Holy Spirit Renewal Ministries - Our Annual Summer Conference

Video by Denise Kukwa

It's not too early to begin thinking about joining me and many others at our annual Holy Spirit Renewal Ministries Summer Conference.

When: June 25-29, 2017

Where: Green Lake Christian Conference Center, Wisconsin

Speakers:
- Steve and Wendy Backlund, from Bethel Redding and Igniting Hope
- David Wagner from Global Awakening and Father's Heart Ministries
- Philip Lee from His Way Out Ministries

Information and registration is HERE.

Speaking in Detroit Saturday, March 11

Pastors Must Dive to the Ocean Depths of Prayer

Detroit

After teaching three to four thousand pastors and Christian leaders, over a period of forty years, at conferences, seminaries, retreats, churches, and individual contacts, I have concluded that most Westernized pastors don't have significant praying lives.

By "significant praying life," I mean the way Jesus prayed in lonely places, as was his custom, as usual.

I am sometimes asked, "Why don't pastors pray? Why are they too busy to pray?"

My answer - one possibility - is: "Because they don't believe."

Eugene Peterson writes:

"Prayer is our core activity. The life of prayer, the practice of prayer, is at the center of the human enterprise. Observed in the context of world civilizations and stretched across the centuries, what stands out is the odd place we American pastors hold on the prayer horizon. For us it is a consumer product. It is a pious item more or less external to ourselves, and for the most part trivialized...

It is rare to find American pastors who are true contemplatives, who embrace the disciplines that nurture a continuous and ready access to the soul and God, who understand themselves as persons of prayer set in a community of prayer." (Peterson, Under the Unpredictable Plant: An Exploration in Vocational Holiness, p. 111)

For most pastors, prayer is a "ceremonial gesture." It's something we do at weddings and funerals, and before the potluck luncheon. "If vocational holiness is to be anything more than a pious wish," writes Peterson, "pastors must dive to the ocean depths of prayer." (Ib., 11-112)

We have no right telling our people that they ought to pray when our prayer life falls somewhere between a water drop and a puddle. Perhaps we don't believe?

***
My recent book is Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God.

The Whole Purpose of Becoming a Christian

Ann Arbor

You can't consistently dwell in the presence of God and stay unchanged.

You can't live a life of abiding in Christ and be fruitless.

The transformation God desires to happen in us is into nothing less than Christlikeness (Galatians 4:19).

The transformation into increasing Jesus-likeness is not a result of us trying harder. "Will worship" will get you nowhere near Christ. A branch attached to a pear tree will produce pears, effortlessly. Therefore, live connected to Jesus.

The promise is astonishing, and serves to distinguish Christianity from religion.

C.S. Lewis wrote:

"Now the whole offer which Christianity makes is this: that we can, if we let God have His way, come to share in the life of Christ. If we do, we shall then be sharing a life which was begotten, not made, which always has existed and always will exist. Christ is the Son of God. If we share in this kind of life we also shall be sons of God. We shall love the Father as He does and the Holy Ghost will arise in us. He came to this world and became a man in order to spread to other men the kind of life He has—by what I call ‘good infection’. Every Christian is to become a little Christ. The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply nothing else."

- Mere Christianity

What Is a Person? Ravi Zacharias at the University of Michigan

This past Tuesday Ravi Zacharias spoke to a packed auditorium at the University of Michigan. The subject: "What It Means to Be Human."

The issue of human identity is huge today, given secular non-answers and the resultant proliferation of efforts at self-transformation.

(Tomorrow morning at Redeemer - Sun., Feb. 12 - I'll give the answer to our identity, and thus, the meaning and purpose of our lives.)

Overcoming Self-rejection

The River Raisin, Monroe County, MI

Henri Nouwen writes: "The great obstacle which prevents the Spirit working in us is self-rejection. The greatest obstacle to the Spirit working in us is that we say to ourselves that we are useless, we are nothing." (The Only Necessary Thing: Living a Prayerful Life, 78)

Conversely, the open door to the Spirit's working in us is the heart knowledge we are deeply loved and accepted, by grace, by God. Jesus told his disciples that, after his death, the Father would come and make his home in their hearts. When we know we are loved by God, and that God loves us in spite of the condition of our hearts, we welcome the homecoming of God. We are "something" in the eyes of God, so much so that the Spirit desires to take up residence within us.

Self-rejection resists the Spirit of God residing in us because we feel undeserving. I have met Christians who insist that God is angry with them and wants nothing to do with them. That is a denial of the grace of God, and shuts the door to experiencing the love and power of God.

Nouwen writes:

"Once I know I am the Beloved, once I start discovering that in me, then the Spirit can work in me and in others; then we can do wonderful things. Now, once I say, "No, God doesn't love me, I am not as good as everyone else," somehow I do not claim the truth that Jesus came to proclaim." (Ib.)

Embracing God's love for you is antidote to a spirit of self-rejection.

***
My recent book is Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God.



I am currently writing Leading the Presence-Driven Church (June 2017), and How God Changes the Human Heart (A Phenomenology of Spiritual Transformation) (June 2018).

When It Comes to Faith, Our Fears Do Not Count

Lamp post on a snowy night in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania

The great theologian John Wayne once said, "Courage is being afraid, but saddling up anyway."

Faith is the same. Faith is RISK. Wherever there is risk, there can be fear.

This is about obedience. First, discern what God would have you do today. Second, do it. You may feel afraid, but at this point your fears are irrelevant, even as they are sympathized with. I hear God saying, "John, I know you are afraid to do what I have asked you to do. Nonetheless, do it. I will be with you in your fear."

Certainty contains no fear. I am certain the chair I am sitting on will hold me. So, of course, sitting in this chair produces no fear in me. But Hebrews 11:6 does not say, "Without certainty it is impossible to please the Lord." Thank God he does not ask this of us! Because then every fear, small or big, would betray us, and we would be constantly displeasing to the Lord.

Faith will always bring some measure of uncertainty, without which it would not qualify as faith.

In this way, when it comes to faith acting out of obedience, our fears, while real and even expected, do not count (even as God continually sympathizes with our weaknesses).

***
I am currently writing Leading the Presence-Driven Church (June 2017), and How God Changes the Human Heart (A Phenomenology of Spiritual Transformation) (June 2018).

My recent book is Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God.

Reason and Experience (Some Thoughts)

Detroit River, in Wyandotte

As a follower of Jesus I view experiential knowledge and knowledge by reasoning as both important. I get concerned when Christians go to either extreme; i.e., either reason or experience, without the other. Here are some thoughts I have about this.

#1 - Ancient Hebrew reasoning was not Western rationalism. The Hebrew word for "knowledge" is "yadah." Yadah has to do with experiential intimacy. To "know" something, in Hebraic fashion, is to be intimate with it. This kind of knowledge is, as philosopher of science Michael Polanyi wrote, "personal knowledge." For example: Do you know how to ride a bike? The answer to this question will be experiential (can you do it?), rather than theoretical (physics of bike riding).

#2 - What it means to "know" something can vary, according to cultures. It is therefore misguided to approach the Bible with a purely rationalistic Western-Enlightenment epistemological paradigm, or with a relativistic post-modern understanding. (See, for example, Metaphors We Live By, by Lakoff and Johnson. They tell of a foreign math student at an American university who, when asked to find the "solution" to a problem, viewed "solution" as a liquid. On the relation of post-modern thinking to a Christian understanding, see James K. A. Smith, Who's Afraid of Postmodernism?)

#3 - The biblical worldview is a highly experiential. Where reason is used, it is often in reflection on experiences and encounters with God. See, e.g., Paul's explanatory reasoning about the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15. Note: left-brained theologians who feel safe with reason but fear experience over-prefer Pauline passages such as this one.  

#4 - The mind is important. Followers of Jesus are told to love God not only with one's heart, but also with one's mind. But the New Testament idea of "mind" is certainly not Cartesian rationalism.

#5 - The great biblical example of a Christian who has deep experiential knowledge and passion, yet also is a very good thinker, is the apostle Paul. Christians who are overly taken by rationalistic apologetics should be sobered by Paul's belief that the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk, but of power. Paul writes many reasonable words about the spiritual realities that he experiences. He is a nice balance between reason and experience.

#6 - Experience, not theory, breeds conviction. Out of experience one begins to relevantly and authentically theorize. Theory without experience is inauthentic.

#7 - The goal of it all is this: what people really need is God. This is different from knowing about God. One can know about God without knowing God. Can one know God without knowing about God? I think so. A little child can know God, correct? The child can know God, while having very little theological understanding of the existence and nature of God. So, the heart comes before the head.

#8 - My own experience says that, when persons experientially encounter something so powerful as God, they want to know - at a level they can understand - that this was God (and that God exists, so it was not an illusion), and what this God is like.

#9 - God wants both our head and our heart. Not one without the other. The Bible is a Hebraic document in which the heart has ontological priority over the head. This is the reverse of Descartes' belief that, in essence, humans are "thinking things."

***I am currently writing Leading the Presence-Driven Church, and How God Changes the Human Heart (A Phenomenology of Spiritual Transformation).

My recent book is Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God.

ROBIN COLLINS – “THE ANTHROPIC TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT”

Monroe County Community College

For my MCCC Philosophy of Religion students.

From Robin Collins, "The Anthropic Teleological Argument," in Peterson and Hasker et. al., Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings.

Explain: The “likelihood principle of confirmation.”

Observations provide evidence in favor of one hypothesis over another, if the observations are more probable under that hypothesis.

Use “Abraham Lincoln inkblot” example.

In this argument the observation is: the existence of our fine-tuned universe, which makes complex life possible.

Explain: The fine-tuning of the universe:

The constants and initial conditions of the universe are set just right for intelligent life to evolve.

If gravity were slightly stronger, then too much clumping together of particles would exist. If gravity were slightly less, then not enough clumping together would exist and individual stars would not have formed.

Collins says – “Many of the fundamental constants must fall into a relatively narrow range in order for complex life to exist.

Explain “naturalism.”

Naturalism – “the universe exists as a brute, inexplicable fact.” (195)

Reality is only physical. Purely physical objects do not think. They do not plan or design things.

Complex things are random

Either the fine-tuned universe was designed, or the fine-tuned universe came about by purely natural causes.

The question is: which is more likely?

State: The Argument

1.   The existence of a fine-tuned universe is not surprising under theism.

2.   The existence of a fine-tuned universe is enormously surprising under naturalism.

3.   Therefore, by the likelihood principle, the existence of a fine-tuned universe strongly support theism over naturalism.

The Worst Thing for a Child to Experience

Sterling State Park, Monroe

The worst thing for a child to experience is having their father and mother divorce. Anyone who thinks otherwise should read, for beginners, The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: The 25 Year Landmark Study, by Judith Wallerstein. Contrary to the popular, mythical belief that kids will bounce back after the initial pain of their parents' split, children of divorce often continue to suffer well into adulthood.

The second worst thing that can happen to a child is for their parents to involve them in the marital conflict. When one parent makes their case against the other, to the child. When the child becomes their confidant and, horror upon horrors, the child becomes their counselor. When the parent tries to become the child's friend, instead of the child's parent. It is hard for trained counselors to help troubled people. How, then, can an untrained child be expected to help their deeply troubled father or mother?

Imagine a child lying in bed at night with the thought that the very foundation of their family is crumbling and giving way, and they are powerless to do anything about it. Imagine that child hearing their father and mother hating on each other, and then trying to fall asleep with those voices in their head. Imagine a child being expected to choose their dad over their mom, or their mom over their dad, when all they want most of all is for mom and dad to love one another. Imagine the child feeling they are responsible for their parents problems. Imagine the child beginning to act out to get some love, from anyone, anywhere.

It's sad, because I have never met a marriage that could not have done otherwise.

***
I am currently writing Leading the Presence-Driven Church, and How God Changes the Human Heart (A Phenomenology of Spiritual Transformation).

My recent book is Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God.