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Kindle Notes & Highlights
The Spirit is not a passive power that we can wield as we choose. The Spirit is God, a Being who requires that we submit ourselves to be led by Him.
Even people who are natural leaders don’t get to lead the Spirit. Everyone is called to be led by Him.
It is true that God may have called you to be exactly where you are. But it’s absolutely vital to grasp that He didn’t call you there so you could settle in and live out your life in comfort and superficial peace.
It is a lifelong journey of putting our flesh to death, or as Paul puts it in Galatians 5, of walking by the Spirit and not gratifying the desires of the flesh.
He wants us to know that His gift of the Holy Spirit is really not for our own pleasure or purposes.
We are most alive when we are loving and actively giving of ourselves because we were made to do these things.
Esther Ahn Kim’s
While preparing for prison, she memorized more than one hundred chapters of the Bible and many hymns because she knew she would not be allowed to keep her Bible.
Esther held the woman’s feet at night to warm them, even though the woman was covered in her own excrement. Though food rations were small, Esther gave up her portions for three days to this woman.
She could have just endured her suffering like a good Christian, and we would have applauded her for it.
But she was not content to merely endure. She was ready every day and every moment, asking God, “Who do You want me to love for You today?”3
Why would we need to experience the Comforter if our lives are already comfortable?
It is those who put their lives at risk and suffer for the gospel (Phil. 1:29) who will most often experience His being “with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:20 NASB). Though this verse is true for all believers (of course God is always with us), if we are never alone or feeling like we need Him, how much do we care or need to know that God is with us?
Each of the twenty-three missionaries surrendered their lives to God that night and told Him they were willing to die for His glory. There was even an argument over who would get to die first.
a small Bible that the missionaries secretly ripped into twenty-three pieces so each could glance at Scripture when no one was watching.
“Don’t you wish we were still there?” He tells me that several of them experienced a deep kind of intimacy with God in the prison cell that they haven’t been able to recapture in their comfort.
!!!
This in turn has affected my prayer life,
At any given moment of the day, people were looking for Jesus. Because of the priority of His relationship with His Father, He found ways to escape.
Our lack of intimacy often is due to our refusal to unplug and shut off communication from all others so we can be alone with Him.
I don’t know exactly what it will look like for you to be still before the Lord.
as we practice this stillness, this waiting, this being, it is then that we can experience deep intimacy and relationship with the Holy Spirit.
Is the "stillness" that Church Fathers and Hesychasts speak of?}
the other Counselor,
You’ve probably heard this truth a hundred times, but have you marveled at it?
He takes up residence in our lives,
The best parent there ever was or will be.
Remember that Abba is the most intimate form for referring to a father.
"Depart from me Lord, for I am a ainful man."
It takes faith to believe God is truly like the prodigal son’s father, who from afar “saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him” (Luke 15:20).
When is the last time you sought after God with all your heart?
even if it necessitates suffering on your part.
He uses his training in the culinary arts to teach the homeless how to cook. He then helps them find jobs as cooks at local restaurants.
Forget About His Will for Your Life!
now I see it as a misguided way of thinking and talking.
God said to go and he went, and that’s pretty much all he knew.
a lot of us need to forget about God’s will for my life. God cares more about our response to His Spirit’s leading today, in this moment, than about what we intend to do next year.
It’s much less demanding to think about God’s will for your future than it is to ask Him what He wants you to do in the next ten minutes. It’s safer to commit to following Him someday instead of this day.
I believe part of the desire to “know God’s will for my life” is birthed in fear and results in paralysis. We are scared to make mistakes, so we fret over figuring out God’s will.
!!!!!!!
instead of searching for “God’s will for my life,” each of us would learn to seek hard after “the Spirit’s leading in my life today.” May we learn to pray for an open and willing heart, to surrender to the Spirit’s leading
I think dwelling on God’s plan for the future often excuses us from faithful and sacrificial living now.
asked Him to join them on their life journey, to follow them wherever they feel they should go, rather than following Him as we are commanded.
Jesus Christ did not die in order to follow us.
He died and rose again so that we could forget everything else and follow Him to the cross, to true Life.
When people give their lives to God in exchange for a ticket out of hell, there is often no turning or change of direction, which is the definition of repentance.
You only need the Holy Spirit’s guidance and help if you truly want to follow the Way of Jesus Christ.
You only need the Holy Spirit if you have genuinely repented and believe. And you only need the Holy Spirit if you understand that you are called to share in Christ’s suffering and death, as well as His resurrection
(Rom. 8:17; 2 Cor. 4:16–18; Phil. 3:10–11).
If you truly believe and have turned from the way you were headed and joined a different Way of living, then you desperately need the Holy Spirit. You know you cannot live this Way without the Spirit in you.
Help me to walk away from the enslaving, worthless things in life.”
The fact is we were called by Jesus to give up everything.
His call is to consider everything a loss for His sake. His call is for total surrender. He calls us to give up all that we have, to give even to the point of offering up our lives as a living sacrifice. His call means realizing that His power is made perfect in our weakness, that when we are weak we are also strong (2 Cor. 12:9–10).
