Category: Holy Spirit

This I Believe (The Creed)

We sang “This I Believe” in our men’s group. The song is based on the Apostle’s Creed and the linked version is from Hillsong.1

Both the Apostles’ creed and “This I Believe” say I believe many times.

Is that just a list of facts to believe? You may have heard the statements in the Apostle’s Creed as cold intellectual truths. I know I used to. But there’s quite a difference between assenting to cold facts and saying “Yes!” to a truth that our life depends on.

If someone says, “Atlantic City is the capital of New Jersey,” not much is at stake in whether that is true or not. 2 But what if I were driving a fully loaded 18-wheeler towards an old one lane bridge across a deep gorge. Can it support me and my load? To go across that bridge is to trust it with my life.

That second kind of belief, trusting with our lives, is the kind of belief sung about in “This I Believe.” Full-bodied genuine Christian belief is much deeper than simply saying “Yes” to some facts, and “This I Believe” takes what might only remain as head knowledge and transforms it into wonderful warm praise.

How do we get that kind of heartfelt belief? In certain circles you are ordered to believe each point in the Apostle’s Creed … or else. You must persuade yourself to believe and confess each of the points or you are in trouble.

But that attempt at self-persuasion is futile because we can only truly grasp these truths by faith. And that faith is itself a gift from God. In Ephesians 2:8-9 it says For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.

We have been rescued from sin and death by faith in what Jesus accomplished in being crucified on the cross for our sin and then brought back to life. And as we follow Christ today, we continue by faith. By faith, we trust our lives to the God who gave us the creed’s truths:

I believe in God our Father. I believe in Christ the Son. I believe in the Holy Spirit. I believe in the resurrection, that we will rise again. I believe Jesus rose again. I believe that Jesus Christ is Lord.

The preceding truths all focus on our personal relationship with God in three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But now consider these truths:

I believe in the saint’s communion and in your holy church.

Here, we have union with Christ —– we join the faith and life of everyone who has ever loved Jesus —- in the unity of the Holy Spirit. God is invisible and we demonstrate our belief in this unseen God by loving real life people. Real life people whose flaws start to disgust us — until we look in the mirror! 

That’s when the great theological truths of the apostles’ creed stop being only abstract and cerebral. God is the God who changes us. The creed comes alive as we live out the Lord’s command to Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. (Ephesians 4:32.)

 

  1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDeA-SAlklU
  2. Atlantic City is not the capital, Trenton is

 

“They’re not gonna catch us. We’re on a mission from god.” Elwood Blues

Today’s title is a quote from Elwood Blues in The Blues Brothers. The mission from God for Jake and Elwood was to save the Catholic orphanage where they were raised from foreclosure.

Luke 4:40-43 shows how Jesus was focused on his mission. The folks in Capernaum were begging him to stay in their town because of all the healing that he was doing. They were amazed to see how he was curing people with high fevers and sickness.  Their attitude was “Please stick around. We can’t get enough of this! Don’t leave!”  But he said, “I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns also, because that is why I was sent. (Luke 4:43)

Though the townspeople in Capernaum pleaded, Jesus could not let himself be distracted from his own mission of spreading the good news to all the towns in the area.

Sometimes we need to clarify just what our mission is….and stick to it.

The organizing expert Marie Kondo asks, “Does it bring you joy?” She’s talking about whether to keep or discard material things, but joy can be a key in our own mission. We believe in the Holy Spirit and we know that one of his fruits is joy. So we find out which activities are bringing us joy, and especially those which bring others joy, as a way of seeing whether they fit into our mission from God.

Here’s two tests of whether it’s the Holy Spirit talking. If you’re feeling led by guilt into doing something, accompanied by a definite lack of joy, it’s probably not the Holy Spirit!  But when what you’re going to do fills you with joy, even when you know it won’t necessarily be easy, there is a good chance that it is the Holy Spirit.

When we are pursuing our mission from God and seeking what God is sending us to do, we have the privilege of walking in God’s favor:  

 May the favor of the Lord our God rest on us;
    establish the work of our hands for us—
    yes, establish the work of our hands. (Psalm 90:17)

Then, today’s opening quote activates in our lives:
“They’re not gonna catch us. We’re on a mission from God.”