Surrendered in Grace
The past month I have been meditating on Andrew Murray's classic
of spirituality Absolute Surrender. Some of you have read,
or are starting to read, this inspirational encouragement toward a more
Spirit-empowered life...
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Spiritual Performance Anxiety
Yesterday, I suggested a typical but torturous back and forth
process involving the attempt to correct imbalanced points of view on
the Spirit's work. The specific nature of the imbalance redressed by
Andrew Murray and the Keswick movement involved the issue of power...
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Purification and the Spirit
Lately we've been speaking a lot about listening to the Spirit
bearing witness within us. Over the years this is something that has
been an integral part of my understanding of spirituality. But the Spirit
is constantly speaking beneath all the 'monkey mind' and white noise
that our consciousness throws up into our thought life...
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Seeing What's There
Of all the portrayals of Watershed's mission I am most fond of
the version that reads, "Watershed's purpose is to enable individuals,
in the context of community, to make decisions that lead to consciousness."
I like it because it does not create a chasm between community and individual
goals, and it emphasizes the importance of making decisions that deeply
affect our everyday lives...
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Giving To You What Is Mine
J. I. Packer finds the central metaphor for the Holy Spirit's
work in the Gospel of John. John emphasizes the Spirit as the Advocate
or paraclete (one who comes along side). The Spirit comes alongside
to do a very specific task which becomes the correcting and organizing
center of what Packer calls the sweet 'p's': power, performance, purification,
and presentation...
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The Spirit of Mediation
How does the Holy Spirit mediate the presence of Jesus to us
on a practical level? J.I. Packer points to three types of awareness
mediated by the Holy Spirit. He believes that the Spirit helps us to
understand Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ of Scriptures, once crucified,
now glorified...
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Spirit Gifts
In the mid-1970s I had my first encounter with the charismatic
movement. Keith Matthews, the young adult sponsor in our church, had
been profoundly influenced by the movement. The best argument that could
be made for the supernatural empowering of the Holy Spirit's gifts was
the vibrancy of life that we all experienced through Keith...
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What Are We Waiting For?
These paragraphs describe occasions of waiting. The first situation
describes anticipatory waiting, waiting for the familiar. Jesus is telling
his friends that when the Spirit comes they will recognize him because
of prior Spirit-inspired experiences...
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