where the true power of the Spirit is seen

David Powlison:

I find myself weary of dramatic hyperbole in descriptions of the ideal Christian life. Extreme! Radical! Passionate! Awesome! Edgy! On fire! Dramatic!

I can understand the emotional appeal of such hyperbole. After all, who wants to live half-baked, mediocre, listless, dull, bland, and boring?! But the opposite of listless is not necessarily all fired up. Our faith contains a wonderfully curious surprise.

For starters, I don’t think many of us are capable of sustaining the adrenaline level. If you did manage to sustain your passion for a week, a year, a decade, it bears pondering whether the wider culture’s obsession with extreme adventure and radically awesome hyperbole might have infiltrated your operating system with a virus. If the passion ebbs, is what really matters lost and gone?

Or does it mean that it’s time to grow up?

Consider the graces that God steadily works to produce in us. They are certainly different from what we naturally gravitate to. In that sense, his purposes are Extreme! Radical! On fire! Exceedingly beyond all you can ask or even imagine! Glory, glory, hallelujah!

But then again, the Holy Spirit seems on fire to produce a life afire with rather unfiery things. His view of what is significant cuts Awesome! down to size (while being the farthest thing from dull). He is forming in you things that are good for the long haul. Good for times when your feelings are marked with pain or loneliness. Good for days or months or years of perplexity and struggle. Good for the small deaths of old age and then for dying. Good for helping others going through the same troubles...We long for dramatic action...But right now we need the good graces to carry us through all that happens until the Day when dramatic finally happens once and for all.

Consider a baker’s dozen of graces that are set on fire with the odd fire of God’s purposes. Ponder each one for a moment.

Mercy
Patience
Gratitude
Goodness
Commitment
Constructive candour
Bearing one another’s burdens
Sense of need and weakness
Reliance on another
Peacemaking
Endurance
Humility
Love

Not one of these sets off conspicuous fireworks. But these are worth more than anything else you could ever desire. Jesus lived this baker’s dozen of good graces. He is making you into this image.

Read the rest here.

what I'm reading: the Spirit, Jesus' limelight

If I had to sum up what I believe about the Holy Spirit (apart from the fact that he's a member of the Trinity, and works in our hearts to bring us to Jesus) it would go like this:

• the Spirit works in our lives through the Bible, the word of God - when we hear it, when he brings it to mind, when we speak it to others


• the Spirit's role is to point away from himself and to point to Jesus, to bring glory to the Father and the Son

It's the second point that Piper explores in this quote, which I came across while reading Nancy Guthrie's Come Thou Long Expected Jesus in the lead-up to Christmas:

When Jesus promised the Spirit (in John 16:14) he said, "He will glorify me"...The Spirit is shy; he is self-effacing. When we look toward him, he steps back and pushes forward Jesus Christ...

If we look away from Jesus and seek the Spirit and his power directly, we will end up in the mire of our own subjective emotions...Many of use know what it is to crouch on the floor and cry out to the Holy Spirit for joy and power, and experience nothing; but the next day devote ourselves to earnest meditation on the glory of Jesus Christ and be filled with the Spirit...

Christian spiritual experience is not a vague religious emotion. It is an emotion with objective content, and the content is Jesus Christ. The shy member of the Trinity does mighty work, but he never puts himself in the limelight. You might say he is the limelight that puts the attributes of God the Father and the person of Christ into sharp relief.

From John Piper "Conceived by the Holy Spirit" in Nancy Guthrie's Come Thou Long Expected Jesus pages 29-30.

image is by at flickr

how we change (11) strategies that support change

Remember that long-lost series on change? No, I haven't forgotten it! We were working through Tim Chester's You Can Change. Now we come to chapter 8: strategies that reinforce faith and repentance (and yes, I'll try to finish the series by the end of the year if you want to read along!).

A few years ago, I planted a lemon tree. By now, it should have produced its first fruit. But it's a stunted, sad excuse for a tree. It's rarely watered and never fed, and it's shoulder-deep in weeds.

The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. (Gal 6:8)

Change is like my tree. It grows in the soil of the Spirit-changed heart, from the roots of faith and repentance. But it only thrives when you water it and pluck the weeds. Temptation and harmful influences are two weeds that stunt change; God's word, prayer, Christian community, service, and (surprisingly) suffering, all feed change and help it grow.

Tim Chester says,

Not sowing to sin = saying "no" to whatever strengthens my sinful desires = reinforcing repentance.

Sowing to the Spirit = saying "yes" to whatever strengthens my Spirit-inspired desires = reinforcing faith.

But wait a minute. Isn't change about grace, not rules? To grow, do we have to forbid pubs, parties, and popular movies? Do we have to practice certain disciplines: 30 minutes' prayer and Bible reading every day? Of course not! Dos and don'ts can't change our hearts. So how do these things fit into change?

Sowing to the Spirit (watering change).

The longer I'm a Christian, the more I realise that things like prayer and Bible reading aren't a matter of rules, but a natural response to God's grace. It's hard to imagine a relationship with God that doesn't include listening to his voice (the Bible), seeking his help (prayer), encouraging his people (Christian community), and reaching out to others (service and evangelism).

I think of these things not as "spiritual disciplines" (as if there's a set of disciplines I do to gain God's blessing) but as outworkings of faith that grow my faith. Yes, doing them requires discipline; but I don't do them to get close to God, or to get God's grace - I have these already! I do them because I love Jesus, and long to grow deeper into his grace.

Not sowing to the sinful nature (weeding change).

It's the same with things that provoke or strengthen sinful desires. What matters is not whether a certain practice is "forbidden", but the impact it has on me. I'd be crazy to do anything that jeopardises my growth. If a book fills my mind with impure images, why read it? If a certain place leads me into sin, why go there? Am I trying to be wiser than Jesus, who said to cut temptation out of my life? (Matt 5:29-30 cf 1 Tim 6:11; 2 Tim 2:22)

As Chester says, we'll want to be aware of two things: places, people or things that provoke sinful desires by exposing us to temptation, perhaps because they appeal to our particular weaknesses; and places, people or things that strengthen sinful desires by influencing us, perhaps by subtly shaping how we think.

Some practical steps to take.

How do I make these guidelines personal? Here are two suggestions. (When I'm struggling, I do this as well as the kind of heart-work we've already talked about).

1. Take a close look at when you're tempted. What mood are you in? Where are you? What are you doing? What have you been viewing or reading? Write a list of situations, people,* places and things that it may be helpful for you to avoid.

2. Think about how to support change. Are there some Bible passages you could memorise? Would it help if you got more sleep and exercise? Is there someone you can call or text when you're tempted? Write a list of positive steps to take to support godly attitudes and actions.

Here are some examples from my own life:
- impatience and irritability: I try to get enough sleep
- gluttony: I don't buy food that is a weakness for me
- introspection: I find ways to serve others
- poor time management: I pray about my day before it begins
- perfectionism: I keep accountable to good friends
- shopaholism: I stay away from shops when I can
- anxiety: I've memorised verses about God's loving sovereignty.

Of course, none of these things replaces dealing with the deep-seated unbelief and idols of my heart. Only God's grace, working through faith and repentance, changes me on the inside. But doing these things feeds my faith, buys me time, starves sin, and supports my repentance.

If I want the tree of change to grow, it may be time to pull out some weeds and do some watering.

*I'm not saying we should avoid all the people that rub us up the wrong way, or we'd have to live on a desert island! People help us grow as we learn to love them. But we may need to stop spending time with a friend who consistently leads us into sin.

Today's post is based on chapter 8 of Tim Chester's You Can Change.

images are by GasBombGirl, Kit Keat, ashley.adcox and Flying House Studios at flickr

are you afraid of the Spirit?

"Mark Driscoll said:

Many of you are afraid of the Holy Spirit.

You betcha, Mark. Aren't you? The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. I fear the Lord's Spirit like I fear the strength of a storm. May it always be so. Amen."

Amen.

from on Driscoll's 18 points

John Piper on the Holy Spirit in the Trinity

While I'm taking a couple of weeks away from intensive blogging, and while you all get hold of Feminine Appeal and start reading it ;), I thought I'd tie up a couple of loose ends on my Enjoying God series.

It occured to me - and one of you pointed it out! - that in my post on how God feels about being God, I talked a lot about the Father and Son's delight in each other, but not much about the Holy Spirit. So I was excited when I read what Piper had to say about this topic during my morning reading:

I have stressed (from texts like Hebrews 1:3; Colossians 1:15; 2:9; Philippians 2:6; 2 Corinthians 4:4; and John 1:1) that the Son of God is the mirroring-forth of God the Father himself in his own self-consciousness. God has a perfectly clear and full idea of all his own perfections. This image of God is so complete and perfect that it is, in fact, the standing forth of God the Son, a person in his own right. ...

Now what about the Holy Spirit? I find it helpful to observe that the mind of God, as reflected in our own, has two faculties: understanding and will (with emotions being the more lively acts of the will). In other words, before creation God could relate to himself in two ways: God could know himself and God could love himself. In knowing himself he begot the Son, the perfect, full, and complete personal image of himself. In loving himself the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father and the Son.

So the Son is the eternal image that the Father has of his own perfections, and the Holy Spirit is the eternal love that flows between the Father and the Son as they delight in each other.

How can this love be a person in his own right? Words fail, but can we not say that the love between the Father and the Son is so perfect, so constant, and carries so completely all that the Father and Son are in themselves that this love stands forth as a person in his own right?

John Piper A Godward Life pp. 73-4.

image is from stock.xchng