Tag Archives: holy spirit

The cross of Christ in Füssen

The Word Made Flesh

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(A three minute read)

The Holy Spirit shook me awake one night to teach me about something in the fourth chapter of Proverbs. It reads:

20 My son, attend to my words; incline your ear to my sayings. 21 Do not let them depart from your eyes; keep them in the midst of your heart; 22 for they are life to those who find them, and health to all their body.

Here’s what He said about it: God’s word is powerful and sovereign. His word was powerful enough to create the heavens and the earth and everything in them, including you and me. He didn’t form the universe with His hands, but with His words.1

His word is authoritative and always accomplishes what He declares it will do.2

What He says, goes. One might say that God always gets the final word.3

That all-powerful and creative Word of God was made flesh in Jesus Christ.4 The Word was made flesh in Jesus, and by God’s Holy Spirit, the Word is also made flesh in us.5 What God the Father spoke, His Word, came alive in Christ and walked the earth to save you and me from our folly.6

When a Christian claims (and appropriately uses) the spiritual authority God gave us, what we see is the action of someone who is steeped in the Word, steeped in Jesus.

When she prays or teaches or makes a declaration and quotes Scripture it’s clear she knows the Word. She knows Jesus.

You’ll know that the Word is written on her heart. You’ll know that it directs and guides what she knows, says and believes. It means that an intimate relationship with Jesus is present, directing and guiding everything she knows, says and believes.

Jesus is the Word. The more we know the Word and live the Word, the more we personify Jesus and live His life through our own. This is the good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

1. Genesis 1:3, 6, 9, 11, 14, 20, 24, 26
2. Isaiah 55:11
3. Revelation 22:13
4. John 1:14
5. John 14:15
6: Mark 10:45

Silver Falls, Coos County Oregon

Never The Same River

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(A three minute read)

Sometimes when I seek God, I don’t get what I expect. Sometimes the Holy Spirit, who coaches me until I am ready to compete. Sometimes the Father, who overpowers me with His love and dominion. Sometimes Jesus appears, to teach – you guessed it – a word.

Sometimes when I seek God, He doesn’t come at all, in any of His persona. He leaves me alone. But this isn’t a lottery. I get what I need, and He knows what I need before I need it.

To use the cliché, His shaping and moulding makes me a vessel that can receive more of Him over time. Just as the potter’s lump of clay initially holds nothing, the artist’s hands slowly, patiently, draw it into the shape of a primitive cup.

Then, with more revolutions and more, the cup changes in size. It’s walls narrow and it grows taller. There’s no more material now than in the original lump, but it is given an inside and an outside. It has boundaries.

God shapes these boundaries in us, and as our insides grow larger, we can contain more of Him. In eternity, I’m a vessel that can receive all of Him. Here in the world, I have time and space limitations, but He has these grow, steadily, patiently.

In eternity, I’m a learner with the patience and obedience to sit at His feet. I learn. I worship. I grow. I change shape. I am filled. In the world, I’m a learner who can be impatient and disobedient, not necessarily from wilfulness, but from the very loud and real distractions presented by this life.

And so I go in circles on the potter’s wheel. No, it’s a carousel, and I reach for the brass ring that is Christ.

It’s His music playing as I go round and round. It’s His pony I am riding, and even though I move in a circle, I never quite come back to the same place. Like the water that is ‘never the same river flowing under the bridge’ the stream of my life is constantly moving, changing and growing.

From my belly will flow rivers of this living water. Christ promised it. I’m just a rock face. It’s the Lord Himself that tumbles out of me to water the plains below.