Aly read my post about the Holy Ghost and the Smoky Mountains. The Vineyard Movement is connected with the Pentecostal Movement. This understanding of the communication between God and us as individuals through the Holy Spirit echoes back to the beginning of Christianity.
The Holy Spirit unites us as a People. We are the Church, bound together and enlivened by the Breath of God.
The Holy Spirit gives us the power to die to ourselves and live out God's Love.
Unfortunately my notes were erased when I tried to publish.
When approaching the Trinity, remember these three things:
1. Jesus was unexpected.
2. Jesus is God made near.
3. Jesus is subversive.
In paintings, the hand gestures of Jesus mean something. An open hand means peace. Holding two fingers up is more complex - the two fingers represent the dual nature on Jesus - human and divine. The lower three fingers represent the Trinity.
Jesus is what God has to say and is what the Holy Spirit has never stopped talking about.
Greek philosophy views the divine as distant. Jesus is not only God with us; but, in Jesus, God is one of us. The Joan Osborne song comes to mind ;)
Jesus lived a life of empathy, not pity. If you want to challenge yourself as an empathetic person, then travel. Travel changes who you are.
Jesus understood grief. Always remember the humanity of Jesus. He laughed, he loved, he suffered, and he died.
This concludes the Timebound and Timeless series on the Bible. Gordon Fee is a Pentecostal and one of today's top biblical scholars.
Fee wrote that God gave us His word in a way that locked in ambiguity.
We need to understand the timebound nature of the Bible in order to understand its timeless truth.
If the Bible is bound by culture and time, then how can we say it is trustworthy? Because the Holy Spirit is bound in its creation. The Holy Spirit inspired the authors. The Holy Spirit brought the Bible to fruition through a historical process. The Holy Spirit speaks to us today through the Bible.
2 Peter is either the last, or one of the last, books written in the Bible. It is written "in the tradition of Peter" but not by Peter. It was written after the deaths of Peter and Paul. The author mentions Paul's writing in such a way that we know the Church already considered his writings as inspired scriptures.
Paul's struggles in real life model how we should let the Spirit move in our life, connect with us, and work through us.
A "divine drop" is when scripture - such as the Koran and Book of Mormon - come to and through only one person. The Bible is not like that. Its construction took centuries.
Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible and The Lost World of Scripture are good references.
Faith is not simply believing the unknowable. Faith is an act of will. Faith is leading a meaningful life.
The Holy Spirit speaks to us through the Bible. We can hear the Holy Spirit through Bible study.
The Bible is awesome and true. In its pages we learn about God and may also encounter God. The Bible is not magic - we should not use scriptures like a magic spell. The Bible is not perfect - its primary function is not to present an accurate history or scientific revelation.
In this series, we have focused on the human element of the Bible; but, the Holy Spirit's role is of primary importance. While God's voice is a voice in the Bible, there are other voices as well.
The pastor likes to read and put into his own words the scriptures he has read. You can also use inductive reasoning - you look at a passage and ask yourself a series of questions about it.
Today we read Philemon and use inductive reasoning as a group exercise. That said, I will end these notes here.
Jesus came to fulfill the promises God made. He's the fulfillment of the grand story of the Old Testament. The message of Jesus was grounded in this story.
The New Testament was slowly put together after it became clear that Jesus was not returning soon. Took about 400 years to come together.
It is not perfect in every detail. A lot of archeological detective work has helped figure out what was in the original documents, but everything is not settled.
Mark is first Gospel and very straightforward story. Matthew, written for Jews, casts Jesus as the new Moses. Luke and Acts is the story of the Spirit. John sets out to show that Jesus is God. The Gospels are Scene One of the New Testament.
Jesus fulfills both God's part and humanity's part of the Covenant.
Scene Two is the rest of the New Testament - the story of the Church, the community of Christ, a community of the Spirit. There isn't an end to the story - the Story isn't over and YOU are in it.
The Spirit leads us into the promises of God. The Spirit leads the Body of Christ.
The equivalent of the widow and orphan today is the mentally ill homeless person.
Appreciating the timebound nature of the Bible enables us to understand the timeless nature of the Bible.
Begin with Jesus. Look at God (and the Bible) through the lens of Jesus.
We always have the opportunity to meet God when we're reading.
The primary theme of Jesus' life, ministry, and message is the Kingdom of God. It is also the major theme of the Bible.
What is the Kingdom of God? It's not Heaven. It's not the Church. Colonialism was motivated by greed by justified by the view that the Church was the Kingom.
In Eden the Tree of Life speaks to God's gift of Life. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil speaks to God's right alone to judge. Jews believe that if Adam and Eve had obeyed, they would have eventually been ready to eat of this tree too.
When we give up our knowledge of God, we become less than we're meant to be.
The Kingdom of God is God's righteous rule over Creation.
The bookends of the Bible - The beginning of Genesis and the end of Revelation - show the Kingdom of God on Earth.
We no longer live in the Kingdom of Darkness, under the authority of Sin - we now live in freedom under the authority of Christ.
Our Father means that we are adopted in the Kingdom. Hallowed be thy name means may my life bring honor to your name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done is a prayer that God's will might be done in your life.
Reflect on Matthew 13:10-17.
