NOT A BIG DEAL?

Pentecost doesn't get even the tiniest fraction of the attention which the incarnation gets.

Every year Christians spend an entire month (at least) in recognition of the moment in time when God took on human flesh and entered into human history. 

There are movies, songs, parties, food, decorations, and special traditions - all over the world!

But when it comes to recognizing the moment 33 years after that Babe was born, when the Holy Spirit entered into human history and ignited the ongoing Body of Christ, there's hardly a passing mention in most churches. 

Why is that?

How does the coming of the Holy Spirit rank against the coming of the Son? 

Was the Spirit's arrival in human history just not as important?

SOMETHING WAS MISSING

When Paul comes across 12 disciples in Ephesus during his third missionary journey, he asks them an unusual question: "Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?" (Acts 19:2)

And considering this was 20 to 25 years after Pentecost, their answer was shocking: "We have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit!"

They go on to explain to Paul that they were baptized into John's baptism - which would have been 25 to 30 years back! 

And then Paul explains that John was baptizing "with the baptism of repentance" and that he had pointed people toward believing in the One who was to come after him, i.e. Jesus.

So then these 12 guys are "baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus". Next, Paul lays his hands on them and they suddenly start speaking in tongues and prophesying!

And I am left with so many questions!

• How did these guys come across the baptism of John the Baptist - who was waist deep in the Jordan River - all the way from Ephesus, over 600 miles away? Were they personally baptized by John or did John's disciples take it upon themselves to spread his message of repentance, eventually reaching to Ephesus? Maybe these 12 WERE disciples of John on a lifelong evangelistic mission?
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• Are there two different types of baptism? If so, how EXACTLY are they distinguished from each other?
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• Were these 12 guys sort of their own little church? Without the Holy Spirit?

I can't even begin to speculate on the answers to any of these questions. There are too few details.

But one other question that comes to mind might warrant some conjecture:

• What prompted Paul to ask these guys whether they had received the Holy Spirit in the first place?

Did he see a lack of joy? Or power? 

An absence of victory over sin? 

Did they lack fruit? Or confidence? Or love?

Were there clues in the way they talked? In their priorities? Their values?

Was there a distance in their relationship with God?

Whatever the clues, something was missing, and Paul immediately recognized what it was: the Holy Spirit.

What has been your experience? Can YOU tell upon meeting a person whether or not he or she is filled with the Holy Spirit, entirely lacking the Holy Spirit, or somewhere in between?

A WONDERFULLY STRANGE WEDDING

I didn't fall out of my writing habit again... 

I simply took a few days off and worked to live in the moment as much as possible as Melissa, Sarah and I traveled to a wedding in Branson, Missouri for a few days.

This involved an 8-hour drive on Monday, a bit of sightseeing and the wedding on Tuesday, and then another 8-hour drive back on Wednesday. 

It was an excellent use of time, especially considering that Sarah is heading to Myrtle Beach for the next two months in just a couple of days, so we won't be getting to spend time with her this summer. 

And the sightseeing was fun, especially the Butterfly Palace.

But what really stood out was the wedding itself and the reception which followed.

It was a bit surreal, because the bride was a daughter of the missionary family living next door to us most of our time in Haiti and several of the guests were Haitians - my former students. 

And I wasn't prepared for that.

It was just so strange to be in this beautiful, glass event facility in the green countryside of Missouri with the "kids" from our life 6+ years ago when we lived and worked in the poorest, most chaotic country in this hemisphere. 

And they are all in their twenties and dressed to the nines!

And they are doing well. Praise God. 

The Lord works in mysterious ways, for certain!

WHAT MATTERS MOST

I once heard someone say that we talk most about the things that matter the least and we talk the least about the things that matter the most. 

And that is all too true. And so very sad.

As a high school English teacher, I often had to cover topics that, if I were totally honest, simply didn't matter - the sort of stuff that prompts some student to ask, "When are we ever going to use this in real life?"

The majority of the time, there wasn't a good answer to that question. 

I have been a teacher for about two decades at this point. Currently I teach English as a Second Language classes two nights a week to local immigrants AND I teach the Bible on Sunday mornings from the pulpit of Sardinia Baptist Church.

And recently I have started to think of myself also as a possible mentor to others ... on matters of life and faith. 

And it occurs to me that a mentor is just a teacher who generally works one-on-one and whose lessons deal only with what matters most about life - as particular needs arise. 

And, again, I say the Church needs more mentors.

SPEAKING IN TONGUES?

A long time ago - and we're talking about 35 years back - I visited a church that was very much into the Holy Spirit. 

At least, that was the impression I had. 

But what they were really into was speaking in tongues. AND they understood speaking in tongues to be THE litmus test proving a believer was filled with the Holy Spirit.

I didn't know my Bible all that well at the time. But now I know that such an idea finds no support in Scripture. 

I wanted desperately to have the experience of speaking in tongues. I didn't know anyone in the church and so I had nothing to lose by going forward at the end of the service to "receive the gift of tongues". 

Some folks prayed over me and, as they did, I was hoping that a jumble of unrecognized words would soon come pouring out of my mouth of their own volition. But after a few minutes of prayer, it became clear to me that if I was going to speak in tongues in that moment, it would require me faking it. 

I couldn't bring myself to do it. After all, I didn't want something fake - I wanted what was real.

Now I look back and wonder what I really hoped to experience. Upon reflection now as a 58-year-old lifelong believer, I think it was this: 

I wanted to lose myself completely. I didn't want to struggle against sin and uncertainty. I wanted to escape my own poor self-image. I wanted God to show up inside my brain, push me away from the steering wheel and take over. 

When read about how the Holy Spirit came over the crowd of disciples at Pentecost, as recorded in the opening of Acts 2, we tend to hyper fixate on the tongues of flame and the commotion of the disciples speaking in other languages. 

And if we do that, we miss what is really important about the story:

When the Spirit comes, He inspires the disciples to WITNESS about God's power and goodness and He miraculously enables them to communicate these things to the waiting world in a way that they can understand. 

Being filled with the Spirit doesn't necessarily result in speaking in unknown languages. It's about speaking and living as witnesses to the love of Jesus. 

LEADING INTO ALL TRUTH

Recently I listened to a podcast hosted by two former Christians. 

The question that prompted their "deconstruction" was kind of surprising to me. 

First, they pointed to Jesus's promise in John 16:13 - that, once sent by Jesus, the Spirit would lead them into "all truth". And then the two podcasters asked this question: 

"If the Spirit leads disciples into all truth, why are there 44,000 different Christian denominations in the world? Shouldn't all believers be unified if we each have access to ALL truth through the Spirit?"

Even if 44,000 isn't an accurate number (and who knows how one would count such a thing), it's undeniable that there is a lot of disagreement within the Body of Christ - and often over major doctrines. 

Besides, the question would stand even if there were only two denominations on the planet.

But here's the problem: The podcasters were making an assumption about the sort of "truth" being promised. Does it really seem likely that Jesus was promising that the Spirit would come bearing correct doctrine?

How might our reading of the promise change when we remember that Jesus had earlier said, "I am the way and the truth and the life"? (John 14:6)

What if "lead you into all truth" primarily means "make you more like Jesus"?

Being filled with the Spirit isn't about intellect. It's about heart. 

WHY GHOST?

The first time I gave any thought whatsoever to the Holy Spirit wasn't until a college Bible study. Only then did I realize that my home church never even mentioned the Spirit outside of the last line of the Doxology we sang every Sunday morning following the passing of the offering plates: "praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost". 

If I had given any thought to the matter as a child, it was only how "ghost" was a strange word to associate with God's Spirit!

If Google can be trusted, the Tyndale Bible was the first to translate the Greek pneuma hagion as "Holy Ghost". That was in 1526 and in that day the Old English gast, meaning spirit or soul, had morphed into ghost. 

So ghost originally had a much broader meaning, without any of today's baggage of being the spooky, ethereal, and shadowy soul of a dead human, out only to haunt the living. 

A truly unfortunate evolution of an important word!

Unfortunately, even though the word ghost changed drastically over the centuries, the descriptor of "Holy Ghost" for the Third Person of the Trinity continues to hang about the Church, thanks to old hymns and the King James Bible, which largely copied Tyndale's practice in this case.

MAYBE WORTH TRYING

Over Mother's Day weekend earlier this month, Melissa and I had all four kids together with us for the first time in about 7 months. It was wonderful.

Caleb came home from El Paso for a friend's wedding. Hannah decided last minute to make the drive from Myrtle Beach. Her arrival Saturday night was a surprise to Melissa, who was watering flowers in the backyard when Hannah walked through the gate. It made for a memorable scene of pure joy as Melissa screamed "NO WAY!" and ran toward Hannah, hands waving wildly over her head.

Just look at how blessed I am:

At some point over the weekend, as family members were hovering around the kitchen table, there was a discussion on some topic I don't even remember now. The only thing I DO remember was that one of my kids asked, "When are you going to start a podcast, Dad?" 

The question seemed half-joke and half-serious. And it was reinforced by a couple of the other three chiming in: "Yeah, why don't you?"

I'll tell you why: because every other person is doing a podcast these days. And very few of the amateurs are doing them well. And most of the small ones seem like a lot of effort to effectively shout into the void.

So that was my answer.

Until it got reframed in my mind yesterday morning. 

Yes, there are way too many podcasts. BUT, there aren't nearly enough mentors. 

So the question becomes, "Could a podcast function like a mentoring relationship, at least to some significant extent?"

And I'm thinking maybe it could. And maybe I will try. 

MENTOR SHORTAGE

In the last few years before he died, one of the ideas that Scott Adams sought to popularize was the existence and value of certain "Internet Dads". 

These were (mostly) men who use their online presence to disseminate fatherly wisdom rather than outrage. They are influencers, true, but only in the most positive directions. They aren't looking to get rich; they want to spread sanity and propagate critical thinking. 

Adams numbered himself among the Internet Dads. He certainly functioned as such for me. 

Not in a spiritual sense, though, since Adams was an atheist. (Although I would say he was as close to the Kingdom of God as an atheist can get.) Critical thinking and human psychology were his specialties, and he altered my perceptions of reality on a regular basis. 

I've always been a bit jealous of the relationship between the Apostle Paul and Timothy, Paul's "son in the faith". 

If I ever had a father in the faith, it was for a single brief year during college when an Intervarsity Christian Fellowship staff member, Tom Shepherd, took an interest in my budding spiritual life. 

And even now, at 58 years down the path, if I should come across a real-life mentor tomorrow, I would latch on and not let go. 

To be clear, I don't feel as though I were singled out for spiritual neglect - mentorship in the faith is a rare thing in the modern church. 

All of this is to say that the Lord seems to be fostering a genuine passion in me to be a mentor to others at this stage of my life. 

Recently I've taken great joy in some real-life mentoring situations, and it seems to me that in a world largely devoid of spiritual fathers and sons, mentoring can in fact be scalable - through the internet. 

The existing Internet Dads I know of all tend to focus on finances, entrepreneurship, politics and similar secular concerns.

Perhaps there is space for a spiritual Internet Dad. 

BACK IN THE SADDLE

Shout out to my cousin Jennifer who recently reminded me that I had not written on my blog since my birthday in April. 

I didn't intentionally stop writing here - I just got busy and tired and fell out of the habit. 

Plus, I didn't have a particular focus for my writing ever since I threw in the towel on my dissertation work at Christmas. The question which lingered in the aftermath was this: What was the point of my doctoral work if I never get to the degree?

I had started my studies under the conviction that it was God's will that I pursue a Doctor of Ministry through Wesley Biblical Seminary - especially when He arranged for it to be 100% free. 

But then at Christmas this year - four years into the process - I decided that I didn't care to spend hundreds of hours in a library in order to finish. Especially since I felt like I had gained much already AND I'm too old to waste time.

The question then became this: How do I take what I gained as-is and put it to good use for the Kingdom - without writing a formal dissertation?

I'm back at the computer tonight because I went for a 5 mile walk this morning. It was a neighborhood stroll that may turn out to be the most profitable walk of my life. 

The past 5 months of disjointed thoughts and priorities all came together into a much more cohesive picture. 

Cohesive enough that I now have no excuse to continue dragging my feet. 

I will gladly share more tomorrow after a good night's sleep.