What are you wearing?

I often find myself leaving the house not wearing the right stuff.  We should never attempt to navigate the world we live in without wearing the appropriate attire. And for everyone who has been redeemed through the finished work of Christ, we are supposed to wear the same thing.  The uniform of the Christian life if you will…

You didn’t know there was a dress code?

Before Christ ascended to heaven He opened the minds of His followers so they would see and know they were witnessing the fulfillment of scripture.  They were surely worried about the thought of life without this awesome and amazing teacher that had given them so much hope.  The man who they now knew as God Himself had had only recently been restored to them after they thought Him dead, An now he was leaving them.  But as he left them they were given this wonderful and simple promise…

“And behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high."

Luke 24:49

The clothing Jesus spoke of then is the same clothing you and I should be wearing today, the active presence of the Holy Spirit working in our lives.

A lot of sermons are preached on the importance of prayer.  More books that can be counted have been written about the importance of a personal relationship with Christ.  But the Holy Ghost, as the King James refers to Him?   Many seem to consider contemplating too much about the Holy Spirit as a little too spooky for some reason.

Today when we hear about the Holy Spirit it seems to come from the more Charismatic corners of our faith.  We see a Televangelist mumbling some unintelligible “yaba daba do” sounding comments.  Or a group of people shaking and wiggling around after they get slapped on the head from being healed.  I don’t want to discount the gifts of tongues and healing as the Bible clearly defines them as gifts, activated by the power of the Holy Spirit.  But I do want to take a closer look at the words of Jesus in His final recorded promise in the Gospel of Luke.

1. Jesus reiterated to them, “And behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you.”  The promise that was coming was the Holy Spirit.

  

2.  Christ told them to stay in the city (Jerusalem) “...until you are clothed with power from on high."   They couldn’t do the work He had planned for them until they had received the power to do it.  And the work they were to do was to build the church, the Bride of Christ.  Simply put, the Holy Spirit would empower them to do the supernatural in the natural world.

3.  They would be “clothed with power from on high."  This power would be received in a way that it should cover them, and protect them in the same way a cloak or garment cover us from the elements.

The same promise that Christ made to His disciples, he made to each of us when we chose to give our lives over to Him.

If we enter our day without the aid of the Holy Spirit to guide us, we cannot expect to have supernatural results.

We wouldn’t leave our houses in the morning without any clothing, streaking is illegal pretty much everywhere in our country and we shouldn’t consider leaving home without covering ourselves in the power from on high Christ promised us.

The Holy Spirit is a real and active person in the life of a believer and without His help the results we will achieve will be nominal at best.  The original Greek word God gave Luke to translate as power in this passage was dunamis.  Dunamis is where we get the contemporary word, dynamite and is defined as, inherent power, power residing in a thing by virtue of its nature, or which a person or thing exerts and puts forth. Jesus gave us all the promise of an explosive and very real power that we can clothe ourselves in the person of the Holy Spirit.

A relationship and unleashing the potential we all have available to us through the Holy Spirit can only be achieved like any other relationship begins, just start a conversation with Him.  Yes we all need an active prayer life and time spent in the Word of God on a daily basis, but the true fulfilling of the abundant life that Jesus spoke of can’t happen without the third person of the Trinity guiding the way.  Jesus was very clear when He outlined the work of the Holy Spirit,

But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.

John 14:20

Next time you’re alone, even driving in the car, initiate the relationship, just start talking to Him and He will listen. And after He starts to listen He will begin to guide you in the heavenly direction we all have available to us.  And when He becomes your guide He will also teach you everything else you need to know as His direction becomes more and more clear.  Once the Holy Spirit becomes a close friend things will change in your life.

Need a little super in this natural world?  Clothe yourself with “power from on high”.  The Holy Spirit, don’t leave home without Him!

Peace,

Jeff

Biblical Truth, the planet Earth

Science tells us a lot of things about the planet we live on, much of it common knowledge to any elementary school student but that hasn’t always been the case.  There have been many errors noted in previous generations beliefs about the world we live in world that have been disputed or flat out proven wrong with the information we have today.  We haven’t always had science as we understand it today but we do have many places through-out history where religion attempts to explain the scientific questions of the day…

Thousands of years ago, Hindu scriptures explained that the world as we know it was resting on the back of a huge elephant and that the elephant was in turn sitting on the back of a giant turtle that swam around in the sea of some other world.  The weather, earthquakes, floods and other phenomenon were to be attributed to the movements of either a colossal elephant or turtle?  Greek mythology claimed our planet was held on the god Atlas’ shoulders.  But the Bible tells a different story altogether about what supports the world:

He (God) stretches out the north over the void and hangs the earth on nothing.

Job 26:7

You and I know today that the earth is suspended in space and nothing or no one holds it up.  And what does Job indicate is holding the world up?  The earth according to Job, “… hangs on nothing”.  The book of Job is one of the oldest written books in the Bible, many date it to 1500 B.C. about the same time the Hindu scripture about the elephant was written.  The Bible tells us that God gave a direct revelation to Job about the suffering he endured and during that revelation Job saw the world as God saw it, suspended in place by nothing without the help of a man or animal.

And for thousands of years man believed the earth to be flat and if you went too far you would drop off into, “nothing”.  Both Hindu and Buddhist scripture hold to the “flat earth” theory.  In 1522 the Portuguese ship Victoria became the first sip to successfully sail around the world.  Leaving Spain in 1519 and headed west, Victoria returned three years later from the east putting to end the myth of a flat world.  But long before the Victoria came to rest in the early 1500’s, the Bible was noted the earth as being round:

It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers;

Isaiah 40:22

When he established the heavens, I was there; when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,

Proverbs 8:27

As we all know today the earth appears as a circle, suspended in space with no one holding it up.  Job, Solomon and Isaiah all received the inspired Word of God about the earth as we all see it today.  Once again scripture is shown to be accurate and truthful while many other means are without a doubt, wrong.

Peace,

Jeff