Category Archives: Holy Spirit

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April 9, 2026

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Attitudes & Behavior, Fruit of the Spirit, Holy Spirit, Love & Works, Salvation: A New You

A LITTLE LIKE A SWISS ARMY KNIFE

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. The law is not against such things. [Galatians 5:22-23 (CSB)]

In contrast to works, which are produced by us, the Fruit of the Spirit is produced by the Holy Spirit. Rather than a basket with a variety of fruit, this is one indivisible fruit characterized by nine virtues: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. We could call this the “Christlikeness fruit” because these characteristics describe Jesus and should describe us.

Planted by the Spirit in our hearts when we accept Jesus, the Fruit of the Spirit is a little like a Swiss Army knife with its numerous functions. Just as the multi-faceted pocketknife can provide us with two blades, along with a corkscrew, screwdriver, bottle opener, scissors, toothpick, tweezers, can opener, and key ring, the Fruit of the Spirit is an all-purpose spiritual tool providing us with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Victorinox, however, doesn’t equip every Swiss Army knife with the same tools. With its 13 functions, their rescue knife comes with a saw for cutting shatterproof glass, a seatbelt cutter, and a window breaker but it doesn’t have the huntsman knife’s corkscrew and multi-purpose hook or the mini champ’s cuticle pusher and orange peeler! Unlike the knife maker, however, God equips every one of His children with the same nine all-purpose attributes in the Fruit of the Spirit!

It’s not Victorinox’s “cross on shield” logo that identifies it; the knife is known by its tools! In the same way, it’s not labeling ourselves Christians that identifies us as such—we’re known as Christ’s followers when the Fruit of the Spirit is evident in our behavior. The tools on any Swiss Army knife are meant to be used but, once it’s sold, Victorinox doesn’t care if you never open the knife. The virtues of the Fruit of the Spirit, however, are meant to be evident and God notices when they aren’t.

When describing the Fruit of the Spirit in “newspaper English,” famed preacher Samuel Chadwick (1860-1932) may have said it best: “The Fruit of the Spirit is an affectionate, lovable disposition, a radiant spirit and a cheerful temper, a tranquil mind and a quiet manner, a forbearing patience in provoking circumstances and with trying people, a sympathetic insight and tactful helpfulness, generous judgment and a big-souled charity, loyalty and reliableness under all circumstances, humility that forgets self in the joy of others, in all things self-mastered and self-controlled, which is the final mark of perfecting.” It is the presence of the Fruit of the Spirit that enables us to grow more like Jesus every day—to have His purpose, thoughts, words and actions be ours.

We recognize a Swiss Army knife by its tools; do people recognize us by our fruit?

“I give you a new command: ‘Love one another.’ Just as I have loved you, you are also to love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”  [John 13:34-35 (CSB)]

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November 17, 2025

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Attitudes & Behavior, Challenges & Difficulty, God's Grace & Love, Holy Spirit, Patience & Perseverance, Trusting God

NITROGLYCERIN

Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing. [James 1:2-4 (NLT)]

Back in the days before coronary artery bypass surgery and angioplasty, my father had heart disease and often suffered from the burning chest pain of angina. When that occurred, he would stop briefly, place a nitroglycerin tablet under his tongue, and his pain would ease. Medical nitroglycerin acts as a vasodilator by dilating or expanding the blood vessels so the heart doesn’t have to work as hard to pump blood through those vessels.

When I was a little girl and my dad took one of his nitro tablets, I didn’t know how they worked. Having seen enough Saturday matinees to know that liquid nitroglycerin is so unstable that the slightest jolt can cause it to explode, I couldn’t understand how my father could safely carry it around in his pocket, let alone put it in his mouth. After all, when Tweety Bird put it in Sylvester’s medicine, the cat blew up! Elmer Fudd used it when battling Bugs Bunny, and I’m sure Wyle E. Coyote purchased some from Acme in his effort to destroy the Roadrunner. The bad guys in westerns blew up train tracks, bank safes, or mines with nitroglycerin and I wondered how something capable of blasting a hole in the side of a mountain could keep my father’s heart from exploding in a heart attack.

Whether in its liquid form or stabilized with clay in dynamite, nitroglycerin is the most dangerous and unstable explosive there is and yet both explosive and medical nitroglycerin have the same chemical formula. How can one can destroy us while the other helps? The difference is that medical nitro is highly diluted, given in a minute dose, and stabilized when manufactured. The trials in our lives are a little like nitroglycerin. Whether they destroy or help us depends on what we make of them and how we use them. We live in an imperfect fallen world and, like it or not, every one of us will face ordeals and troubles throughout our lives. Some we bring on ourselves as consequences of our own sin. But, as happened with Job, many of life’s trials seem as undeserved, random, and unexpected as a tornado; they can descend upon us without rhyme or reason. Without God, those trials can demolish our lives as easily as nitroglycerin can demolish a building. With God, however, like medicinal nitroglycerin, trials can help our heart for Him.

God’s purpose isn’t to give us easy comfortable lives; He wants us to grow into the image of his son, Jesus Christ (which is what sanctification is all about). Everything in our lives, both good and bad, is designed to help us reach that goal. Unfortunately, when all is going smoothly, we tend to forget about God, just as easily as my father forgot about his diseased heart when relaxing in his recliner. But, just as the pain from stress or strenuous exercise made him turn to his nitro, trials force us to turn to God.

I lose the analogy between trials and nitroglycerin here because, while those tiny nitro pills alleviated the pain in my father’s chest, they didn’t cure his heart disease. They were a temporary fix and he died of a massive heart attack at the age of 56. Trials, however, do more than ease the symptoms of what’s wrong with us; they can actually shape and fix us. Unlike heart disease, disappointment, despair, and disaster don’t have to kill us. Faith is a muscle and, just like the heart, it grows stronger when it is exercised. Somewhat like bypass surgery and cardiac rehab, God fixes our hearts with trials—it may hurt for a while but it gets better and we get stronger!

Whether our trials are as destructive as liquid nitroglycerin or as therapeutic as nitroglycerin pills depends upon our reaction to them. We can become bitter or we can consider them blessings in disguise. We can rebel or choose to trust God and accept His grace to deal with our difficulty and pain. Rather than a cardiologist, we have the Holy Spirit who will give us all of the comfort, strength, and wisdom we need to endure our trials. Because of Him, we can emerge from our trials with mended hearts and a stronger, purer, and more mature faith.

Trials are medicines which our gracious and wise physician prescribes because we need them; and he proportions the frequency and weight of them to what the case requires. [John Newton]

And I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit in you. I will take out your stony, stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart. And I will put my Spirit in you so that you will follow my decrees and be careful to obey my regulations. [Ezekiel 36:26-27 (NLT)]

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May 19, 2025

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Church & Worship, Holy Spirit, Knowing Him, Salvation: A New You, Today: Make it Count

A CHANGE OF HEART

For you are not a true Jew just because you were born of Jewish parents or because you have gone through the ceremony of circumcision. No, a true Jew is one whose heart is right with God. And true circumcision is not merely obeying the letter of the law; rather, it is a change of heart produced by the Spirit. [Romans 2:28-29a (NLT)]

In 1962, my 2-month-old nephew Johnny and his parents traveled 1,500 miles for his Baptism. Because my mother was hospitalized (and soon would be dead), the sacrament took place at her bedside. This was the only time Johnny and his grandmother met and the last time my sister saw our mother alive.

Believing that children should be free to find their own way to God, my brother-in-law was opposed to infant baptism. Nevertheless, my father wanted that baby baptized as much as he wanted my mother to meet her first grandchild. Because children under 12 were not allowed to visit hospitals back then, he convinced my brother-in-law that a hospital baptism was the only way my mother could see and hold the little guy. The hospital was run by the Sisters of Charity so he knew the nuns wouldn’t deny his request for a bedside baptism (especially since he neglected to mention that the priest was Episcopalian rather than Roman Catholic). That we were Protestants, however, didn’t keep the nuns from joining us during the service.

Unfortunately, other than the funerals of his grandparents, Johnny’s baptism probably was the only time he came near a minister, church, Bible, prayer book, holy water, or even a nun. While his parents were good people, they never attended church and the boy had no religious education. By the time he was in his teens, the troubled youth was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder. As often happens for people with severe mental illness, he self-medicated with drugs and alcohol. A vicious cycle began as the substance abuse exacerbated his mental illness and his disease increased the abuse.

Unable to stay on his meds and off drugs, he was a lost soul. When he wasn’t in jail, the hospital, or couch surfing through the homes of other users, Johnny lived on the streets. Sadly, it was on those streets that he died from a fentanyl overdose. While I can’t know what is in anyone’s heart, I doubt that Johnny believed in Jesus. Nevertheless, he was baptized; did that sprinkle of water mean he was saved?

As a sign of God’s covenant with Israel, all of Abraham’s descendants were to be circumcised. In Romans 2, however, Paul points out that, for the Jew, the true sign of belonging to God was not the ceremony of circumcision; it was a change of heart produced by God’s Spirit. It was God’s spiritual surgery upon the heart rather than the removal of one’s foreskin that made a Jew right with God. While there are parallels between baptism and circumcision, they symbolize two very different covenants. Nevertheless, while studying Romans and rereading today’s verse, I replaced “Jew” with “Christian” and “circumcision” with “baptism.” Indeed, Christianity has nothing to do with parentage nor does baptism bring salvation; salvation requires a change of heart.

The Book of Common Prayer (1958) calls baptism an “outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.” Without that “inward and spiritual grace,” I fear it is just a ritual. External actions like baptism, communion, genuflecting, making the sign of the cross, or church attendance are not what make us Christians. Salvation doesn’t come by works or sacraments; it comes through God’s grace through faith!

Assuming Johnny never came to know Jesus and be filled with His Holy Spirit, I fear that my nephew’s baptism didn’t make him a Christian any more than his hospital circumcision made him a Jew. While baptism is a step of obedience for every Christian, it does not save us. Our salvation is because of Jesus’ death and resurrection and is available only through faith in Jesus Christ. Let us all beware of trusting that baptism alone will bring us to heaven.

Tragically, some people believe they are going to heaven when they die just because a few drops of water were sprinkled over their heads a few weeks after their birth. They have no personal faith, have never made a personal decision, and are banking on a hollow ceremony to save them. How absurd. [Max Lucado]

If you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by openly declaring your faith that you are saved. [Romans 10:9-10 (NLT)]

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February 24, 2025

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Attitudes & Behavior, Church & Worship, Holy Spirit, Spiritual Gifts

WHAT DO WE BRING TO THE TABLE?

I encourage you to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, dedicated to God and pleasing to him. This kind of worship is appropriate for you. Don’t become like the people of this world. Instead, change the way you think. Then you will always be able to determine what God really wants—what is good, pleasing, and perfect. … God in his kindness gave each of us different gifts. [Romans 12:1b-2,6a (GW)]

FarmWhen told that the gifts the Holy Spirit gives us are unique for our specific ministries, we get nervous. We already have a career, didn’t sign up for seminary, and aren’t interested in being ministers. While being a minister/pastor/priest is a vocation, the ministry is the work of every Christian. No matter what our professions, we are all called to minister and that doesn’t necessarily mean pastoring a church. It means serving God and His people in Jesus’ name, which is where those spiritual gifts come in. God is not about to send us off empty-handed.

In job interviews, applicants often are asked, “What do you bring to the table?” With God, however, it’s a little different. When we come to him, He doesn’t care about our resume, how much or little we know, or how many assets we bring to Him. When we come to His table, we receive our own personal coach in the way of the Holy Spirit who provides us with at least one spiritual asset personally designed for us.

In Matthew 9, Jesus spoke of the harvest being plentiful but the laborers being few. I wonder—is it the labor pool that is lacking or is it the willingness of the laborers to do His work that is missing? As Christians, we’re filled with the Holy Spirit and yet we often seem void of His promised gifts. Is it that we don’t recognize our gifts or are we simply unwilling to use them? Last week, while receiving Communion with others in the congregation, I wondered what gifts we each brought to God’s holy table and how many of those unused gifts we were taking back home with us.

I suspect that there are enough laborers but we’re just waiting for the ideal job, the perfect opportunity, or the ideal situation to arise. My brother remained unemployed for years because of that attitude; although there were plenty of opportunities, none were the precise one he desired! There should be no unemployment line in God’s Kingdom! We forget that God’s strength is made perfect in our weakness. Not only does He equip us but He also offers on-the-job training!

I’ve taken assorted Spiritual Gift inventories and, while they can be helpful, I doubt their necessity. All we have to do is look at the harvesting needs around us and show up for work. We’ll soon figure out if driving the combine, baling the hay, swinging the scythe, hand-picking the berries, cleaning the tools, transferring the grain to the silo, managing the logistics, marketing the wheat, bringing water to the thirsty, or feeding the workers is the job for which we’ve been designed. The important thing is to show up for the harvest; in God’s Kingdom, there should be no shortage of laborers! Let’s get to work!

When he saw the crowds, he felt sorry for them. They were troubled and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is large, but the workers are few. So ask the Lord who gives this harvest to send workers to harvest his crops.” [Matthew 9:36-38 (GW)]

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February 20, 2025

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Attitudes & Behavior, Challenges & Difficulty, God's Plan, Holy Spirit, Thanks & Praise, Today: Make it Count

HOW DO WE DO IT?

Speak to each other in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and chanting in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks for everything to God the father in the name of our Lord Jesus the Messiah. [Ephesians 5:19-20 NTE)]

lotus flowerJoe Btfsplk was a character in Al Capp’s Lil’ Abner comic strip. With a last name that sounds likes what’s known as a “raspberry” or “Bronx cheer,” the poor man had a dark cloud of perpetual bad luck hanging over his head. Btfsplk no longer appears in the comics but I think his dark cloud of misfortune has settled over the head of a dear friend I’ll call JB (in honor of Capp’s luckless character). Since JB’s retirement, if something could go wrong, it has and, as soon as one challenge resolves, another one appears. When I saw the photos from his most recent mishap, JB looked as if he’d been tossed around in a giant rock tumbler filled with broken glass and boulders.

I later learned that one of his wounds became infected (meaning a hospital stay) and, upon his release, JB fell and suffered a ruptured Achilles tendon! A modern-day Job, the poor guy can’t catch a break!

JB, like Job, could be described as an honorable and upright person who fears God. Fortunately, JB doesn’t have a group of friends (like Job’s) who blame his misfortunes on his unrepented sins. Nevertheless, like Job, JB probably wants to know the why of his continual trials. But, as a Bible-reading Christ follower who’s read the book of Job, JB understands that only our sovereign God knows why life unfolds as it does.

Paul’s words to the Ephesians were to always give “thanks for everything to God the Father” but, when considering JB’s trials, I wonder how it can be done. Were I under the dark cloud that seems to plague him with an unending downpour of challenges, I wonder if I could give thanks for it all. While giving thanks in some or most things is doable, the Greek word Paul used was pas which meant the entirety—every kind of circumstance. Rather than just the good or even tolerable stuff of life, we are to give thanks for the whole shebang (trials and all)!

It’s not as if Paul said those words flippantly. Like JB, his life was filled with trials and adversity. He suffered through more than his share of floggings, beatings, shipwrecks, imprisonment, persecution, physical infirmity, and pain. Giving thanks in such ordeals and trouble seems impossible until we look at Paul’s words leading up to today’s verses in which he said to “be filled with the Spirit!” [5:18] He also called on the power of the Spirit with his closing words to the Ephesians: “Just this: be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of his power.” [6:10] He told Philippians something similar: “I have strength for everything in the one who gives me power.” [4:13]

On our own, we might be able to put on a good front—grit our teeth, “grin and bear it,” or wear a martyr’s face while grumbling inside—but we need the power of the Holy Spirit to have a heart that is thankful to God in all things. It is by the Spirit’s power that we can focus on God, on His love, wisdom, and many blessings so that, knowing that He sees the future while we see only the present, we can submit to His sovereign plan with thanks and even joy.

I don’t think Paul’s words mean we have to be happy every time we end up in the ER, are diagnosed with cancer, or lose a loved one. The many psalms of lament show us that grief, anguish, and pain can coexist with gratitude. Rather than denying our pain, sorrow, or suffering, giving thanks during our trials reminds us that beauty, joy, and good still exist in spite of them. We can move from lament to gratitude because there always is something for which we can be thankful in every situation—even if it’s only that whatever happened wasn’t worse! We know that God is present and that He will strengthen, comfort, protect, and guide us through the dark storms of life and, for that, we can be thankful.

Admittedly, being thankful in all circumstances is not easy. Even famed evangelist Charles Spurgeon struggled. “I have not always found it easy to practice this duty; this I confess to my shame,” said the man known as the ‘Prince of Preachers.’ “When suffering extreme pain some time ago,” continued Spurgeon, “a brother in Christ said to me, ‘Have you thanked God for this?’ I replied that I desired to be patient, and would be thankful to recover. ‘But,’ said he, ‘in everything give thanks, not after it is over, but while you are still in it, and perhaps when you are enabled to give thanks for the severe pain, it will cease.’ I believe that there was much force in that good advice.” Indeed, there is!

Always celebrate, never stop praying; in everything be thankful (this is God’s will for you in the Messiah Jesus). [1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 NTE)]

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November 11, 2024

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Bible Stories, Family, Friends & Fellowship, God's Grace & Love, Holy Spirit

IMMANUEL

“And be sure of this,” He promised, “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” [Matthew 28:20 (NLT)]

My mother’s father abandoned his family when my she was five; neither she nor her brother saw him again. When I learned this as a youngster, I couldn’t understand how any father could do that. How could he not care about the children he left behind? Didn’t he want to know the beautiful woman who was my mother?

People come in and go out of our lives. Some people leave abruptly as did my grandfather and others just fade away. Either we move or our friends and neighbors do and we eventually lose touch with one another. While we lose some people to the moving van, others depart in a hearse. In this world, even our closest relationships are only temporary.

As Christians, however, we have one constant person in our lives: Jesus. When prophesying His arrival, Isaiah called Jesus Immanuel, meaning “God with us” or “God is with us.” As fully God and fully human when He walked the earth, Jesus was, indeed, Immanuel. But, because He was confined to the limitations of time and space in a human body, Jesus couldn’t be with everyone at once.

Unable to be with people in Jerusalem, Nazareth, Bethlehem, Cana, Bethany, Ephraim, Jericho, and Samaria at the same time, Jesus walked more than 3,000 miles during his three-year ministry. It was in Capernaum that He drove an evil spirit out of a man and healed both Simon Peter’s mother and the paralytic who came through the roof. To raise the widow’s son, however, He had to be in Nain and, when He healed the paralytic by the pool of Bethesda, he was near the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem. He healed those ten lepers somewhere along the border between Samaria and Galilee, had to go clear across the Sea of Galilee to the Gerasenes region to heal the demon-possessed man, and was north of Tyre and Sidon when He was approached by the Syrophoenician woman. Jesus couldn’t be with Martha, Mary, and the dying Lazarus in Bethany while He was with the disciples a day’s journey from Jerusalem. When He lived as a man, Jesus was only Immanuel, “God with Us,” to those who were physically near Him.

When Jesus died on the cross, He didn’t leave us alone the way the spouses of so many of my friends have; He returned three days later. When He ascended into heaven, He didn’t lose touch with us as often happens when people move. He certainly didn’t abandon us the way my grandfather did to his family. Although Jesus died, rose, and ascended into heaven, He never really left us because He gave us His Holy Spirit! His Spirit is with every one of us, all the time, no matter where we are or what we’re doing. No longer confined to a body or limited by time or space, Jesus is, indeed, Immanuel: God with Us.

The best news is that, unlike my grandfather who never came back for his children, Jesus will return!

And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, who will never leave you. He is the Holy Spirit, who leads into all truth. The world cannot receive him, because it isn’t looking for him and doesn’t recognize him. But you know him, because he lives with you now and later will be in you. No, I will not abandon you as orphans—I will come to you. [John 14:16-18 (NLT)]

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