Knocking at Our Door
Bob Wickizer
Isaiah 43:1-7
Our reading in the Book of Acts today makes an important distinction that I had never noticed before. Peter and John ''went down and prayed for [the people of Samaria] that they might receive the Holy Spirit (for as yet the Spirit had not come upon any of them; they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus). Then Peter and John laid their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.''
We could get into a great theological discussion here about the difference in baptism between different Christian denominations but that misses the point entirely. The distinction here has to do with being baptized in name only versus receiving the Holy Spirit. When we receive the Holy Spirit then our life reorients so that our actions are focused on the benefit of others. We lose our self-absorption and we live so that others may have life.
Churches of all kinds place too much emphasis on the physical church as the place where one receives the Holy Spirit. Of course that misses the point too because if you are not already in church then you sure won't receive the Holy Ghost. I think that we receive the Holy Ghost in the ebb and flow of our daily lives. The challenge for all of us is to recognize that and then act on it.
An example of receiving the Holy Spirit and paying the price for it is the real life story of Jack.
Jack grew up in a house full of books. He enjoyed reading and a family life full of love and vitality until his mother died of cancer when he was ten. His father never recovered from her death so that her passing meant that home life for the two brothers would never again be warm and satisfying. Although his mother introduced him into the church, Jack remarked after his mother's death that ''the God he encountered in church and in the Bible his mother gave him was, if not cruel, at least a vague abstraction.'' He became a self-avowed atheist by the time he was a teenager.
Although he ...
Bob Wickizer
Isaiah 43:1-7
Our reading in the Book of Acts today makes an important distinction that I had never noticed before. Peter and John ''went down and prayed for [the people of Samaria] that they might receive the Holy Spirit (for as yet the Spirit had not come upon any of them; they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus). Then Peter and John laid their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.''
We could get into a great theological discussion here about the difference in baptism between different Christian denominations but that misses the point entirely. The distinction here has to do with being baptized in name only versus receiving the Holy Spirit. When we receive the Holy Spirit then our life reorients so that our actions are focused on the benefit of others. We lose our self-absorption and we live so that others may have life.
Churches of all kinds place too much emphasis on the physical church as the place where one receives the Holy Spirit. Of course that misses the point too because if you are not already in church then you sure won't receive the Holy Ghost. I think that we receive the Holy Ghost in the ebb and flow of our daily lives. The challenge for all of us is to recognize that and then act on it.
An example of receiving the Holy Spirit and paying the price for it is the real life story of Jack.
Jack grew up in a house full of books. He enjoyed reading and a family life full of love and vitality until his mother died of cancer when he was ten. His father never recovered from her death so that her passing meant that home life for the two brothers would never again be warm and satisfying. Although his mother introduced him into the church, Jack remarked after his mother's death that ''the God he encountered in church and in the Bible his mother gave him was, if not cruel, at least a vague abstraction.'' He became a self-avowed atheist by the time he was a teenager.
Although he ...
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