalm or Proverb, but no. Deutoronomy.

The thing is, I've never read Deutoronomy. I'm not totally sure I knew how to spell it before I cracked it open. So crack I did.

At this point I'm near the end -- I just finished chapter 31, out of 34 chapters. I'll be honest, its pretty dry, and kind of frustrating. For example, if your kid is rebellious, stone him to death? That's a smidge past spanking, you know? Hard to reconcile that with the loving Christ in the New Testament. And yet, clearly Christ was fully behind Deutoronomy.

As I'm nearing the end, though, there are a couple of strong themes I'm finding. One of them is that there are consequences for our actions. Much of the book gives specific laws, and even punishments for lawbreakers. But you get to chapters 28 - 30, and Mo basically takes it all a step further. If the folks obey the law, there will be blessings. If they disobey, curses. Consequences.

Another theme I'm seeing is about community. There are various occasions when we are told to love God with our heart, soul, mind, and strength. And we also see God promising to be with us.

What's really fascinating to me is that Mo explains more than once that God knows the Israelites are going to screw it all up. God already knew! And yet, he went through with his promises, gave all the great gifts, etc -- and outlined how he would punish the folks when (not if, but when) they screw up their part. Consequences. But in that vein, he also promises that when they turn back to him, he'll bring them home. Consequences, but also community.

So I find myself looking at my life and considering the consequences, good and bad, of my decisions. And I'm also looking at the community I have with Jesus, considering how to stop stiff-arming him in certain areas of my life.

I'm glad he already knows what I'll do. That takes some of the pressure off. Not because it gives me any kind of get-out-of-jail-free card, but because he has a plan.

And his plans are GOOD.