Category: Holy Spirit

  • Busy Beaver – another helper

    We need the Holy Spirit

    Beaver

    One summer in my late teens, I worked for an oilfield service  company. I was a grunt laborer and traveled into the field doing whatever necessary and unpleasant work needed to be done.

    For a while, we had a beaver problem. Beavers are one way God uses His animals to mold and shape His creation. Their system of dam building can transform an area incredibly over time.

    This particular beaver had decided to dam a culvert on a small creek, causing the road to flood. I’d get out of the truck, don hip waders, and pull the dam apart. In a day or two, the busy beaver would have it rebuilt. Various crews tore the dam down on multiple occasions.

    The company I worked for even brought someone in to dynamite the dam and the beaver’s lodge. Even that didn’t work. The determined rodent started to rebuild. In the end, they called a trapper in and removed the beaver from the area.

    Sometimes, we can be like that very determined rodent. We slave away at things, only to have them fail. Then we do it all over again and wonder why it doesn’t work.

    Author Rita Brown once said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”It’s a profound quote often falsely attributed to Albert Einstein and others.

    We try to live and serve under our own direction and power rather than relying on the leading of the Spirit. It’s a form of insanity.

    Only God’s plans are infallible. Only God’s ways will lead us to the right place. We need the Spirit.

    We were given the Spirit as a helper.

    And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever. John 14:16 ESV

    …the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. John 14:26 ESV

    Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. Romans 8:26-27 ESV

    But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth. Acts 1:8 ESV

    All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills. 1 Corinthians 12:11 ESV

    As believers, we have choices. We can work feverishly but in futility. Or we can trust the Spirit to lead and trust the Lord to produce fruit.

    I pray we are all a little less like that beaver and a lot more like Jesus.

    Hallelu Yah (Praise God)

    Be blessed, 

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  • Sealed – Holy Spirit Guaranteed

    artists conception of Noah's ark

    One of the things that always amazes me is how often we miss  critical details when we read familiar Bible stories. It may be because we have heard or read them so often that we don’t actually read them.

    Let me cite a couple of examples from the account of Noah and the flood.

    How many animals did Noah allow into the ark? Most people will say that’s easy. It’s two; he brought the animals onboard two by two.

    The Bible has a different answer.

    Then the Lord said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and all your household, for I have seen that you are righteous before me in this generation. Take with you seven pairs of all clean animals, the male and his mate, and a pair of the animals that are not clean, the male and his mate, and seven pairs of the birds of the heavens also, male and female, to keep their offspring alive on the face of all the earth. Genesis 7:1-3 ESV

    There are pairs, seven pairs for clean animals and birds and a single pair for the unclean.

    How did the Ark stay afloat when everything else, including boats, was destroyed?

    Was it the construction? God gave very explicit instructions about how to build it.

    And God said to Noah, “I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth. Make yourself an ark of gopher wood.Make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and out with pitch. This is how you are to make it: the length of the ark 300 cubits,its breadth 50 cubits, and its height 30 cubits. Make a roof for the ark, and finish it to a cubit above, and set the door of the ark in its side. Make it with lower, second, and third decks.  Genesis 6:13-16 ESV

    That may be part of the reason, but the larger portion of the answer is recorded elsewhere.

    And those that entered, male and female of all flesh, went in as God had commanded him. And the Lord shut him in. Genesis 7:16 ESV

    The ark remained afloat, keeping its inhabitants safe because the Lord sealed them in and the flood out.

    The Lord who sealed the ark for Noah, thus protecting Him, is the same Lord who seals us when we are Christians. It’s why Paul could say with confidence,

    Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death? (As the Scriptures say, “For your sake we are killed every day; we are being slaughtered like sheep.”No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us. Romans 8:35-37 ESV

    Jesus put it this way:

    I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. John 10:28-29 ESV

    Believers are sealed in by God. What a blessing.

    Be blessed

    Hallelu Yah / Praise God 

    Kevin

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