In my experience the Holy Spirit really is our only hope. We just celebrated Pentecost, and I plan to talk about the Holy Spirit for another week or so. It is tough trying to follow God - our Holy God - when we are people who get so caught up in the flesh. We get so caught up with our fear and our worry, and preserving and surviving. Those fleshy emotions are directly in conflict with our commitment to lives of discipleship. We try to emulate a generous, giving, loving, un-tethered Messiah. We try to be like Jesus - and it is really hard.
It is really hard to be like Jesus when we have been doing it for a few months, and it is really hard to be like Jesus when we have been doing it for decades. That is why I say that the Holy Spirit is our only hope. Kindness and generosity aren’t our natural response. It seems in many ways that we can’t be more than greedy, self righteous people without the Spirit working in us.
Even in our churches we get caught up in fear and anger and jealousy. We hoard and protect our resources. At the same time we say we follow Jesus who gave it all up for us. It just isn’t easy, and we can’t do it on our own. We need help to overcome our fear and jealousy and anger.
Jesus models the love of God, that we are trying to emulate. The love of God - the love of Jesus, the love of the Holy Spirit is generous, overflowing, outrageous. When we view it through our fleshy concerns, we might even call God’s love wasteful. Like the beauty of the cherry blossoms. Thousands of flowers all at once. Almost more beauty than we can stand, only to fall to the ground petal by petal, and then it is dirt. God pours out love without reason, without justification, with reckless abandon - and that is what we are called to do. The only way we do that is through the Holy Spirit’s nudging. I pray that we call can hear, and respond faithfully to the Spirit of God that moves in, among and through us.
Holy Spirit Come!
- Bob Brown, pastor
It is really hard to be like Jesus when we have been doing it for a few months, and it is really hard to be like Jesus when we have been doing it for decades. That is why I say that the Holy Spirit is our only hope. Kindness and generosity aren’t our natural response. It seems in many ways that we can’t be more than greedy, self righteous people without the Spirit working in us.
Even in our churches we get caught up in fear and anger and jealousy. We hoard and protect our resources. At the same time we say we follow Jesus who gave it all up for us. It just isn’t easy, and we can’t do it on our own. We need help to overcome our fear and jealousy and anger.
Jesus models the love of God, that we are trying to emulate. The love of God - the love of Jesus, the love of the Holy Spirit is generous, overflowing, outrageous. When we view it through our fleshy concerns, we might even call God’s love wasteful. Like the beauty of the cherry blossoms. Thousands of flowers all at once. Almost more beauty than we can stand, only to fall to the ground petal by petal, and then it is dirt. God pours out love without reason, without justification, with reckless abandon - and that is what we are called to do. The only way we do that is through the Holy Spirit’s nudging. I pray that we call can hear, and respond faithfully to the Spirit of God that moves in, among and through us.
Holy Spirit Come!
- Bob Brown, pastor
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