HYDRATE

T90+

 Yesterday as part of our Dehydrated series and mission to draw closer to God through the Holy Spirit, we started a Summer Spiritual Challenge called T90+.  T90+ is a 4 step challenge:

    Engage Scripture 4x Weekly

    Fast 3 Days Total

    Pray 2x Daily

    Tithe 1x Per Pay Period

This is a practical process whereby we can let the Holy Spirit work on us and in us to develop the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5.22-23). The goal is to know our DIRECTION in life, have a spiritual DEPTH, walk in DISCERNMENT, and be a fully DEVELOPED follower of Jesus. Hundreds took up the 90 day challenge yesterday, and it was an awesome thing to see all the T90+ green bracelets after church. So if you were out yesterday, you can sign up online and pick up your bracelet during office hours or next Sunday.

T90+ is a spiritual intensive for the summer.  It is a hard challenge that is meant to shock our spiritual muscles and get us back into shape and make us fit for service.  I can't wait to hear all the stories of life change over the next 90 days!

We also added another challenge yesterday - the GO GIVE challenge. We gave every person $10 to go and do an act of kindness to bless someone else.  It is our way of helping our church understand how to steward God's money and listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit in regards to generosity, as well as the obvious, blessing others. We asked each person to share their story over the next 14 days. So be on the look out!

Live Hydrated.

Sorry to the 5 of you who read this thing :), but with Mother's Day this past Sunday and a special Sunday coming up...we have/are taking a 2 week diversion from Dehydrated. We will pick up again Monday with more thoughts on the Holy Spirit. Make plans for the special Hydrate experience Pentecost Sunday @ 6 PM!

Verge of Adultery

Kristen and I will be celebrating 10 years of marriage this August, so I have had this whole marriage motif on the brain.  I talked about this yesterday in service. We, as the Church, are the bride of Christ. We are married to Christ in covenant union with Him sealed by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit, as we have learned is our convincer - he makes us aware and convinces us of where we are in standing with Christ. There is never a more difficult place in a marriage than when someone is committing adultery. When someone goes outside the marriage to get a need met. That is what cheating is...getting a legitimate need met in an illegitimate way. You cheat on your spouse and yourself and the consequences are horrible; this is why God hates divorce...he knows the consequences. Truth is, we are divorced in our hearts long before we sign the papers; that is why spouses are often stunned and shocked when affairs are revealed, because they didn't realize, they didn't know the other person has turned away in their heart first. This was the accusation of Jesus in Revelation 2 to the Ephesian Church. He said he was proud of the consistency, constancy, the work, the effort, but the charge was they were slipping away. They were on the verge of spiritual adultery and almost divorced in their hearts from him.  They had forgotten their first love.  He said, go back and do what you did in the beginning. How you get there is what keeps you there. 

Sometimes you have to go back, back to your knees, back to prayer and fasting, back to engaging Scripture, back to the simple things. You have to go inward to solve the outward problems of your life. You have to engage your heart. It is the hardest work in the world, but it is the simplest...do what you did in the beginning. Remember the beginning and start there. The Holy Spirit will help you restore your marriage to Christ. He will bring you back from the verge of adultery and spiritual divorce. He will help you renew your vows and live the covenant relationship out to its fullest. 

If you are committing adultery, repent. If you are divorced, remarry. Whatever you do, find your way back to Christ, he has never left and has been and always will be faithful. (Gal.5.23; Rev. 2)

Live Hydrated.

Emotional Living

How many of your daily decisions flow from your emotions? Emotionally-based decisions can get us into serious trouble, especially if those emotions go unchecked. Often we live out of our emotions because we are either too lazy to do the work on our character or totally unsure how to change. The Holy Spirit is the character-developer. He brings about the fruit of our lives. When our mind, will and affections are surrendered to him, we can be emotional, but they won't rule us. The Spirit, our counselor, teaches us how to discipline our thoughts and think like God. He illuminates the Word of God and causes us to live by revelation and biblically-based reasoning. When we think rightly, we make right choices. Our will becomes infused with Holy Spirit strength to choose holiness. Sin becomes useless, an irritant when our mind and will are functioning and flowing with the Holy Spirit. Our affections become distinguishable from our emotions. If our affections are for God and our emotions are normal and neutral, then it is about our response to those emotions. The Holy Spirit must have control; He must lead, and He must lead in the minutia of life. it is in the nitty-gritty of daily life, in the decisions we make that we don't even think about that His influence must be present. It is a supernatural impulse. When we spend the time working on the nine dimensions of the fruit through prayer, study, and other disciplines, then those emotional outbursts or emotionally numb decisions will not take our life in the wrong direction. The steps of the righteous are ordered by God. The Holy Spirit is the guide to those steps. There will be times when we have too many emotions, not enough emotion, distorted emotions, super high or super low emotions; circumstances create all kinds of emotions in us, but the big question is do we let our emotions rule us or the Holy Spirit? How you answer that question will determine not only where you end up in life, but how you get there.

Live Hydrated.

Pace

Sometimes the greatest hindrance in bearing the fruit of the Spirit is the pace of our culture. Character is not formed in a pressure cooker or microwave, but in a crock pot or open fire. It takes longer than what we are use to - it is inconvenient.  That is what discipline is; it is inconveniencing our will to submit and conform to the will of the Spirit. The Spirit will teach us about our character and our heart. He will show us what is there, what is missing and what needs to go.  If we aren't walking with Him, it is easy to deny, push down, push past, pretend, or lie to ourselves about who we are and how people experience us. Tuning into the Spirit is critical to living a life of love, joy, peace, kindness, faithfulness, humility, and self control. You can't live just from your head, you must live from your heart also. Knowing the right things is different than embracing and living them out. That is what the Holy Spirit does.  He helps connect our head and heart, and that process takes time.  You can understand intellectually immediately, but surrender happens through a daily discipline rooted in the teaching, counsel and comfort of the Holy Spirit.  

Slow your heart down today regardless of how busy you are.  Let the Holy Spirit use your experiences to shape your heart and ultimately your life.

Live Hydrated.

Positioning

We talked yesterday about how we reposition ourselves through repentance and God repositions us through justification in our "come to Jesus" experience.  Position is important when it comes to a lot of things.  If you are out of position on a football field, you miss the tackle; on a baseball field, you botch the grounder; on a soccer field, you let the goal pass. Position matters. The same is true in our relationship with the Holy Spirit.  He promises to be the constant presence in our lives, but do we position ourselves before Him in a way that allows us to be taught, comforted, and empowered or are we resistant, scared, or disinterested?  When we stay distant, we get dehydrated because we aren't taking in as much as we are putting out. 

Right now in our new series Dehydrated, we are working through the fruit of the Spirit or the character-development function of the Holy Spirit. Truth is we become like who we spend our time with.  This week find some ways to get alone before God the Spirit and spend some time with Him - position yourself.  You can do this through prayer, reading or listening to Scripture, trying a worship CD in the car or downloading something from iTunes, skipping a meal or two and fast and pray during your lunch hour, or whatever way you know works best for you when it comes to connecting with God.  When you do things like this, it begins a deeper relationship with the Holy Spirit, and it gives Him room to work in you and on you. So this week - change up the routine a little and reposition yourself in front of God, and let him begin to work on your heart/character in a new and fresh way. You will feel closer to Him, begin to recognize his voice, and eventually, become more like Him. You got to start somewhere, and the starting point is your position.

Live Hydrated.

Hydrate Comments

Thanks to everyone who commented on last week's blog posts.  There were some really great insights and thought-provoking questions.  I think just stating those deep questions help others because we all have had them or presently do have them right now.  When we share our burdens, we see we are not the only one who struggles in relationship with God the Spirit. Although there are sometimes no simple answers, or maybe no answers at all, and everybody is different - there is a place to work through it, engage, and discover.  This series is all about tackling these profound questions in a simple way.  By the end, I want people to have a basic understanding of the person and purpose of the Holy Spirit.  I also want people who have never experienced an encounter with the Holy Spirit to do so for the first time in some way.

Positioning ourselves is critical.  And I will talk about that tomorrow...

Live hydrated today.

Dual Purpose

Had a great comment from Monday's post about the function or purpose of the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit functions to make our character like Christ's and through our character we become better equipped to witness of the reality of Jesus.  There are power encounters that deepen and strengthen our confidence to go and make disciples as Jesus commanded us.  Those encounters are for us, but also for others.  There is always a dual purpose, because our lives are not one-dimensional.  If Jesus said the kingdom rests on loving God and loving others, as we love ourselves, then our experiences in the Spirit are for us to be loved/blessed/transformed, in order that we may love/bless/transform others. 

Sunday we begin a 3-week portion of the Dehydrated series on the nine dimensions of the character of the Spirit, often called the fruit of the Spirit.  We will be taking a deeper look at Galatians 5 and study how our lives are to be lived in Christ. Too many times on studies on the Holy Spirit people want to focus first on power and gifts, but gifts without character, power without love, Paul says is WORTHLESS.  So we are starting with the foundation of who we are, our being, so that out of who we are can flow the doing part of our life - our gifting. When we do this, we find a balance to our existence.  Dehydration means your body is out of balance - not enough coming into the body in relationship to what is going out; same is true for the Church - we are out of balance because we often highlight one over the other, gifts over fruit or fruit over gifts and miss wholeness which the Holy Spirit came to bring as our Counselor and Comforter.  It is not an either-or, but a both-and reality.  You have to have both functioning in your life to reach your full potential in Christ. 

I am going old school Sunday and pulling out the ole whiteboard and will TEACH not preach...yeah right, I will get a little loud somewhere along the way!  See you Sunday @ 929 or 1101 for week 2 of Dehydrated - invite, invite, invite! Know Christ; Make Him known!

bmh

Relate-ability

In our new series Dehydrated, we are talking about spiritual dehydration resulting from a lack of understanding and relationship with the Holy Spirit. Yesterday I talked about 5 ways we unintentionally quench the Holy Spirit in our lives, and slowly but surely, cause dehydration without realizing it.  

My first reason was the RELATE-ABILITY FACTOR.  Most of us have some difficulty relating to the Holy Spirit, because he is just that...a Spirit.  We understand the concept of Father and Son - those are common to us, but the Spirit is kind of weird, spooky, out-there, mystical, supernatural. Although we are suppose to be living supernatural lives in a natural world, the inverse is usually the case. Trying to connect with the Holy Spirit is often a great challenge.  I listed some other reasons like we treat the Holy Spirit as an IT not a HIM or we define Him by our bad experiences with people or churches; those all contribute and work together.  I think at the outset however, just the fact this Spirit of God, Spirit of Truth, Holy Ghost is so invisible, seemingly unattainable, uncontrollable, more spiritual, and more unlike us intimidates most believers at the very outset. As a result, we have a tendency to check-out of relationship with Him because it is too hard, too confusing, or just plain too much.

But I wonder how many of you have in the past or are presently wrestling with the Relate-ability Factor? Some people simply don't have a reference point or know how to get started in this relationship with the Holy Spirit.  I challenged you hard core yesterday to be honest about your presuppositions and bring them to God, and then pray a very dangerous prayer...Holy Spirit show me who You are according to You, not according to me. With that prayer in mind, read/listen to the Scripture, and let the text say what it says about the Holy Spirit. That is the starting point! This type of prayer and study brings transformation in your life and gives you an exciting new adventure to pursue with God, because God will answer.  Jeremiah records these words...God says, "Seek Me and you will find Me, when you seek Me with all of your heart." 

If you are willing, post some comments or questions about the Relate-ability Factor; maybe even share a little of your own story.  We can all learn from one another's experiences and questions.

bmh

DEHYDRATED

Dehydration is a condition that occurs when the loss of body fluids, mostly water, exceeds the amount that is taken in. With dehydration, more water is moving out of our cells and then out of our bodies than the amount of water we take in through drinking. When we lose too much water, our bodies become out of balance or dehydrated. Severe dehydration can lead to death.  I think the Church is a little, and in some cases severely, spiritually dehydrated. We have taken in programs, systems, strategic thinking, technology, etc. - mostly all good things and been so busy creating stuff, copying what we see in others, trying with our own might to do good that we haven't really noticed that our actual daily intake of the Holy Spirit has suffered leaving us weak, thirsty, and dizzy. We are spiritually short, and many of us are dehydrated, cramping and dying. We are in desperate need of an infusion of the love and power of God the Spirit.  When the means becomes the end, things (people) get out of balance - leaders, pastors, churches, Christians.  It is easy to do, especially in our culture and the pace of our lives - even missional ones. This Sunday @ Genesis Church we begin a new series called DEHYDRATED.  It is a series about the Holy Spirit. We will learn who He is and how we connect to Him, and maybe, just maybe in the weeks ahead we will experience Him in a fresh way that quenches our spiritual thirst and strengthens our lives as we learn to live fully hydrated. Come experience it @ 929 or 1101 in our new facility at the corner of Fred George and Mission Road. Check back here Mondays and Wednesdays during the series as we discuss in detail the person and work of the Holy Spirit - be part of it all and invite a friend!

bmh