Hey All…
He refused to explain the Bible to us. He wouldn’t tell any of us. We were a group of four teenage fellas who had gotten really hungry for all that God had for us. Our youth pastor, Scott, had been teaching through the Book of Acts just like we are doing this fall at Mt. Hope. When he spoke about the Holy Spirit from Acts 1 and 2, we were completely lost. So, we went to Scott. “What does this mean,” we asked. He refused to say. It was maddening and brilliant all at the same time. I’ll tell you why in Deeper Thoughts below… But first… LOTS of important things coming up: · Ladies… TOMORROW, September 14, 7:00 - 9:00 p.m. put on your cowboy boots and hat and come line dancing with us! Click here for more info and to RSVP! PLUS… SAVE THE DATE for Saturday, October 19 from 9 a.m. – 3:30 p.m. for a One-Day Women's Retreat at the Mt. Hope Pavilion! More details to come! · All-Church Workday… come hang with an amazing group of people, all while helping spruce up the church facility and campus on NEXT Saturday, September 21, 9:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. · Kick-Off Prayer and Worship Night – Sunday, September 29, 6:00 p.m. – Join us for a very special night of worship, seeking God, guided prayer, and discussions about our Mt. Hope future. Through the fall season, look for a series of powerful prayer and worship gatherings, prayer vigils, and at-home guided prayer experiences. As a church family, let’s seek the face of God for our future, to believe God for supernatural provision for our facility expansion, and to listen to the Holy Spirit for each of our individual callings. · Also, as we refresh our vision for prayer as a church, look for a brand-new prayer wall and prayer cards this Sunday morning. Plan to share your prayer needs with us. Individual prayer partners will carry each prayer need before God and follow up with you until God supplies the answer. We’re getting serious about seeking God in fresh and powerful ways! · Do you want to connect with others at Mt. Hope? Did you know we have an online church directory? You have to sign up to participate… we’ll have resources and information for you on Sunday. Oh… and Dave Firestone will have his camera along to grab a profile photo of you if you’d like! OK…that’s it today for you email skimmers and those who prefer to not understand scripture. BUT… Some Deeper Thoughts… You’d think a good youth pastor would be super excited to tell his fired-up teenage boys all about the Bible. Especially when they ask. But nope. He refused. He had a method to his madness. And it worked. You see, Pastor Scott was wandering into a section of scripture that just about every other church in our tradition steered well clear of. Historically, there had been some churches who had taken these passages of scripture and wandered into a little bit of weirdness with them. Since there had been a lot of confusion about the subject in those days--and in some cases, some fairly dangerous misuse of the topic—churches like ours had all but abandoned teaching on the “baptism of the Holy Spirit.” It was considered too risky. People might misunderstand. Folks might get swept into false doctrine. Some might get overly emotional. Others might feel alienated and fearful. So, most pastors in our church tradition just skipped this part of the Bible altogether. But there was a problem with that strategy: Jesus didn’t skip over it. He told his disciples to press in: “Do not leave Jerusalem,” Jesus said, “but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 1:4-5). “What does this mean, Pastor Scott?” we eager teenagers asked him after the youth service one night. (An important note if you are somewhat theologically astute… you might recognize these terms: We were not in a “Pentecostal” or “charismatic” church whatsoever. Our church was just like Mt. Hope—a middle of the road, evangelical, Bible teaching church with a fairly calm and mainstream worship style.) We stood there anxiously awaiting Scott’s explanation. He quietly opened his Bible, thumbed back to the same passage in Acts, and read it out loud to us again. Then he closed the Bible and looked at us. We waited. He stared. It got awkward. “Um… Scott, so what does it mean? What is this ‘baptism of the Holy Spirit’? What does it look like?” He opened his Bible again, read the passage aloud, closed it again, and continued his creepy stare. About a week later, all four of us made an appointment to meet with Scott at his home to talk more about this. In that context, lazing on his massive 1980’s puffy blue couch, he gave us more time. This time when we pressed him, he opened his Bible and read us a bunch of passages--Luke 3:7-17; John 14:15-17; John 16:7-15; Acts 1:4-8; Acts 2:1-12; Acts 4:31; Acts 8:9-25; Acts 10:1-48; Acts 19:1-7. “Now we’re getting somewhere,” we thought. And then we verbalized the question everyone had out loud: “So, what does this look like? When the Holy Spirit comes upon us, how will we know? What will it look like? What will it feel like?” You can probably guess what Scott did next: He opened his Bible, began to read the passages again… Scott never added a single word of interpretation. He offered no explanation. He did not give us a model of what it looked like. He never showed us a video. He did not take us to a church service where people talked about it. He refused to give us any instruction whatsoever. Brilliant. This did two things. First, we got super hungry. We could not be content without knowing for ourselves what God had for us. Without Scott giving us any guidance except the raw words of scripture, we were certain there was something we didn’t yet understand, and God was going to have to reveal it. This led us to seek God fervently. When God answered, it was obviously God. Secondly, Scott brilliantly protected us from an over-emotionalized, experience-seeking, theologically distorted error that some folks in more charismatic traditions had fallen prey to. He forced us to find only what God was revealing, not what man would impose upon us. Friends, I wonder if we have been undersold on this topic. Some of our churches have avoided it altogether, leaving us entirely unaware of what God intends for us from this text of scripture. Others have run headlong into it with a zeal and enthusiasm that over-emphasizes and hyper-emotionalizes it, taking it where it was never intended to be. This Sunday, would you trust me to unpack these texts with you and give you some clarity? I’ll be a little more forthcoming that Pastor Scott was—you are adults, and we can handle sorting this out together. But I also promise you that we will discover a scriptural promise that fits right here in our own tradition and style without getting weird. If you have any background with this topic that makes you a bit nervous, I’ll take really good care of you, explain the controversies that surround the topic, share my take on scripture, and explain why Mt. Hope is who we are with it. Do some reading in advance… the texts are all up there where Scott read them to us. Then, let’s seek out the scriptures together!! Much love to all… Chris Eads Mt. Hope Pastor Friend
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