I am reading “For the City” by Darrin Patrick and Matt Carter and I am enjoying it and appreciating it.
This excerpt really struck me regarding culture and gospel contextualization: “We listen to questions that people are asking, and we seek to give them God’s answers in ways they can understand. Those who pursue healthy contextualization will not only ask questions of the culture, but will also listen to the questions that the culture is asking and respond to those questions with the gospel. This sounds like a nice, neat little formula for ministry success. Not so much. In reality, it is anything but nice, neat, and formulaic. This is due in large part to one of the primary challenges to contextualization: the Christian subculture. Churches tend to get so caught up in their own unique subculture – the Christian bubble – that they fail to incarnate their faith in the culture to which they’ve been called. In other words, churches can turn inward and get stuck. They lose their sense of mission and their ability to relate to the surrounding culture.” p. 74
I recently finished reading Forgotten God: Reversing the Tragic Neglect of the Holy Spirit by Francis Chan. I appreciate Chan’s thoughts as I think it is a necessary topic. We do have a tendency to overlook or minimize the impact of the Holy Spirit, the third person of our Triune God. Chan has a simple and down-to-earth writing style. Just as when he speaks in person, he has a way of communicating his passion as a follower of Jesus and challenging his listeners/readers to a more devoted life to Jesus. The choice of transitioning between chapters with stories of “Spirit filled” people is a great one. It really helped to frame the discussion around practical examples. The following are some quotes from the book that stood out to me and some of my thoughts:
“It really is an astounding truth that the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you.”
“One question I’ve had to ask myself repeatedly is am I even open to the possibility that I could be wrong in my beliefs? If so, would I have to change my actions if I were shown that my interpretation of Scripture was faulty?”
“When we allow others’ perceptions of us (or even our perceptions of their perceptions!) to control how we live, we are enslaved.”
“Do not quench the Spirit.” 1 Thessalonians 5:19
“Do not treat prophecies with contempt.” 1 Thessalonians 5:20 “I had contempt for anyone who claimed to have ‘a word from the Lord.’ I felt it was a righteous contempt because I’d seen other people use the phrase, ‘I have a word from the Lord’ to manipulate others for personal gain.”
“The biblical response would have been to ‘test everything. Hold on to the good. Avoid every kind of evil.’ (1 Thessalonians 5:21-22). Rather than rejecting the possibility of God supernaturally speaking through people, I should have tested what I was hearing in the context of faithful community. Another valid test for prophecy is the standard of edification. The purpose of prophecy is to encourage and build up the body of Christ. Like every other gift, if it is not done out of love, it is meaningless. (1 Corinthians 13:2, 8; 14:3, 31)”
“This is why orthodox (as in ‘committed exegetical living’) and radical (as in ‘willing to do whatever and go wherever the Spirit leads, even if it doesn’t make sense’) community is vital to living lives that comply with the leading of the Holy Spirit.
“Surrender yourself and invite Him truly to dwell within you, whatever that may mean and wherever it may take you.”
“Did God lead you to where you are?…That very well may be the case. But it could also be a cop-out because you like where you live. You have a good job. The school district is safe and has high ratings. Your family lives close by (or perhaps far away, depending on your relationship with them). It makes sense that you are ‘called’ to be there, right?”
“Basically, what difference does your presence here make? Or, as my youth pastor once asked me, what would your church (and the worldwide church) look like if everyone was as committed as you are? If everyone gave and served and prayed exactly like you, would the church be healthy and empowered? Or would it be weak and listless?”
“But it’s absolutely vital to grasp that He didn’t call you there so you could settle in and live out your life in comfort and superficial peace. His purposes are not random or arbitrary. If you are still alive on this planet, it’s because He has something for you to do.”
“He wants us to know that His gift of the Holy Spirit is really not for our own pleasure or purposes.” I would expand on this to say, but it results in our pleasure when we do His purposes.
“We are most alive when we are loving and actively giving of ourselves because we were made to do these things.”
“Who do You want me to love for You today?” (Esther Ahn Kim)
“Though I do not believe God gives us His Spirit solely for our personal benefit, it is undeniable that one of the greatest aspects of being in relationship with the Holy Spirit is the intimacy, security, and encouragement He brings us. It is then we can serve God as a beloved child rather than a stressed-out, guilt-ridden slave.”
“But the reality is that I am indwelt by the Holy Spirit. And because of this reality, stress and tiredness and impatience don’t have to define my day.”
“Jesus suffered grueling death so that I could have the amazing gift of the Holy Spirit. How dare I take this for granted.”
“He doesn’t need our help but invites us to participate.”
“Because the fact is that if you were in step with the Holy Spirit, listening to and obeying Him, you wouldn’t sin (Galatians 5:16)”
“This does not mean that if you sin, you don’t have the Holy Spirit or aren’t a follower of Christ. It does mean that when you are sinning, you are not simultaneously submitted to the authority and presence of the Holy Spirit in your life. He is still present, but you are most likely suppressing or ignoring His counsel. The hopeful part in all this is that even when we do ignore the Spirit and sin, the Holy Spirit convicts us of that sin.”
“Take some time to think about areas in your own life where you tend just to do your own thing, heedless of the Spirit’s will and call. Living by the Spirit implies a habitual, continual, and active interaction with the Holy Spirit.”
“As we ‘work out our salvation’ and as ‘God works in us.’ Let us keep in step.”
“People ought to see the transformation in our lives and respond by saying, ‘The Lord –He is God!”
“Yet whether consciously or not, we essentially say to God, ‘I know You raised Christ from the dead; but the fact is my problems are just too much for You and I need to deal with them by myself.”
“If GOD truly lives in you, shouldn’t you expect to be different from everyone else?”
“When I read the book of Acts, I see the church as an unstoppable force.”
“Let’s pray that God would build His church, an unstoppable force, empowered and sustained by the Holy Spirit.”
“In other words, when we stock up on knowledge without applying it to our lives, we are actually sinning. You would think that learning more about God would be a good thing…and it can be. But when we gain knowledge about God without responding to Him or assimilating His truth into our lives, then it is not a good thing. According to the Bible, it’s sin. May we not merely gain knowledge. Instead, as we learn, may we grow and confess and change more into the people we’ve been created to be by the power of the Holy Spirit, who dwells within us.”
“What I am saying, though, is that instead of thinking and telling people they are crazy when they feel like the Spirit is leading them into something that doesn’t necessarily make sense to us, we should join them in the discernment process. Instead of discouraging people, we should pray for more insight and boldness. Instead of deadening people to the Spirit’s leading with our words and our actions, we should celebrate and join the Spirit’s movement in and through them!”
As I mentioned in the opening, I think Chan has really touched on a problematic subject in the life of the church. Though our “tragic neglect of the Holy Spirit” does not affect His power, it limits our power. The book challenged me at a time when I am trying to be more faithful to and in tune with the promptings of the Holy Spirit. I have found that I need to discipline myself to pull away from the noise in order to learn to listen.
As with most issues we struggle with, we do not struggle with them in isolation, but in community. This means that churches struggle with the neglect of the Holy Spirit too. I plan to share what I have learned with my church, but I recognize that everyone does not have the time nor discipline to read the book. So after reading the book, if you are interested in sharing the ideas and thoughts in community, Chan’s Basic Series film on the Holy Spirit may be helpful as a way to begin to engage others in the discussion. I have embedded the trailer for it below:
So, I’m here in San Antonio…what a beautiful city. The riverwalk is amazing. The pic above is our hotel.
So I was in airports and planes most of the day yesterday and I finally got to dive into Rob Bell’s book Sex God.
Once again, Rob delivers with his amazing way to make you rethink everything you ever thought you knew, stretch those boundaries and feel like you are learning everything new for the first time. I got through the first three chapters and as most of you have probably read the first chapter, the next two certainly don’t disappoint.
Don’t worry, I won’t give anything away, but Rob redefines the word sex based on the Latin root and you will never look at, use or think of the word the same way after reading this. One of Rob’s best abilities is to find the spiritual in everything and the connections he makes are astounding. Just like in Velvet Elvis, he intertwines scripture to back up his statements and personal stories to drive home the point. If I had to summarize the book so far with one word, it would be “connection”. I can’t wait until Monday (my next travel day) to finish it off…
