|
The following three Essays were published June – August 2008. They outline some basic ideas about living with God and how God works through the Gifts of the Holy Spirit
Gifts of the Spirit - God Working in You By Jeff Neuman-Lee
There are things that you are supposed to do and there are some things which you are not. I’m not talking about bad things like murder and theft. I’m not talking about ignoring the needs of others and selfishly hoarding things to yourself.
I am talking about good things to do. Things, which if they are done, will benefit others. Make others genuinely happy things to do. Things which will remind others of the love of God because it is the love of God shining through you. That’s what I’m talking about. Some of them you are supposed to do, some of them not.
How can I say this? Aren’t we all supposed to do all the good things?
Well, no. There are many, many wonderful things to do in this world. And only one you and you cannot do them all. Sorry if this is bad news to you, if you thought you could do it all. Too bad. You can’t do it all.
But you can do some. And God, working in the Holy Spirit, has been setting you up to do some particular thing or things which will benefit others, make others genuinely happy and remind others of the love of God because it is the love of God shining through you.
These are the gifts of the Spirit. (See I Corinthians 12) Each one of us gets the dose of the Spirit which we are supposed to get for the good of the rest of us and God’s message working in the world.
I’m sitting in the office and Cathy Jo is typing away in the next room. You don’t see her during worship, but she’s in the office nearly every Monday. One of the things she does is our newsletter. Pretty great newsletter, don’t you think? The Holy Spirit is working through her for this news letter. She loves to do it. And it benefits us all.
I think of my sister Gail, our congregation’s Moderator. She just passed around via email to the other folks who commonly visitor (deacons, ordained, etc.) that she’s been visiting someone who had to go to the hospital. I’m so happy about this because I’ve been out of town. It seems that we can rely on the Spirit to get folks visited, and with leaders like Gail listening to God’s Spirit and just doing it, it gets done.
A whole lot of the Prince of Peace community has made a beautiful labyrinth in the yard east of the building. It looks like a piece of art to me. Vickie and Susie gave us leadership on this, and you know that the Spirit has been working through them and will continue to do so. When we use this labyrinth for prayer, how much will it empower us to be closer to God?
For each of us the question is not how can I be good, but which good shall I do? Each of us has our situations and our limitations. But God is working and empowering each of us to be the people of Jesus Christ.
Gifts of the Spirit - God working in your leadership.
By Jeff Neuman-Lee
There are things that you are supposed to do. They are good things. And they are not assigned to anyone else. If you don’t do them, who will? They may probably just not get done. And they are good things which need doing.
I am talking about good things to do. Things, which if they are done, will benefit others. Make others genuinely happy things to do. Things which will remind others of the love of God because it is the love of God shining through you. That’s what I’m talking about.
Well, if you read last month’s essay, you will know that I’m talking about Gifts of the Holy Spirit.
There is a hidden quality in these “gifts”. It is something which solves the problem of how adults are to relate to one another. This hidden quality orders society not with an artificial hierarchical basis, but rather liberates each individual within the community. It makes life thrilling for us each as individuals and it gives all humanity the tremendous power which God has offered to it.
That quality hidden in your gift is that when you simply use your gift, you will have to give back your leadership.
The upshot is that in our gifts given by God through the Holy Spirit, God intends for the mature follow of Jesus to be a leader of the community. The goal of the community is not for it to simply follow one individual or a board of elders, but rather for each one to grow into maturity in Jesus Christ.
- The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. Ephesians 4: 11 - 13
Imagine how better things would be if each of us used our gift from the Holy Spirit with the eager and energized attitude of one who sees how God is bringing truly good things to each other and to God’s mission to share Christ’s love in the world! When you tap into that core within yourself, you are truly touching what is real in you, God drawing you out to share His love for others. This is true freedom. Not the negative stuff, but rather the true “yes” within your heart.
You will know you are giving your leadership when you see relationships grow, when friends or even enemies over come their difficulties with each other and are reconciled, when the people of God, gathered for worship or for service are filled with joy.
Pray for the courage to live with such power.
Gifts of the Spirit - seeing the power of God (and no whining).
By Jeff Neuman-Lee
There are things that you are supposed to do. They are good things. And they are not assigned to anyone else. If you don’t do them, who will? They may probably just not get done. And they are good things which need doing.
I am talking about good things to do. Things, which if they are done, will benefit others. Make others genuinely happy things to do. Things which will remind others of the love of God because it is the love of God shining through you. That’s what I’m talking about.
Well, if you read last month’s essay, you will know that I’m talking about Gifts of the Holy Spirit for which God has given you responsibility. And in order for you to take your responsibility, you must become a leader.
Now let’s talk about the great symptom that we refuse to take the leadership which God gives to us through our gifts: whining. Now sometimes it does not exactly sound like whining. We can mask our whining in anger. Or we can hide it in depression. But the essence is whining.
But it is just a symptom of something deeper. What happens when we don’t want to take responsibility for what we have been given?
We defer that responsibility onto someone else. I mean, think of it. If God has appointed you to reach out to the neighbor next door, and that neighbor has a severe drinking problem, you might say to yourself: “self, I am not going over there to talk with that guy, he’s got a major problem! I know God wants me to go over there, but, hey, what am I supposed to do if he’s got a problem like that?”
See what you did? Now God hasn’t asked you to solve this guy’s problems. You can’t do that. God has simply said to you go and what you do is defer your problem onto another. You make your problem someone else’s.
If you think about it, whining is one of the absolute worst problems in the world. Let’s take integration as an example. Back in the 60's our culture pretty much realized that our racist basis for living was wrong. So how did we deal with it? Mostly by busing our children or by setting quotas. What’s wrong with that? Well, we put the work of solving the problem onto others. Instead of inconveniencing ourselves, we inconvenienced children and their parents, we forced employers to do things, etc.
Now one might ask, was it not necessary to do all these things? Were we not so racist and intransigent that we were not going to do the things we needed to do? Was it not certain that we would rather put our pain onto another and dream that it might just go away?
Which raises the questions for us followers of Jesus, should we not be the ones to stop whining first? Are we not the ones who should lead the world in an end of whining? Is not Jesus’ surrender to the cross a clear and definitive act of a refusal to whine?
When you whine you refuse to trust the leadership God has given you. Not only does whining keep you from doing the work God has for you, it brings disasters upon others.
Yet, as we do the work God has called us to do, when we take our responsibility for our gifts, the power of God will indeed flow through us to do his glorious work of love in the world.
|
