The Holy Spirit in our Midst
Many of you reading this attended last quarter’s six-week study of Taylor Staton’s book, The Familiar Stranger. It was Wednesday night at the movies (we watched a short video), followed by a discussion. Each week focused on a chapter in the book, which is all about this curious third person of the triune God known as the Holy Spirit. When I was growing up, we called him the Holy Ghost.
If you missed these meetings, I encourage you to pick up a copy of the book and have a look. [The Familiar Stranger]
Staton’s teachings bring the often-neglected and sometimes awkwardly avoided Holy Spirit in our community up to an equal footing with God the Father and Jesus, our Lord and Savior. On these Wednesday nights, we studied the Biblical topics of discernment, prophecy, healing, and redemptive suffering, and how these aspects of the Holy Spirit work in our community in balance and in order.
Three of them, discernment, prophecy, and healing, are gifts of the Spirit as taught in the scriptures:
For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. (1 Cor. 12:8-10 ESV)
The teaching is that the Holy Spirit within us will gift these abilities to those in our community as he sees fit. We are to understand what these gifts are, why God puts them in our midst, strive for them, and learn to operate in them as the Spirit enables.
Then there is redemptive suffering. This is learning how to invite God to enter into our seasons of suffering with us. To surrender our struggles and pain to him. And to persevere with him, knowing that in trusting him, good will come of it and that it will be redeemed either in this life or the next.
I believe the Holy Spirit is preparing us for an outpouring of his gifts here at The Clearing. Lives will be changed, and our trajectories will be precisely directed to transform us to have the mind of Christ. There will be renewed hope and enduring joy in our lives. Our community will know that Jesus is Lord because of our love for one another. Thank you, Holy Spirit.
