The Holy Spirit As an Interpreter

I've been a minister since July of 2001, so I have had plenty of opportunities to see God in action. But, I am only beginning to understand how the Holy Spirit moves in a person's individual life. I have preached many sermons on Sunday mornings and during Wednesday night prayer meetings. Most of the time, I feel like I do a good job expressing what God want me to express. For the record, the word of God always makes a great sermon. It's just that sometimes the preacher (me) doesn't do a great job of translating the scripture. But I discovered a really cool thing about how the Holy Spirit works on people during a sermon. The first time this happened was around 2002 or 2003. I had just preached a really good sermon from the book of Mark chapter 9, where the father of a possessed son stated, "Lord I believe, help thou mine unbelief!". I felt that I preached exactly what God wanted me to say and the Holy Spirit moved on the people to understand every illustration that I presented with clarity. After the church service was over, I was shaking hands with everyone and feeling good about how everything had turned out. But that good feeling turned to a slight bit of confusion. As I spoke to three different people, I received three different reviews of what I had said in my sermon. All three people told me that I spoke to them and that they were blessed by what God had revealed to them through my sermon. But they all had three different interpretations!

I discussed this with my Pastor. I told him how I specifically said one thing in my sermon, and somebody heard a completely different message from what I KNOW I said. He smiled and explained to me that what the people understood from my sermon may not have been what I was trying to say to them. But it was what they needed to hear in order to be encouraged. What I am trying to say is that the Holy Spirit took my words and adjusted them to the individual needs of the congregation. As a very elementary example: I was sure that I said apple. One person heard orange. Another person heard peach. Still another person heard grapes. But no matter what they heard, the fruit was still tasty and filling to them. What happens when you hear a sermon? The Holy Spirit will minister to you where you are. You may be further along in your walk with God than I am. Or, I may be further along than you. But we can listen to the same sermon, and both receive a message that is specific to what we need to hear. And we can both be blessed by it. Here's another way of looking at it. I can read a scripture in the Bible and pull a different meaning from it as a thirty-four year old, married, father of one than I did when I was twenty-four years old and single. At both ages, I was able to get something out of the scripture. But my life experiences have changed a lot over the past ten years. As a result, the scripture has been expanded for me in order to apply to a more expanded life. The Holy Spirit has allowed my eyes to be opened up more now at thirty-four because I need it more. As a result, I can appreciate what God is saying to me right now just as you can appreciate what God is saying to you. My prayer for you is that God will continue to speak to you in the way that you need Him to just as He is speaking to me. May we all continue to hear clearly the voice of God today, tomorrow, and forever!

Peace and Love,

Rev Mike





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Hello and Goodbye

Today has been an interesting day. I had the opportunity to experience life and death in less than 24 hours. My wife and I are Godparents to the second child of two of our best friends. So this morning we attended the baby dedication at their church to make it official. For those of you that are not familiar with baby dedications in the Baptist church, it is based on I Samuel 1:1-10. Tonight, I have just returned home from the memorial service of one of the mothers of our church (RIP mama G). In the morning, I had an opportunity to celebrate a new life and all the potential that children have. This evening, I was equally blessed to celebrate the life of a warrior for God that "fought the good fight". I think it is fitting that I pause to reflect on both.

They say that every time someone passes away, somewhere a new life is coming into existence. The new life helps to give back some of what you lose in the old life leaving. How ironic that the new life I celebrated was in the morning and the old life we celebrated was in the evening. In a way, today symbolized the way we can view our own lives. The morning is like the beginning of your life (the birth). The evening is like the end of life (the death). We, as well as everyone else are in some phase of our lives. Weather you are in the morning, noonday, or evening of your life, you have an opportunity to make good on all of the potential that you had when you were born. No matter where you are on your journey, the next step you take is a step toward fulfilling the promise of God in your life. What have you done to ensure that you are fulfilling your potential? What have you done to hinder your progress? I know that I can look back over the past year of my life and see the good and bad decisions that I have made. But today has helped me to realize that no matter what we are doing, we only have so much time to do it in. I ask again... where are you in the day of your life? What are you going to do with the time that you have left? I hope that you can think about it and push on toward what God has planned for you. Don't know what God has planned? Just ask. I know He wants to tell you.

Peace and Love,

Rev. Mike

I See God In My Fishtank

Don't worry, I'm not losing it. This does have a point. I recently acquired a twenty gallon aquarium and set it up. A good friend of mine gave me six fish to get me started. Everything was going fine for the first month and then I decided to add about four more fish. Well, let's just say that everything got a little unpredictable after that. I had one fish literally changed colors to show himself as the dominant fish. He then began to kill off the others! The four new fish were all dead within 48 hours. And he even killed one of the original fish and then he and the other four remaining fish stripped the body down to the skeleton! After some research on the Internet, I discovered that the death of some of the fish was unavoidable. You see, even I were to go in and remove the dominant fish, another fish would take over the dominant role within the tank. Then the new dominant fish would exert his or her authority over the tank. It's just the way it is. That's kind of the way life is... Now here I go, so follow me on this.

Our lives are kind of like my aquarium. We are just going along minding our own business when wham! Life comes along and shows it's true colors. The next thing we know, we have lost friends, family, time, patience, and fellowship with God. We can't control everything that happens in our world. But we can control how we react to it. Even though we get attacked by life on a daily basis, we can go to God for relief. The trick is not to try to avoid the pitfalls in life. The trick is to make sure that we have a good relationship with God no matter what our situation. Life is full of hills and valleys. Either you are just coming out of a trial, you are going through a trial, or you are on your way into a trial. There is always going to be something. But as long as we have God on our side, we know that eventually everything will be okay in the end. Even if the end result is death, we have a home in Heaven. My goal with this one is just to let you know that you cannot control everything that happens in your "fishbowl" life. But thankfully, you don't have to. Give up control to God. Today and in the future. And everything is going to be alright in the end.

Peace and Love,

Rev. Mike

picture by michael thompson





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Throwing Matches

Do you have someone in your life that needs encouragement? How about someone that you need to witness to? I think we all have these types of people in our lives, but maybe we don't want to barrage them day after day with why they need to be saved, or why they need to come to church, or come to Sunday school, or begin tithing, or get stronger for the benefit of the kingdom, and on and on and on... Maybe we don't want to club them over the head everyday, but we can gently nudge them on whenever we have opportunity. It's kind of like throwing matches into a dark room. The dark room represents the improvement that needs to be made in the person's life. The match is the little bit of encouragement that we try to send on a daily basis.

Just imagine that that the person that you are encouraging is a completely dark room filled with fire wood. The fire wood is the realization of the individual that they need to improve some aspect of their life. But that fire wood will not catch fire without some help. That's where you come in. It is your job to throw match after match of encouragement, correction, and instruction to your family and friends. Notice that I said match, not torch! The more that you try to beat people up, the more they will resist. My approach is to gently nudge and allow the Holy Spirit to take over the situation. There will be opportunities to throw that torch every once and awhile. But don't feel bad if you can only throw a match. Many a blaze has been started with just one simple match. So just keep throwing matches at you friends. Eventually, you will set them on fire.

Peace and Love

Rev. Mike





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