Robby Dawkins and James Goll - Free Online Conference!

In case you haven't heard... Holy Spirit Renewal Conference at Green Lake is canceled this year due to the worldwide Coronavirus crisis, but we are Re-Envisioning 2020 Enjoy a taste of the Holy Spirit Conference with this ONLINE, re-envisioned 2020 event. Seasons of challenge can carry the threat of defeat and destruction, but our hope and assurance rests in God who empowers His people to PREVAIL! Join us as we delve into the hope and future God offers us during life-altering times and beyond. We invite you to three powerful sessions for worship, and to hear from HSRM speakers from across the USA and guests Robby Dawkins and James Goll. Pass the word to your friends, family and church. Viewing online will be as easy as going to our website, www.hsrm.org , and clicking on the event tab that will be provided on the homepage. Don't miss this opportunity to be inspired, instructed and empowered, and to bless others too. ~~Free Event~~ JUNE 21-23, 6:30 PM EDT "Through our God we shall do valiantly, it is He who shall tread down our foes." Psalm 108:13 Holy Spirit Renewal Ministries| hsrm.org

If I Loved, Everything Would Change

(Linda, on Weko Beach, Bridgman, Michigan)

Friday morning. 

I'm reading from the Gospel of Matthew to begin my day.

If someone attacks me, am I to attack them back? Should I respond to them as they have done unto me?

For followers of Jesus, the answer is clear. He said:

"Don’t repay an evil act with another evil act. But whoever insults you by slapping you on the right cheek, turn the other to him as well." (TPT)

So, obviously, when I pay back with an evil act, what I am  doing is anti-Jesus. That's clear. I see what I am not to do. I am not to do unto others as they have done unto me. 

But what should I do? That's clear, too. I am to do unto others as I would have them do unto me. I am to love them, from the heart.

Jesus said,

"Love your enemy, bless the one who curses you, do something wonderful for the one who hates you, and respond to the very ones who persecute you by praying for them. For that will reveal your identity as children of your heavenly Father." (TPT)

Here is the real Jesus, the a-cultural Jesus, the revolutionary Jesus, for His is a revolution of love.

His counsel, his strategy, is simple, and brilliant. 

Simply brilliant. 

Everything about me and around me would change if I, one of Jesus' followers, would do this, from my heart. 

***

My two books are:

Leading the Presence-Driven Church

Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God

The Praying Tree and a Holy Indifference

(Maumee Bay State Park, Ohio)

There is a pine tree in a forest preserve outside Lansing, Michigan, that I used to pray in. The branches formed a natural ladder. I would climb thirty feet up, sit on a branch, feel the wind swaying the tree, and pray.

I had made a leather wristband, and burned these words on it: "a holy indifference." By this I meant: indifferent to everything, except what God wants for me and says to me. One day I wore the wristband when I climbed the praying tree.

Ruth Haley Barton writes: 

"Mary, the mother of Jesus, is a model of what it means to be indifferent. Her prayer “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word” (Luke 1:38) is will  a wonderful expression of the kind of indifference we are talking about here." (Barton, Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership: Seeking God in the Crucible of Ministry, p. 202)

Without a holy indifference we should not expect to hear much from God. Without indifference "the discernment process becomes little more than a rigged election!" (Ib.) This is because our agendas compete with the voice of God, which rarely matches our agendas.

"Indifference is an important prerequisite to the prayer for wisdom, because the wisdom of God is often the foolishness of this world; indifference to matters of our own ego, in particular, prepares us to receive this gift." (Ib., 203)

I tied the leather wristband around a limb of the praying tree. That was 1985, thirty-five years ago! Whenever I climbed the tree, I saw the wristband. 

This was, for a season of my life, my spiritual focus. I was learning holy indifference. 

On occasion, I think of going back and trying to find that tree. If the tree still stands, the wristband has become the tree. Hopefully, a holy indifference has become me.

***

My two books are:

Leading the Presence-Driven Church

Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God

Robby Dawkins and James Goll - June 21-22-23 - A Livestream Conference!

(HSRM Conference!)

As many of you know, our annual conference in Green Lake, Wisconsin, has been cancelled.

But the HSRM team is putting together an alternative, a mini-Green Lake experience.

Robby Dawkins and James Goll have agreed to do a livestream event June 21-22-23.

I am meeting again with the HSRM Exec Committee tomorrow to further develop these details.

Here's the schedule so far - each evening event begins at 6:30 PM (so far, this is the time).

More details to come, including how to get the link.

Sunday 6-21-20	Monday 6-22-20	Tuesday 6-23-20
Worship - Hannah Ford	Worship - Columbus Baptist (New Jersey) worship team	Worship - Redeemer Fellowship worship team
Clay Ford	Pam Wantz	John Piippo
Robby Dawkins	James Goll	Robby Dawkins
Live Q&A with Robby Dawkins	Live Q&A with James Goll	Live Q&A with Robby Dawkins

In Essentials Unity, in Nonessentials Liberty, and in All Things, Love

Antioch University, Yellow Springs, Ohio

(I'm re-posting this, for such a time as this.)

When I was growing up my parents did not allow a deck of playing cards in the house. Card-playing was wrong. It was sin. I didn't know why this was so. As a child I didn't question it or find it weird. It was when I became a Jesus-follower that I began to wonder.

I found out that, among the Finnish Lutherans of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where my family was from and where I was born, card-playing was associated with drinking and gambling. Someone who was a Christian didn't drink, gamble, or play cards.

Sociologically, that made sense to me. But I no longer felt card-playing was a sin. Card-playing lies way out on the periphery of mere Christianity. God may tell a few to avoid a deck of cards, but it is a non-essential. You can be a Jesus-follower and have a deck of cards in your house, unless God specifically (for some reason you may or may not know) tells you not to have one. 

Here's how I have come to view the bigger picture about such things.

For a long time I've seen the Christian faith as a set of concentric circles, circles within circles. On the outer circles we find nonessentials of Christianity. These matters may be important for a few, but do not apply to all. In the inner circle, Circle 1, we find the heart of mere, true Christianity. If one does not affirm Circle 1 statements, then probably one is not a Christian, just as I am not now playing tennis as I'm typing on my laptop.

The set of propositions that fit within Circle 1 include:

1. God exists. (Viz., an all-powerful, all-loving, all-knowing, necessarily existent, without-beginning-or-end, creator and sustainer of all things, incorporeal, personal agent.)
2. Jesus the Messiah is God incarnate.
3. Jesus died on a cross, was buried in a tomb, and was raised on the third day.

If someone thinks any one of these three propositions are false, then I think they are not a Christian. (Yes, I am aware [amazingly, to me] of the "atheistic Christianity" of, e.g., Paul Van Buren and Thomas J.J. Altizer. I read their books back in the 1970s. Altizer, in The Gospel of Christian Atheism, wrote: "every man today who is open to experience knows that God is absent, but only the Christian knows that God is dead, that the death of God is a final and irrevocable event, and that God's death has actualized in our history a new and liberated humanity." At this point I would argue that Altizer has left Christianity in the same way one who travels by foot cannot be said to be flying in an airplane.)

Basic to mere Christianity is belief in God.

Also basic to mere Christianity is a recognition that Jesus is Lord, in the strong sense of being from God. Jesus is God the Son. I don't think one must fully grasp this concept to be a Christian. I'm still growing and learning such things. But mere Christianity includes the realization that one needs saving, and Jesus is the Savior.

To disaffirm the cross and the resurrection surely disqualifies one as a Christian. How odd it seems to me to say, "I don't believe Jesus died on a cross for my sins. I don't believe Jesus was raised from the dead. But I am a Christian." Why, I would ask? Why insist that you're playing tennis while typing on your laptop?

Central to mere Christianity are statements 1, 2, and 3. They (and some others) belong in the center circle of the Christian faith. But the statement card-playing is wrong does not belong there. It orbits on some distant curve many circles from the center.

Outwardly adjacent to and encircling the Circle 1 is Circle 2, which involves very important issues that we should rightly feel passionate about, and upon which Jesus-followers have disagreed.

Circle 2 are important but non-essential to salvation. They include:

• The meaning and means of baptism
• The meaning and means of the Lord's Table
• The doctrine of the person and work of the Holy Spirit
• The theology and practice of the gifts of the Holy Spirit
• The nature and expression of worship

These (and others) are important. It's in this second circle that denominations form. Churches have split over these things! While they are very important they are not, I think, essential to true Christianity. Surely if one heart-affirms Circle 1's third proposition (and, by implication, affirm propositions 1 & 2), they are a "Christian." No futher doctrinal understanding is needed. 

When I gave my heart and life over to Jesus as Lord, I had no clue of the deep matters of Circle 2. So, I think we can disagree on the things of the second circle and still affirm one another as brothers and sisters in Christ,

if we agree on Circle 1 things. (And even things beyond the second circle, such as the age of the earth, which no one in the Bible seems interested in [while being very interested in the truth that God has made it all].)

My parents were Jesus-followers. I loved them, and did not disrespect their wish that a deck of cards not be in their home. I like the way Pope John XXIII counsels us to do this: "In essentials unity, in doubtful matters [nonessentials] liberty, and in all things, love [charity]."

**
My three books are:

Leading the Presence-Driven Church

Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God

Encounters with the Holy Spirit (co-edited with Janice Trigg)

After a break I'll continue writing Transformation: How God Changes the Human Heart.

Then: Technology and Spiritual Formation.

Then, the Lord willing, Linda and I will write our book on Relationships.

The Importance of Praying!

Thank you Pastor David Hamstra for interviewing me about my book Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God.



David is lead pastor of CrossPoint Church in Crown Point, Indiana.

What I Am Now Reading

(Monroe County. 10/8/20)

Linda and I are readers, as are many of you.

Here is what I continue to read, in my alone times with God.

• The Book of Proverbs. I continue to use Proverbs in my devotional times. 
• The Gospel of Luke. I am constantly reading about Jesus, my Savior and Lord!
• Faith That Matters: 365 Devotions from Classic Christian Leaders. This is a beautiful collection of God-thoughts from Christian authors I admire.
• Hearing God Through the Year: A 365-Day Devotional, by Dallas Willard. Willard remains one of the great influences in my spiritual life.
• How to Pray: Reflections and Essays, by C.S. Lewis. I read Lewis's Mere Christianity in 1970, as a new believer in Jesus. Reading him is returning to a familiar friend who has guided me on my Christian journey.

Here are books I am now reading.

• The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success, by Ross Douthat. Douthat has become one of my favorite writers. He posts for the New York Times. He's Roman Catholic. I enjoyed his book Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics.
• Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World, by Vivek Murthy. I received this for my birthday. Linda and I are especially concerned about the loneliness epidemic, and how to foster social connection in our church family and beyond.
•  The Unseen World: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible, by Michael Heiser. My friend Rick Goodin recommended this to me. Very interesting! You can hear Michael Brown interview Heiser, on demons,  HERE. 
• Into the Abyss: A Neuroscientist's Notes on Troubled Minds, by Anthony David. Linda and I do a lot of counseling. We are always reading books that help us in this area of our ministry. She just finished the book; I'm halfway through!
• Following Jesus: Biblical Reflections on Discipleship, by N. T. Wright. $1.99 on Kindle!
• Hidden in Plain View: Undesigned Coincidences in the Gospels and Acts, by Lydia McGrew. Introduction by Craig Keener. A great apologetic resource for the historical reliability of the Gospels and Acts.

The Self is Gathered and Retooled in the Act of Praying

(Redeemer sanctuary)

To be dissipated is to be scattered, scatterbrained, scatterhearted.

In times like we are now in the self can be spread out like a thin layer of Saran wrap over the minutia of life. 

In America we are the identityless people. The issue of personal and corporate identity is the crisis of our time. Our culture makes T.S. Eliot's "hollow people" look like paragons of self-discovery.

The more we lose focus, the more the self dissipates. Thomas Merton writes:

"The measure of our identity, or our being (for here the two mean exactly the same thing) is the amount of our love for God. The more we love earthly things, reputation, importance, ease, success and pleasures, for ourselves, the less we love God. Our identity gets dissipated among a lot of things that do not have the value we imagine we see in them, and we are lost in them: we know it obscurely by the way all these things disappoint us and sicken us once we get what we have desired." (Quoted in Henri Nouwen,  36)

Like Emilie Griffin once wrote, it's not life's failures that disappoint us, but life's achievements and successes, since once acquired, discover they do not fulfill us in the way we imagined they would.

The dissipated, flat-as-a-pancake self becomes less and less in its never-satiated quest to consume more and more. Life blurs together. 

What's needed is the discovery, or rediscovery, of focus, of centeredness, of selfhood. 

This is a learned behavior, and can be found in a life of praying. 

In praying the self orients itself to the true north of the being of God. In praying, God gathers the scattered fragments of self into an undissipated whole. In the dedicated act of praying we are pieced back together and restored to our first love, which is Jesus. 

In praying we realize, experientially, that our identity lies fully "in Christ." In praying, the self is gathered and retooled.

(For more, see my book Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God.)

***
The Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot


Mistah Kurtz - he dead.

A penny for the Old Guy


I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when 
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour, 
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other kingdom 
Remember us - if at all - not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men 
The stuffed men. 

For the rest GO HERE.

Warfare Praying for Moms - Redeemer, Mother's Day 2020

Sunday Service - 05/10/2020 - Warfare Praying for Moms

How to Lead Church When the Pandemic Is Over

How shall we lead the Church in the days ahead?

With a new Pentecostalism. Like this.