The Holy Spirit

Recently I downloaded a discipleship bible study from the Navigators UK website. I was actually looking for a Nav bible study on 1 John, as that's what we're looking at in church, but I couldn't find anything. Anyway, I found this study. It's called "Learning to Live" and there are 6 books. I haven't printed out all of them. I just looked through the contents of each and decided what I wanted to learn because each book is about 60 pages long and I was using the printer at work. I've been slowly working through book 2, where the topics are things like "Living by the Spirit" and "Living by God's truth". It's been amazing and really challenging!

What I wanted to write about is the Holy Spirit study. That was a real eye-opener. It took me through all passages that deal with the Holy Spirit and of course at the end of each study, it has a self-reflection/application section that asks you think about how you can apply what you've learned to your life. I was really challenged by the fact that the same Spirit that shut the lions' mouths when Daniel was in the lions' den is the same Spirit that lives in me. I have access to that power and I have done nothing about it.

Another thing that challenged me is a sermon I listened to online. The preacher was talking about the New Testament meaning of fellowship. In the New Testament, the disciples would meet together for fellowship because they really needed it. They'd been out evangelising and making disciples and they had been beaten or spat at or stoned - whatever, so they needed to meet together so they could bandage each others' wounds and pray and build each other up again so that they had the strength to go back out and do it all again. Today fellowship is hanging out after church and having a laugh. We don't seem - not the majority anyway - to seek a way to build each other up and equip ourselves to be able to go and make disciples of all nations...

These two things have really been on my mind since I heard and studied them. We have this amazing power in our lives, but we don't use it to it's full potential. And we don't take advantage of the time we have together to strengthen each other to do God's work. Why? I know I haven't because it really never occurred to me until I came across these two teachings and also my faith has been almost non-existent. But now, I'm not sure what to do with this knowledge as I don't know where I can start. I have been praying for God to help me to love Him so that I can love and serve His people and now this! It feels like too much to take in. And it's scary.

I feel like for the past few weeks I have been yearning for a deeper fellowship and now I know what the New Testament definition of fellowship is, I just want to have that so that I can be equipped to go out and do the task God has for me. But that kind of fellowship is seriously lacking at my church. After the sermon, we rarely even talk about it. We just make jokes and talk to each other about the last week and the week ahead. So I've been praying for it. I can't be the only one who desires a bit more depth in my relationships with people at church. It seems to be lacking for the women. The men have a really good programme for them. I hope the women will too. And I mean more than just meeting together and eating a lot of junk food and talking about how hard it is to be a single woman. I need more.

I guess this has all been a bit "stream of consciousness". I just miss the deeper friendships I used to have where I could talk about these sorts of things.