holy spirit – Mum's devotional

Now I’m just being evil…

January 4th

“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.” Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city. The Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” And let the one who hears say, “Come!” Let the one who is thirsty come; and let the one who wishes take the free gift of the water of life.

Revelation 22:13-14, 17 (NIV)

It is true that the temporal order has its time; but the Eternal shall always have time. If this should not happen within a man’s life, then the Eternal comes again under another name, and once again shall always have time. This is repentance. Confession is a holy act, which calls for a collected mind. A collected mind is a mind that has collected itself from every distraction, from every relation, in order to center itself upon this relation to itself as an individual who is responsible to God. It is a mind that has collected itself from every distraction, and therefore also from all comparison. For comparison may either tempt a man to an earthly and fortuitous despondency because the one who compares must admit to himself that he is behind many others, or it may tempt him to pride because, humanly speaking, he seems to be ahead of many others.

Father in Heaven! What is a man without Thee! What is all that he knows, vast accumulation though it be, but a chipped fragment if he does not know Thee! What is all his striving, could it even encompass the world, but a half-finished work if he does not know Thee: Thee the One, who art one thing and who art all! So may Thou give to the intellect, wisdom to comprehend that one thing; to the heart, sincerity to receive this understanding; to the will, purity that wills only one thing. In prosperity may Thou grant perseverance to will one thing; amid distractions, collectedness to will one thing; in suffering, patience to will one thing. Oh, Thou that giveth both the beginning and the completion, may Thou early, at the dawn of day, give to the young man the resolution to will one thing. As the day wanes, may Thou give to the old man a renewed remembrance of his first resolution, that the first may be like the last, the last like the first, in possession of a life that has willed only one thing. Alas, but this has indeed not come to pass. Something has come in between. The separation of sin lies in between. Each day, and day after day something is being placed in between: delay, blockage, interruption, delusion, corruption. So in this time of repentance may Thou give the courage once again to will one thing. True, it is an interruption of our daily tasks; we do lay down our work as though it were a day of rest, when the penitent (and it is only in a time of repentance that the heavy-laden worker may be quiet in the confession of sin) is alone before Thee. This is indeed an interruption. But it is an interruption that searches back into its very beginnings that it might bind up anew that which sin has separated, that in its grief it might atone for lost time, that in its anxiety it might bring to completion that which lies beforeit. Oh, Thou that givest both the beginning and the completion, give Thou victory in the day of need so that what neither a man’s burning wish nor his determined resolution may attain to, may be granted unto him in the sorrowing of repentance: to will only one thing.

from Kierkegaard’s Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing (Ch. 15)

The good news is that since this is the last (daily) post, you will not be seeing any more Kierkegaard. The bad news is…. actually I don’t have any bad news. Sorry?

Being taught by God

December 30th

But you have received the Holy Spirit, and he lives within you, so you don’t need anyone to teach you what is true.* For the Spirit teaches you everything you need to know, and what he teaches is true—it is not a lie. So just as he has taught you, remain in fellowship with Christ.

1 John 2:27 (NLT)

All things are clear and open in the divine scriptures; all things that are necessary are plain.

…Tell me, with what pomp of words did Paul speak? and yet he converted the world. Or with what the unlettered Peter? ‘But I don’t know,’ you say, ‘the things that are contained in the divine scriptures.’ Why? are they spoken in Hebrew? are they in Latin, or in foreign tongues? ‘But they are expressed obscurely,’ you say. What is it that is obscure? Are there not histories? For (of course) you know the obvious parts since you inquire about the obscure. There are numberless histories in the scriptures.

Tell me one of these. But you cannot. These things are an excuse, and mere words. Every day, you say, one hears the same things. Tell me, then, do you not hear the same things in the theatres? are not all things the same? is it not the same sun that rises? is it not the same food that we use? I should like to ask you, since you say that you every day hear the same things; tell me, from what Prophet was the passage that was read? from what Apostle, or what Epistle? But you cannot tell me.

When you want to be lazy, you say that they are the same old thing. But when you are questioned, you are in the case of one who never heard them. If they are all the same, you ought to know them.

from John Chrysostom’s Homily 3

*Obviously, since the epistle was written by John the Evangelist there’s a bit of ‘Speak to a fool in his folly…. don’t speak to a fool in his folly’ going on. There’s clearly a place for teaching, encouragement, exhortation etc., the problem is when you rely on other people so that you don’t listen to the Holy Spirit for yourself, which is more what Chrysostom was talking about here.

O, Dayspring!

December 21st

O Dayspring, brightness of the everlasting light, Son of Justice, come to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death!

O Oriens* antiphon

These are the last words of David:

“The inspired utterance of David son of Jesse,
the utterance of the man exalted by the Most High,
the man anointed by the God of Jacob,
the hero of Israel’s songs:

The Spirit of the Lord spoke through me;
his word was on my tongue.
The God of Israel spoke,
the Rock of Israel said to me:
‘When one rules over people in righteousness,
when he rules in the fear of God,
he is like the light of morning at sunrise
on a cloudless morning,
like the brightness after rain
that brings grass from the earth.’
If my house were not right with God,
surely he would not have made with me an everlasting covenant,
arranged and secured in every part;
surely he would not bring to fruition my salvation
and grant me my every desire.”

2 Samuel 23:1-5 (NIV)

*If this sounds familiar it’s because O Come, O Come Emmanuel is based on the Greater [‘O’] Antiphons. As I may have said before, they are very, very old, and have been translated, paraphrased and re-translated many times.

Here is another John Wesley hymn: literally the only version of Hark! The Herald Angels Sing I found that I liked, by the U.S. Army Band of all things. (I think it’s just because it needs a lot of deep voices, but most of the men’s choruses that did it used the Willcocks arrangement, which I loathe with a passion.)

…and here is an image of another spiral galaxy, M74, from last year’s Hubble Advent Calendar in The Atlantic.

Here’s this year’s calendar, if anyone’s interested.

O, Key of David!

December 20th

O Key of David, and Scepter of the house of Israel; that opens and no man shuts; and shuts and no man opens: come to bring out the prisoner from the prison, and those that sit in darkness, and in the shadow of death.

O Clavis David antiphon

On that day I will call for my servant… and he will be like a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to the House of Judah. I will place the key of the House of David on his shoulder; what he opens, no one can close; what he closes, no one can open.

Isaiah 22:20-22 (HCSB)

Write to the angel of the church in Philadelphia:

“The Holy One, the True One, the One who has the key of David, who opens and no one will close, and closes and no one opens says: I know your works. Because you have limited strength, have kept My word, and have not denied My name, look, I have placed before you an open door that no one is able to close. Take note! I will make those from the synagogue of Satan, who claim to be Jews and are not, but are lying — note this — I will make them come and bow down at your feet, and they will know that I have loved you. Because you have kept My command to endure, I will also keep you from the hour of testing that is going to come over the whole world to test those who live on the earth. I am coming quickly. Hold on to what you have, so that no one takes your crown. The victor: I will make him a pillar in the sanctuary of My God, and he will never go out again. I will write on him the name of My God and the name of the city of My God — the new Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from My God — and My new name.

“Anyone who has an ear should listen to what the Spirit says to the churches.”

Revelation 3:7-13 (HCSB)

Oops, more from Isaiah (I did warn you), but since we did the worst church from Revelation, so I thought we could do the nice one now. It being Christmas and all.

I’m actually enjoying this though. Yesterday I asked C how many Christmases she was actually going to have -because, by my count, she’s already had the four Friendsmases, the weekend gathering, and presumably something will actually happen on Christmas Eve and Day- and she looks at me with a completely straight face and goes ‘As many as I can [obviously]’

Here is Red Mountain Music’s version of Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus on Youtube and Spotify.

…and here is an image of a comparatively young globular cluster, NGC 362, from last year’s Hubble Advent Calendar in The Atlantic.

Here’s this year’s calendar, if anyone’s interested.

Holy ambition

November 29th

John’s disciples came to him and said, “Look, Rabbi, the One who was with you beyond the Jordan, the One you testified about—He is baptizing, and everyone is going to Him.” John replied, “A man can receive only what is given him from heaven …the One whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God gives the Spirit without limit.

John 3:26-27, 34 (BSB)

[If we look] to some human example… either we shall find ourselves as good as somebody else and be content, or we shall be satisfied to be as some human ideal, and so shall stop short of the only perfect pattern. We shall never grow up to the measure of the Lord until we take the Lord’s own word and character as our standard and ideal; until we take our stand upon the sure and immutable ground that He who commands holiness expects us to be holy, and that He who promises His own grace and all-sufficiency to enable us to meet his demands, will not excuse us if we fail. He has offered us Himself as the life and power of our obedience and holiness, and nothing less than His own perfect example should ever satisfy our holy ambition.

We need a work that is… more wholly for God, more singly devoted to His glory, and more satisfied with His approval whether men are pleased or not. And we need a larger conception and realization of the work that He expects of us.

We need a larger hope. We need to realize more vividly, more personally, more definitely, what the coming of the Lord means, and means to us… May the Lord enlarge our hopes and intensify them until this becomes, next to the love of Jesus, the most inspiring, stimulating, quickening motive of our Christian life and work!

We need a larger baptism of the Holy Spirit, for this is the true summing up of all that we have said. It is one thing, not many things, that we need; and, filled with the Spirit in still larger measure, the fruit of the Spirit shall expand and increase in proportion. We need more room for His indwelling, more scope for His expanding, more channels for His outflow. We are not straitened in Him, we are straitened in ourselves. “He giveth not the Spirit by measure,” but we receive Him in very confined and small capacities. He wants more room; He wants our entire being, and He wants so to fill it that we shall be expanded into larger possibilities for His inworking and His outflowing.

A. B Simpson’s The Larger Christian Life

‘We cannot grow into Christianity’

November 21st

I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.

Ephesians 1:17-21 (NIV)

We cannot grow into Christianity, we must be born from above and then grow. And so sanctification is progressive, and yet it has a definite beginning. Christ is completely formed within us, but He is the infant Christ, and grows up to the maturity of the perfect man in us just as He did in His earthly life. … So the first step in our advance must be a new conception of the truth as it is in Jesus and a larger view of His word and will for us. We do not need a new Bible, but we need new eyes to read our Bible…

We need to see, not simply a system of exegesis or a system of Biblical exposition and criticism; a thorough knowledge of the letter and its framework of history; geography, antiquities and ancient languages; but a vivid, large and spiritual conception of what it means for us and what God’s thought in it for each of us is. We want to take it as the message of heaven to the present century and the last decade, the living voice of the Son of God to us this very hour, and to see in it the very idea which He Himself has for our life and work; to take in the promises as He understands them, the commandments as He intends them to be obeyed, and the hopes of the future as He unfolds them upon the nearer horizon of their approaching fulfillment. How little have we grasped the length and breadth and depth and height of this heavenly message! How little have we realized its authority and its personal directness to us!

from A. B. Simpson’s The Larger Life (Pt. I)

…and here is Amy Grant’s one good song, Fat Baby on Youtube and Spotify. (Mostly because it’s funny, but also because it’s 40’s-ish and bears very little resemblance to her other work.)

Natural life

October 30th

That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.

John 3:6 (ESV)

…If I do not put to death the things in me that are not of God, they will put to death the things that are of God.

There are things in a man’s natural life that are fine and beautiful, but when a man comes to Jesus Christ, he has to forgo them, and go to their “white funeral.” This is a phrase Tennyson uses in speaking of the “white funeral” of the single life; and that aspect is the only one that suits the spiritual life. Think of it in reference to babyhood, there comes a time when that phase dies and child life begins; there is a “white funeral” of the baby; and then a “white funeral” of the child and girlhood begins. Apply that spiritually.

There is any amount in paganism that is good and virtuous, but if I am going on with Jesus Christ, I have to give those things a “white funeral,” make a termination of them, and we very often get there through disenchantment. It is not true that everything in life apart from Christ is bad; there are many virtues that are good and moral, pride and self-interest are remarkably fine things in some aspects, “highly esteemed among men,” but when I see Jesus Christ I have to go to their moral death. Any fool will give up wrongdoing and the devil, if he knows how to do it; but it takes a man in love with Jesus Christ to give up the best he has for Him. Jesus Christ does not demand that I give up the wrong, but the right, the best I have for Him, viz., my right to myself. Will I agree to go through my “white funeral” and say I deliberately cut out my claim to my right to myself, deliberately go to the death of my self- will? If I will, instantly the Spirit of God begins to work, and slowly the new mind is formed.

These crises are reached in personal life, and we find the same thing in the life outside, and the only line of solution is this one. If we find a line of emancipation and solution for ourselves, we have also found a line of solution for problems outside ourselves. Moral problems are only solved by obedience. We cannot see what we see until we see it. Intellectually things can be worked out, but morally the solution is only reached by obedience. One step in obedience is worth years of study, and will take us into the centre of God’s will for us. All our darkness comes because we will try to get into the thing head first. We must be born into the kingdom of God, Jesus says, before we can begin to think about it…

from Oswald Chambers’ Shadow of an Agony
(The Psychological Phase-II, Man Becomes What He Is)

Infinite change

September 27th

…and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out His love into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, whom He has given us.

Romans 5:2-5 (BSB)

What at present is your condition in suffering? The doctor and the pastor ask about your health, but eternity makes you responsible for your condition. Does it frivolously or superstitiously fluctuate in a fever of impatience? Or are you willing to suffer all and let the Eternal comfort you? As time goes by, how does your condition change? Did you begin well perhaps but become more and more impatient? Or perhaps you were impatient at the beginning, but learned patience from what you suffered?

Alas, perhaps year after year your suffering remained unchanged, and if it did change, then its description would be a matter for the doctor or the pastor. Alas, perhaps the unaltered monotony of the suffering seems to you like a creeping death. But while the doctor and the pastor and your friend know of no change to speak of, yet [this] talk asks you whether under the pressure of the unchanged monotony an infinite change is taking place. Not a change in the suffering (for even if it is changed, it can only be a finite change), but in you, an infinite change in you from good to better.

from Kierkegaard’s Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing
(Ch. 14, Steere translation)

I hesitated to post this, because obviously it’s a super-popular subject.

…and here’s Josh Garrels’ The Resistance on Youtube and Spotify, which is actually why you’re getting more from Purity of Heart again so soon, because it reminded me of this passage for some reason.

The Comforter

September 21st

But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me: and ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with me from the beginning.

John 15:26-27 (KJV)

If all Jesus Christ can do is to tell a man he has to cheer up when he is miserable; if all the worker for God can do is to tell a man he has no business to have the “blues”—I say if that is all Jesus Christ’s religion can do, then it is a failure. But the wonder of our Lord Jesus Christ is just this, that you can face Him with any kind of men or women you like, and He can cure them and put them into a right relationship with God.

When a worker meets a soul like that, what is he going to do—preach the gospel of temperament, “Cheer up and look on the bright side,” or preach Jesus Christ?

Oswald Chambers’ The Cure of Souls (Ch. 6)

…and here’s Jars of Clay’s version of The Comforter Has Come on Youtube and Spotify respectively.

Living Temples

September 13th

Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?

1 Corinthians 3:16 (NKJV)

God is especially present in the hearts of his people by his Holy Spirit; and the hearts of holy men are temples in the truth of things, and, in type and shadow, they are heaven itself. For God reigns in the hearts of his servants; there is his kingdom. The power of grace has subdued all his enemies: there is his power. They serve him night and day, and give him thanks and praise; that is his glory. This is the religion and worship of God in the temple. The temple itself is the heart of man; Christ is the high-priest, who from there sends up the incense of prayers, and joins them to his own intercession, and presents all together to his Father; and the Holy Ghost, by his dwelling there, has also consecrated it as a temple; and God dwells in our hearts by faith and Christ by his Spirit, and the Spirit by his purities: so that we are also cabinets* of the mysterious Trinity; and how is this short of heaven itself, except as infancy falls short of manhood, and letters of words? It is the same state of life, but not the same age. It is heaven in a looking-glass, dark, but yet true, representing the beauties of the soul, and the graces of God, and the images of his eternal glory.

from Jeremy Taylor’s Holy Living (Ch. 1, Section 3)

*’Cabinet’ also meant a room, or even a small hut, at one point.