Sorry it has been a while since I’ve caught you up on life here in
Georgia, I was having some technical difficulties with my computer. :P Anyway,
here's the run down since last time I wrote:
Two weeks ago, our teacher was Mr. Mike Esposito and the topic was
the Holy Spirit. Mike and his wife Terrill are actually on staff here at
YWAM Atlanta. Terrill helps out in the kitchen (She's the one that makes
sure I have allergy friendly food!) And Mike does...other things? He's a busy
guy, he teaches at other DTSs and he and Terrill have a pretty big ministry in
Mexico as well. All that to say, Mike taught us about the Holy Spirit.
Now when last week rolled around, I was excited, because Mike is a pretty
dynamic speaker, and its always interesting to see what people have to say
about the ol' Spirit o' God. I mean, being raised in the church and my
mom being, well my mom, I am thinking that I have just about heard everything
you can hear about this Holy Spirit Guy. I figured I would of course pick
up a few new good tid bits, but for the most part, I felt like I had a pretty
good understanding on the baptism of the Holy Spirit and all that jazz.
WHOO BOY. I was in for a treat! Because the thing is, I was kind of
right, I did know a lot of the information he gave us, Id heard it all before
(with a few exceptions). What Mike did however, was take all of that
information that was scattered and unorganized in my brain, and presented it in
such a way that I was able to clearly understand process it all as a whole.
To borrow from my classical education, it was like moving from Grammar to
Logic. I already knew all the pieces, from there it was just learning how
they all fit together; then going one step further into Rhetoric, learning to
put those concepts and principles into practice.
BUT! I like sharing, so if you don’t really feel like a bible
lesson you should just keep scrolling until I say stop. Ready Go! For those of
you still with me, here are some of the main points and my favorite tidbits I
got from Mike’s teachings:
Secular versus Sacred- it doesn’t exist! You belong to Christ, and that being said,
any ground you walk on is sacred ground.
It is our job to bring Christ into EVERY SINGLE SPHERE OF SOCIETY. We cannot just relegate him to the church on
Sunday. Government/law,
Arts/entertainment, Education, Media, Business, Family—God fits in every single
sphere.
YOU DON’T LEAD PEOPLE TO JESUS.
You share what you know. The Holy
Spirit convicts and works in their life.
HE and he alone gets the credit for leading people to Jesus.
OLD COVENANT VERSUS NEW CONVENANT—Ex. 30:30 is the first
documented time of someone being anointed with oil. This anointing was symbolic of the anointing
of the Holy Spirit, it represented the person being set apart for God’s purpose
and the Holy Spirit coming upon that person and equipping and changing them in
order to accomplish that purpose.
According to the Old Covenant, only a select few received this
anointing, and IT COULD BE REMOVED. Take
for example Saul (First King over Israel), in 1Samuel 11, he receives his
anointing. 4 Chapters later in chapter
15, he disobeys God’s commands, and the Lord REMOVES his spirit, and rejects
him as king. However, in the New
Covenant, we receive the Holy Spirit when we accept the gift of salvation. Let me reiterate, everyone who accepts
salvation through Jesus receives the Holy Spirit, not a select few, everyone. And he’s there to stay; he doesn’t get taken
away from us. Additionally, we also
receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and that’s where
people’s doctrines get muddled. But for
the sake of time, I'm just going to assume that you all believe in said
concept, and if you don’t, well we can argue that in the comments or
something. So that’s all really cool,
but that’s not everything! Do you all
remember the story of Jesus getting baptized by his cousin John the
Baptist? Well if you don’t, the jist is
this. Jesus is like “Hey! I'm here to be
baptized!” And John is like “Whoooaa bro.
I cant do that! You’re the messiah! YOU should be baptizing me!” Jesus kind
of rolls his eyes and is like “Just do it.” So he gets baptized and the spirit
of God comes upon him like a dove, and God speaks from heaven and announces to
everyone “THIS IS MY SON IN WHOM I AM WELL PLEASED.” Also very very cool. And then Jesus goes and starts his
ministry. So, here’s the point I want to
make. Even Jesus had to receive the
anointing of the Holy Spirit before beginning his ministry. He told the disciples not to leave Jerusalem
until they received it. So if both Jesus
and his disciples had to receive the anointing of the Holy Spirit, why
shouldn’t we? God doesn’t need our help,
but we need his. So he commissions us to
go and make disciples of all nations, but he doesn’t send us out all on our
lonesome! God chooses to partner with us and gives us his Spirit.
STOP
Okay, now that we’re all back together, lets move on. To those of you who read through my
theological ramblings, I hope you enjoyed it.
If you skipped through them, I cannot say that I blame you; I probably
would have skipped through it too. My
conclusion to last week is simply this, God’s pretty stinking cool. He doesn’t need our help, and yet he chooses to partner with us, and more than
that, he pursues relationship with us.
Take a moment to really think about that. Think about how massive the earth is, now
consider its place in our solar system.
Now think about the size of the solar system in relation to the Milky
Way, then take it one step further, and think about the fact that the Milky Way
is one galaxy in billions. Can you
comprehend the massiveness of the Universe?
Now think about how small you are in comparison. The God, who painted the night sky, who
created each and every planet, solar system, and galaxy individually and knows
them all by name, wants to partner
with you. You, a tiny little spec on the sneeze of a planet we call home. He is pursuing YOU. And that is why God is so cool! Which brings
me quite well into last week’s topic, which was “The Father Heart of God.” Stay tuned. J
