We had a good turnout today for Bible Study with our friend Mike showing up for the second time and offering much welcome commentary. Our topic was Isaiah 27 and typically we will read the scripture together and I take off on my commentary of the scripture at hand. Normally, it doesn’t take long for me to wander off topic with whatever the Holy Spirit leads me to. And today that was talking about the 100 or so prophecies concerning the advent of Christ that have been fulfilled. If you are interested I have my outline for today’s lesson in a previous post. I spent a good amount of time going over the concept of GOD not lying or changing his mind. Quite a difference from us sinful humans.
I think everybody was already on board with that and then we went on to what turned out to be my main topic today, the Holy Spirit. If you have accepted Christ, and the ABC’s are a description of how that happens:
A. Accept Christ. As simple as that. He is our Savior and the only way to Heaven and eternal life in His Presence.
B. Believe specifically that he was born of a virgin, suffered, died and rose again on the third day.
C. Confess your sins, contritely and completely. GOD, our creator knows your heart as does Jesus. There is no getting around it, everything you or I have done is known to GOD. Confess and ask for forgiveness.
Once you have done this, the Holy Spirit will indwell you. It was explained today, by Pastor DelRoy who is part of our group, that you must make room in your heart for the Holy Spirit to fill in and up. The more room you make the more the Spirit fills in.
I had told the people in our group to ask the Holy Spirit to take control of them. Paster DelRoy mentioned that “make room in your heart”, by removing what has cluttered it up with sin, rather than asking the Holy Spirit to take control of you, is the way to do that. That was my Elder Shepherd guiding me and I am very grateful for that correction. We all need an Elder Shepherd in our lives.
So, make room in your heart and life by removing the sin and whatever else you have hidden in there.
For me, it was a pressing need to delete all the reading material off my Kindle, and getting rid of all the books I had collected. My primary reading material for enjoyment was Science Fiction, but I had many other kinds of books. I am self educated. I read and kept books on whatever interests me and teach myself to do what I just read. History books, by the dozens. My wife tells people that she got a degree in History and I know it better than she does. Anyway, I felt I had to get rid of all of it. And I did. I stopped listening to music of any kind. This blog which I started 3 years ago had some really good writing. Totally pride filled, and well, all of the over 300 posts had to go. And so it went. This may seem a bit extreme to you. For me to have kept any of that stuff, I would have not had any room in my heart for I wanted more than life. I wanted the Holy Spirit in me and did whatever it took to make it work.
You may have a different drive to clean out sin. Follow wherever it takes you. After doing this and praying, a lot, my language cleaned up almost overnight. My heart softened. And my long reluctance to read the Bible fell away. Now I am teaching Bible Study on Wednesdays.
It turns out that the talk about the Holy Spirit and the discussion that followed, well, that pretty much rounded out the hour.
I am already looking forward to next Wednesday. Join us if you can. The details of how to do that are in the previous post.