For even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed as one of these
“Go your way.
Eat the fat and drink sweet wine
and send portions to anyone who has nothing ready,
for this day is holy to our Lord.
And do not be grieved,
for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”
(Nehemiah 8:10)
For my American friends, Happy Thanksgiving!
Harbinger: Autumn Leaves and Stones
I remember the days of old;
I meditate on all that you have done;
I ponder the work of your hands.
(Psalm 143:5)
Photo: Bouquet
When I received my first blogging award nomination my reaction was kind of like this –if you can imagine a very plump middle age woman in the place of this talented child. Well, perhaps this is not the best visual, but still:
I didn’t post it right away because I was just so humble (ahem) and also because I couldn’t figure out how to get the pasty link thing to work. So I dropped it to contemplate the gravity of the honour. Then there were some more very flattering nominations, which I truly appreciated.
Then I read the rules on some of them. Pass the award on to 15 other bloggers? As I often say to my husband, I said, “Husband, I am an English major. You do the math.” So he did. He figured that if everyone receiving an award passed that award on to 15 other people the very next day and they did the same, in little more than a week we could pretty much encourage the entire world –at least several billion of them.
This relates to my post On Being a Descendent of Royalty. Just because the designers of rules for receiving blogging awards were exceedingly generous doesn’t mean that they are not of value and that some kind people out there took the time to read my blog and nominate me for an award. I am truly grateful. I thank you. I am honoured.
So to catch up on some inexcusably overdue acknowledgements I would like to thank the following bloggers for their generosity and kind words:
Admin at Pure Gory
Deborah at “Ye shall know me by my fruits”
Victoria at Made for Victory
Melody at Meanwhile Melody Muses
Gracie at Frames and Focus
I highly recommend their sites.
Now, the obligatory seven things about myself list:
1. When I was in grade three I rode my imaginary horse, Ginger, home from school every day. The neighbours thought I was seriously gimped.
2. I’m usually in the process of reading at least six books at the same time and I often start in the middle.
3. I can’t dance or remember the 7 times table, but I always have music in my head. It can be annoying.
4. Between my husband, my children and their spouses and myself we have about 49 1/2 years of university education (so far). Some of it is paid for. I’ve done umpteen year’s worth of courses in music, education, theology, art, and English, but I don’t have a degree.
5. My parents were told I was dead. Mom had a caesarean section to deliver a stillborn, but some friends gathered all night to pray for this young couple and their baby. God must have heard, because I am here. Still.
6. I am seriously in love with Jesus Christ. So is my husband. It’s a magnificent threesome.
7. I published my first poetry at 12, sang in my first opera at 14, performed in a nightclub when I was too young to get in, dated a politician when I was too young to vote, learned to fly a kite at 45, went through adolescent rebellion at 39 and started splashing right through the middle of puddles at 55. It’s not just that I have a tendency to be ahead of the curve or behind the curve — the curve and I have never met.
The point of awards is, I think, to bring attention to worthwhile blogs, so rather than contribute to the devaluation of awards I choose to bypass the whole system and get to the point of saying check out these blogs. I shall try to do this on a more regular basis. The following bloggers may consider themselves winners of Charis’ very own first I LIKE YOU award (if I could figure out how to make an icon I would):
Check out these blogs:
(Edited to add: after 25 edits on this post I think this is as good as it’s going to get. Click on the URL and not the name of the blog and you should get there. sigh.)
Admin at Pure Glory http://pureglory.net –prophets Gabriel and Hazel bring strong words of encouragement
Deborah at Ye Shall Know Me by My Fruits http://girlwiththepen1118.wordpress.com/ incredibly talented poet who writes the most evocative sensuous real stuff. She really should be famous. Seriously.
Victoria at Made for Victory– http://madeforvictory.com/an over-comer of epic proportion
Melody at Meanwhile Melody Muses– http://melodylowes.com/ fellow lover of words, flowers and hope who is not afraid to pump up the colour
Gracie at Frames and Focus–http://graciebinoya.com/ a sensitive, talented photographer with a gift of holy discontent that keeps her striving to be even better
And some others that have really touched my heart:
Quilla at Ruach333 http://ruach333.wordpress.com/–photography and poetry from a quiet but deep, deep man of faith
Disciple Gideon at Disciple Gideon http://disciplegideon.wordpress.com/ -an honest humble man with a listening heart and a gift for being profound
Janelle at My Men and Me http://mymenandme.wordpress.com–a pure soul who loves the Lord, loves her family, loves her farm, and loves her readers
Stephanie at The Potter’s Hand – http://thepottershand2011.com -a worshipping Singaporean who sees the glory of God all around her and captures it with her camera
Trina and Micheline at Whimsical Publishing http://whimsicalpublishingblog.wordpress.com–a writer of children’s books and an illustrator/artist/photographer team who are much too lively and fun to stay in a box
Mirjam at Mirjam Aldolphi Photography http://mirisphotos.org -in Ukraine -a woman whose love for needy children needs no translation
There are other blogs I enjoy, of course. I’m just starting in order of when I first started reading them. If I forgot an award, please remind me, so I can make an excuse, and then acknowledge it.
Blessings on you all. You have enriched my life!!
Last of the tomatoes
(Click on photo for larger version)
I’ve heard it said that to possess knowledge is to know that a tomato is a fruit. Possessing wisdom is to know not to put it in a fruit salad.
Cross Fire
Sometimes I feel like I’m caught in the crossfire. That’s the problem with eschewing labels; when people are not sure if you are one of us or one of them you are apt to catch shrapnel from all sides.
My grandparents were ethnic Germans who lived in an area claimed by the Russians at that time. Grandfather Johann was apparently fluent in seven languages, not because he was a scholar, but because it was expedient, and sometimes necessary for survival. He was no fan of the Czar who sent him and his men into war horribly under-equipped, but after he escaped to Canada with his wife and child, the situation became much worse for family left behind. Stalin killed most of them for being Germans, and Hitler killed the remnant for being Russian. My grandmother never recovered from hearing the Red Cross report that said they could find no trace of anyone she knew and loved in the old country. But that’s another story…
Photo: My grandmother at the time of the exodus from The Crimea
From the vantage point of time and reconciliation we can see the error on both sides. My mother, with her roots in The Crimea married my father, the great grandson of a Scot who received an endowment of land in Canada in appreciation for his service to the Queen in The Crimea. My ancestors could very well have faced each other on the battlefield.
Eventually everything worked out and produced –me (and my siblings).
Anyway, I find myself in a similar position between groups of people who regularly lob incendiary criticisms at each other. My goal is to stand in the gap and facilitate peace, not to serve as a meddlesome target. If you are firmly entrenched on either side I ask you to hold your fire until you have prayed about this (and give me time to duck).
I’m talking about the big C Church and our understanding of the filling of the Holy Spirit, or what some call the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
For a long time I’ve had questions about role of the Holy Spirit and the place of the gifts of the Holy Spirit (especially the list given in 1 Corinthians 12 – words of wisdom, words of knowledge, faith, gifts of healing, working of miracles, prophecy, ability to distinguish between spirits, and the ability to speak languages one has not studied). Most of my life I have been told either that such things ceased when the New Testament became available to the literate (often clergy), or that most of the time they are demonstrations of satan’s powers to deceive, or that if they do exist they are very rare and only for the purposes of impressing jungle people somewhere as a type of introductory business card, or are so divisive they are better off ignored. On the other hand, I’ve run into people who teach that if you didn’t experience them (especially the last one) in the same way they did, you are not really filled with the Holy Spirit and therefore a lesser Christian.
After a brief encounter back in the Jesus People days, someone convinced me that I had been deceived and that if I ever did anything like that again, terrible things could happen to my children. (Crazy, I know, but I was a fearful person –maybe you had to be there.) My stance after that was “There is no shortcut to holiness,” and I went back to work on my road to burnout.
A few years ago I read a book by John White, “When the Spirit Comes in Power.” (My motive for reading it was fear that my daughter was getting involved in some sort of cult.) I respected John White as a scholar (he was a professor in the department of medicine), a serious Christian (former missionary) and an excellent writer. (I met him once and quoted John White to John White, not knowing who he was – but that’s another story.)
He was asked to examine the Vineyard movement, led by John Wimber, for Biblical soundness and signs of manipulative “brain-washing” type behaviour. He acknowledged that he thought some of the “manifestations” were the result of these activities attracting histrionic personalities, but he was also convinced that most were genuine experiences. Something he said really stood out to me; when Jesus spoke about the seriousness of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit it was in the context of religious leaders attributing miraculous works He did to the evil one. John White came to the conclusion that it was more dangerous to pronounce that something not understood was of satan than it was to let something questionable go by and let it be tested by time and the fruit produced to see if it actually was of God. He was impressed enough to eventually join the movement himself.
Not long after that, after a period of learning to forgive some people, Holy Spirit showed up unexpectedly in power in my life, in ways I had never experienced before. I know it was Him because everything that happened led to the praise and glory of Jesus Christ and a greater hunger for a deeper relationship with Him. That would have been a pretty stupid move on satan’s part if it was his doing.
Now here was my dilemma: On the one hand I saw, with my own eyes, the gifts of 1 Corinthians 12 in operation, and experienced some of them myself, yet I saw, to my shock, some of the people with the most dramatic supernatural giftings had, how shall I say this nicely, um.. major character flaws, moral blind spots and egos bigger than all outdoors.
On the other hand I knew many dear saintly people who had never experienced any of these things, who worked very hard to bring the good news of Jesus Christ to the world, but who saw very little in the way of results. They either tended to become more insular, protecting themselves and their tribes from “worldly influence,” or went to the other extreme becoming increasingly less attached to acknowledgment of the Bible as the word of God and relied more and more on personal effort and political solutions to ease the pain of a hurting world, than they did on God.
Here is what I have learned that has helped me bridge the no man’s land between these two paradigms. (Many, many thanks to Brad Long for this teaching.)
There is more than one word for the filling of the Holy Spirit in the new Testament.
There are two meanings covered by one English phrase. We also have only one word for “love” when the Greek has four (agape, eros, storge and phileo).
The Holy Spirit comes in two different ways (well, three if you count “Paraclete”, the One who comes along side).
The Greek words for filling from within, pleroo /pleres, refer to the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.This word is used when the Scripture talks about men like Stephen and Barnabas who were “full of the Holy Spirit and faith and wisdom.” It’s like the welling up of an internal spring. It’s there all the time, in season and out of season. “But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His.”( Romans 8:9) “For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, ‘Abba, Father.’ The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.” (verses 15 &16) 1 Cor. 12:3 says: “Therefore I make known to you that no one speaking by the Spirit of God calls Jesus accursed, and no one can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. Jesus breathed on his disciples and said “Receive the Holy Spirit,” (John 20:22) but Jesus also said, “Wait in Jerusalem until you are clothed with power from on High.” (Luke 24:29). So did the first impartation not take –or is there another Holy Spirit experience?
Photo: Spring-fed pond on Haha Road
The Greek words pletho /pimplemi refer to the Holy Spirit coming upon a person, like oil is poured or smeared on, or clothing is put on or the wind comes on a windmill empowering the blades to move. It is episodic, that is, it happens more than once and often comes in dramatic encounters with Holy Spirit in which one is touched and sometimes overcome by His power. (This is when the weird stuff sometimes happens, like trembling or falling over, especially when one does not have a grid for it and one’s physical system is overwhelmed. Toppling over or feeling great heat etc. is a side-effect, not a goal or something to brag about and especially not a sign of spiritual superiority. For those with reserved tendencies who eschew display it’s a humbling experience.) This “coming upon” also occurred in the Old Testament to people like Samson, Saul at Gibeah and others like Gideon or Elijah and Elisha. It is not a sign of superior holiness, but God does what He will and chooses whomever he wishes for the purposes of demonstrating His power and equipping for assignment. This is the word used in Luke 1 when Elizabeth’s baby leaped in her womb when meeting pregnant Mary and when Zechariah prophesied and when the believers acted drunk and spoke in other languages in Acts 2.
Acts 1:8 also uses it in the promise, “But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
Photo: Windmill which moves the Calgary public transit system
[Lest this turn into an entire book I recommend using something like the Blue Letter Bible online and doing a search of all the uses of pletho/pimplemi (Strong’s 4130) and pleroo/pleres (Strong’s 4137).]
Photo: a congregation of windmills doing what windmills are meant to do
So we have the Holy Spirit within and the Holy Spirit upon. Both. But what happens when one type of filling is emphasized to the exclusion of the other?
When pletho (upon) is more important, the result can be evidence of the Holy Spirit showing up in power (some call this “anointing”), with great works being seen, but a sometimes accompanied by a dearth of fruit of the Spirit, or a lack of discipline in reading and meditating on the Bible, and tainted by immaturity or character development that hasn’t kept up with the level of ministry. (How many “anointed” people have crashed and burned due to moral failures or poor understanding of solid doctrine?) In a church it shows up as competitiveness, envy, divisiveness and spending the supernatural provisions of God on one’s own pleasures. (James 4 “What is the source of quarrels among you…”) Sadly in the public forum it can be misused on self-aggrandizement.
When pleroo (within) is chosen to the exclusion of pletho we see developing character, but ineffective fulfillment of the great commission instruction to make disciples. Burnout comes as a result of lacking the right tool for the right job. A handsaw can eventually chop down a tree, but a powerful chainsaw is much better. We also see a lack of freedom to move in faith and a sense of having to carefully budget meager resources. Sometimes we see a theology based on ways to cope with disappointment with God.
When both kinds of filling are present, (the people in Acts 10 seemed to get a package deal) honoured, and acted upon we see people seeking and surrendering to God’s will, using the power from God in love to build up and encourage the church and for witness and to demonstrate the goodness of God’s love in the world. This church will also grow in knowledge of the Scriptures, in understanding the nature and character of God, as well as in wisdom, revelation and spiritual discernment. We will see both the gifts of the Spirit and the fruit of the Spirit. We will see growth in relationship with God and understand genuine worship. There are more churches becoming like this and I thank God for them.
Abba, enable us to be filled with all the fullness of your Holy Spirit. We want to be the people you created us to be, doing the things you created us to do. We want to grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ and in relationship with each other. Then the world will know that You are good and know that we are Christians –by our love.
Painting: Reserved
(The stream that flows out of this reservoir is called St. Joseph’s Creek. It flows through the town below, out into the countryside and across a First Nations Reservation where it joins the St. Mary’s River just before it’s confluence with the Kootenay River. After a brief sojourn across the border, the Kootenay turns north, back into Canada, and waters a wide valley where fruit is grown commercially.)
Reflection on the Reservoir
Idle in the wild
the waters
reserved by earthen dam
wait
Welling up over the wall
the outpouring spills
to thirsty valley
surging gushing rushing
on its pilgrimage
to freedom
babbling ecstatic companions
overturn hapless pebbles
and undercut established banks
between soccer and tennis scores
beside disciplined lawns
through sweet barbeque smoke
under red painted bridges
inside covert culverts
behind rainbow-puddled gas stations
over destitute shopping carts
past sitting walkers
around rusted wrecks
amid static mobile homes
Without reserve they flow
through Reserve
until St Joseph pouring at last
into St. Mary’s joy
is carried by her abundance
to greater confluence
and wide hillsides of heavy orchards
In the reservoir
the congregation of waters
held back in saturated bed of clay
deep in stillness
dark in secrets
ceases striving
and reflects
ruby opulence
in golden autumnal glory
Lord
I have watched
waiting
in saturated bed of tears
eager for my turn
to burst over damming reserve
to bring tribute to tributary
to whirl and dance in eddies of joy
to shout the songs
of sky-glittered brook
to journey to ripened fruitful fields
Lord
here
subdued in the secret depth
where you make
your thoughts known
still my heart
that might I reflect
your glory
Bless the Lord, O you his angels,
you mighty ones who do his word,
obeying the voice of his word!
Bless the Lord, all his hosts,
his ministers, who do his will!
Bless the Lord, all his works,
in all places of his dominion.
Bless the Lord, O my soul!
(Psalm 103:20-22)
(Click on photo for larger version)
On your feet now—applaud God!
Bring a gift of laughter,
sing yourselves into his presence.
Know this: GOD [YHWH] is God, and God, GOD.
He made us; we didn’t make him.
We’re his people, his well-tended sheep.
Enter with the password: “Thank you!”
Make yourselves at home, talking praise.
Thank him. Worship him.
For God is sheer beauty,
all-generous in love,
loyal always and ever.
(Psalm 100 The Message paraphrase)
The truth dawns
“It’s who you are and the way you live that count before God. Your worship must engage your spirit in the pursuit of truth. That’s the kind of people the Father is out looking for: those who are simply and honestly themselves before him in their worship. God is sheer being itself—Spirit. Those who worship him must do it out of their very being, their spirits, their true selves, in adoration.” -Jesus
(John 4:23-24 The Message)
I used to think that this passage, often translated “worship Him in spirit and in truth,” was about balancing left brain and right brain approaches to life, that is, the intuitive feely stuff versus solid doctrinal fact-filled logical study. My interpretation was an attempt to find balance between my flag-waving, dancing-in-the-aisles, go-with-the-flow friends and my chapter-and-verse, decently-and-in-order friends. Then I started thinking, since when is worshiping God in spirit not worshiping in truth, and since when does worship in truth not involve the spirit? I checked with a Koine Greek scholar and he said those two words are not separated in the Greek. It does not say “worship Him in spirit but also worship Him in truth”. It says “worship Him in spiritandtruth.”
The discussion Jesus was having with the Samaritan woman was about where proper worship should take place. He answered her place question by saying the time is coming -oh, wait a second, it’s here now- that you will worship Him in the reality of the spiritual.
Paul wrote in Colossians 1:27: For I am a minister of the Church by divine commission, a commission granted to me for your benefit and for a special purpose: that I might fully declare God’s word—that sacred mystery which up to now has been hidden in every age and every generation, but which is now as clear as daylight to those who love God. They are those to whom God has planned to give a vision of the full wonder and splendour of his secret plan for the sons of men. Yes, and the secret is simply this: Christ in you! Christ in you bringing with him the hope of all glorious things to come. (Phillips)
Christ in me?
Wow.
Charis: Subject to Change 