EHBC Prayer Guide Note: PRAY for Christ’s followers to walk in the fullness of God’s Spirit so that they can live in the likeness of Christ.
What I think I have heard from God today:
(1) "I am with you on this journey." Yesterday, I'm pondering "walking in the Spirit." Today, our prayer note is to pray that we will walk in the fullness of God's Spirit. How cool is that? I have another item like that, but I'm saving it for point number two. Did God manufacture these coincidences just for me? I don't think so. I think there are too many other people involved for any of it to be "just for me." But God is big enough to weave together ALL the coincidences He needs to speak to any number of us in any number of ways, and then He is near enough to highlight for me in my mind what I need to see "just for me." :)
(2) Yesterday I questioned whether I would have the opportunity to speak to my HT students about spiritual matters. Today one of them asks me what I think about using a Ouija board! Thank you, God! I still didn't have time to get into it in the class, but I'll type up and print a response that she and any other student can read. It's possible that God is allowing me this opportunity but that it doesn't mean I'm "supposed" to be there. Yet as this follows so closely on the heels of my questions yesterday...I conclude with moderate confidence that He is also saying that it is He, and not my own wisdom, that has placed me in this position.
(3) Time for a new go-to preacher. Whenever I have wanted to listen to preaching I have for some time now clicked over to Piper. He's Calvinist and I'm not, but this has never been a hindrance. My wife and my pastor are also both Calvinists! :) But today, listening to a sermon called "If You Abide in My Word, You Are Truly My Disciples," I reached a point (unrelated to Calvinism) where I'm ready to go somewhere else to feed. Piper seems to me to have a bias against unmediated encounters with God. What I mean is, he seems to think that the Bible is the chief (and by his own words, in some ways the ONLY) means by which God speaks to His people today. I don't know that I disagree with the above statement (minus the part in parenthesis), but the bias seems to go beyond that. In explaining the statement of Christ that forms the title of the sermon, Piper makes what I think is an unsupported jump from "My word," to "the Bible." I've seen this bias before. I would say that the Holy Spirit (Spirit of Christ) is our chief connection with God, and the Bible is secondary, but he seems to reverse that. I may not be explaining this well, and I don't want to do anything to tear him down--I love him, his passion for God and His glory, his style of preaching, his pastor's heart, and his vulnerability as a church leader. I will still listen to him in the future, I am sure. But right now, what I yearn for, learning how to hear God's Spirit testify to my spirit, I don't think Piper will teach me, and beyond that I think he will try to discourage me. So, no hard feelings, but I'll be shopping around for a new go-to preacher. Any recommendations?
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