19 May 2013 - fire fall

19 May 2013 - fire fall

Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth.

Renew us, LORD.  You want us to be filled with your Spirit but we are lukewarm and indifferent.  We feel powerless and trapped by circumstances.

If you take away their breath, they perish
and return to their dust.

Yet you alway offer renewal in your Spirit.  You are always ready to recharge us and full us with new life.  There is no symmetry with what we were in the past.  We are reborn as something entirely new.  We are a new creation that is finally what the old one was intended to be.  In the old order self seeking and survival of the fittest have come dominant through sin.  The new order, which exists in the midst of the old without being of it, is based only on love

When you send forth your spirit, they are created,
and you renew the face of the earth.

As new creations we are filled with the gifts that Isaiah lists:

• wisdom
• understanding
• counsel
• fortitude
• knowledge
• piety
• fear of the LORD

And the fruits that Paul lists:

• love
• joy
• peace
• forbearance
• kindness
• goodness
• faithful
• gentleness
• self-control

And even the charismatic gifts that Paul desires for us (cf 1 Cor 14:5):

• words of wisdom
• words of knowledge
• prophecy
• tongues
• interpretation of tongues
• healing
• mighty deeds
• faith
• discernment of spirits

Clearly we are very different without all of these than we are with them.  It is no stretch to say we are a new creation!  And as a new creation we are united as one in a unity that is strictly impossible in the old. By one Spirit we proclaim the truth of the Good News.

No one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit.

By one Spirit we are united as one family under our Father in heaven.

but you received a Spirit of adoption,
through whom we cry, “Abba, Father!”

Let us seek the fire of the Holy Spirit trusting that he is refining us and building us into his temple.

Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire,
which parted and came to rest on each one of them.

As he fills us let us join the disciples in proclaiming "the mighty acts of God" to all the nations.  These acts aren't simply directed toward gifts for gifts sake.  The gifts are a function of unity with God himself.  They are the fruit of the indwelling Trinity.  And this is the desire he has for each of us.

“Whoever loves me will keep my word,
and my Father will love him,
and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.

The one thing that can stop us is sin which cuts us off from this indwelling.  But Jesus has prepared for this as well.  The solution?  The Holy Spirit working in priests God calls.

Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them,
and whose sins you retain are retained.”

So, since nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ, let us join with the psalmist in praising  him!

Bless the LORD, O my soul!
O LORD, my God, you are great indeed!
How manifold are your works, O LORD!
the earth is full of your creatures;

Bryan Torwalt and Katie Torwalt - Holy Spirit