To Full to be Full

Last night at Starbucks, just kind of rehearsing our lives with one another, I shared a story with a group of folks that I thought might be relevant with where we are going on Saturday Night.

When I entered into the military I had an identity crisis. In college I was a "known" person. I was known for my personality and for my accomplishments. When I entered into the military that was shattered. I was thrust into a group of people; no one knew anything of who I was or what I had done. And guess what, no one cared. I was just a lowly newbie...just like everyone else. Well, to be honest that didn't set well with my overinflated sense of self-importance.
So, in my first house (OK-this is really embarrasing), I had an office in which I placed on the wall every award and accolade that I had from college. Every time I walked in my office I was able to remind myself, "You're good enough, you're smart enough and doggoneit people like you." I told you this was embarrassing. My life was filled with pride and self-importance.

Can I just tell you, there is no room for the Holy Spirit in a life filled with all that self-centeredness? Eventually I realized that the stuff had to come off the wall. I had to empty my walls and my life of my own insecurity. Now that stuff is packed up in a box underneath our house in a cubby hole. Only a life emptied of self can be filled with the Holy Spirit.

To live a Spirit-filled, Spirit empowered life begins as we divest ourselves of our pride, ambition, self-loathing, bitterness, pain, and all other forms of "self-worship." God cannot breathe the Spirit into us if our spiritual lungs are already full. So going into this weekend I ask you...

What's still hanging on your walls?

Our Scriptures from Saturday Night

Like I promised, I am going to give you the various scriptures that I used to talk about the Evidence of God's Breath. I invite you to read them and think about the context in which they are found.
Genesis 1: From Order to Chaos
Exodus 14: A Way where there was no Way
Isaiah 61: Good News Proclaimed to the Poor and Broken
Ezra 1: God using the Unusable
Acts 1: Power for Faithfulness
Acts 4/5: Power for Boldness
Acts 10: Spirit of Reconciliation
Galatians: Freedom and Fruit
Romans 8: Life from Death

This is just a taste of the evidence of God's Spirit moving in this world. Read the Scriptures and look into the realities in which we live and look for other evidence.

Surveying the Path

Over the last few weeks, the news has shown images of the devastation left by the Tornado in Murfreesboro. It is an awesome reminder of the power of nature. When winds blow at the force of an F-4 tornado (upwards of 170mph)it isn't difficult to see where those winds have been. There is sufficient evidence, reminders of the path of power and in this case tragic destruction.
Reading through the Psalms, it is the metaphoric language of these poets that also grab hold of my attention. The Psalmists will say, "The mountains melt like wax before the Lord." "The Lord does whatever pleases him, in the heavens and on the earth, in the seas and all their depths. He makes clouds rise from the ends of the earth; he sends lightening with the rain and brings out the wind from the storehouses." Such powerful imagery, one that announces, "When God shows up...you can't help but notice."
I believe that! I believe that when God shows up we must take notice. When God breathes...when the breath of His Spirit is sent into this world, it becomes obvious. It becomes our task as Christians to survey the path of God's breath and to name it for the world. When life emerges from brokenness and despair, we say, "God has been through here." When marriages are healed from deceit and broken trust, we announce, "Look at the path of God's breath." When the hungry are fed, when justice is maintained, when peace flows like a river, we declare, "Look what the breath of God has accomplished in this place." Unlike the path left by the tornado, a path of destruction and sorrow. The Path of God's breath is one of life and celebration.

No Monopoly

I have been giving much thought to the nature of how God's Spirit is at work in our lives. One of the issues that keeps presenting itself to my heart and mind is that we must be careful never to suggest that perhaps we have a monopoly on the Holy Spirit (by us--I mean individually or as a church). We don't possess the Spirit, the Spirit of God takes hold of us. We don't own it...we are gifted by it, as God continues to breathe faithfully into our lives.
But remember...God is free. God is free to send forth God's Spirit in whatever way God desires. The challenge as Christians is to be open to the possibility that God is breathing into lives and situations that we thought were once "godless." We pray for eyes to see the faithful movement of God's breath in this world. It is a breath that isn't contained in the church, but brings life to the church. We are to pray for the sensitivity to God's movement, that the breath of God's Spirit would carry us forth into those places and to those people that God is moving towards. To live by the Spirit is to surrender to the Spirit's freedom to be for the world as "gift" just as the Spirit is to the church as "gift."
Oh yeah...and to be thankful that God is free to breathe whereever and however God chooses to breathe.

God Breathes...

This Saturday Night we begin a new Sermon Series called God Still Breathes. If we trace throughout the Old Testament, we find that the word for wind, breath, and Spirit are the same. In Hebrew the word is ruah. It is the breath of God over the earth that brings order in Genesis 1. It is the breath of God over the earth that causes the waters to recede in Genesis 8. It is the breath of God into the dry bones in the valley that brought life from death in Ezekiel 37. But it is the same word that is spoken when God sends his Spirit upon the prophets, upon Moses and David. This word literally has the connotation of bringing vitality, of moving, of sustaining life.

Now fast forward into the New Testament. Jesus says that unless someone is born of water and Spirit, they will not have life. As a thorough-going Jewish Rabbi, Jesus would have had in mind the word ruah. It is the breath/Spirit that proceeds from God, that traverses the earth bringing order from chaos and invades the life of humanity, bringing life from death. It is the gift of God to creation that makes possible God's intention for life as we should know it. Jesus promises throughout the Gospels that there would come a time when the Spirit would come upon those that follow Him. In Acts chapter 2 we see that promised fulfilled as the breath blows and the followers of Jesus are filled with God's Spirit. It is as they are caught up by God's Spirit...moved by God's breath that amazing things begin to take place.

Over the course of the next 6 weeks we will talk about how God is still breathing. His Spirit is as available to us today as it was in the time of the Early Disciples. We will discuss how this faithful breathing God draws us closer to God and sends us into the world. We will learn to be able to recognize that movement of God as he breathes faithfully into places that we might have otherwise missed. We will gather to celebrate, as we move toward Pentecost, the awesome gift of God's Spirit to both the church and in the world.

A Prayer for our Season to Pentecost

O Lord, who else or what else can I desire but you? You are my Lord, Lord of my heart, mind, and soul. You know me through and through. In and through you everything that is finds its origin and its goal. You embrace all that exists and care for it with divine love and compassion. Why then, do I keep expecting happiness and satisfaction outside of you? Why do I keep relating to you as one of my many relationships, instead of my only relationship, in which all others ones are grounded? Why do I keep looking for popularity, respect from others, success, acclaim, and sensual pleasures? Why, Lord, is it so hard for me to make you the only one? Why do I keep hesitating to surrender myself totally to you?
Help me, O Lord, to let my old self die, to let die the thousand big and small ways in which I am still building up my false self and trying to cling to my false desires. Let me be reborn in you and see through you the world in the right way, so that all my actions, words, and thought can become a hymn of praise to you.
I need your loving grace to travel this hard road that leads to death of my old self and to a new life in and for you. I know and trust that this is the road to freedom.
Lord, dispel my mistrust and help me become a trusting friend. Amen.
--From A Cry for Mercy by Henri J. M. Nouwen