Better together

But God’s Spirit gives us power to do what he asks

Judges 6:34 Then the Spirit of the Lord clothed Gideon with power.

Acts 1:8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you.

1 Corinthians 4:20 For the Kingdom of God is not just a lot of talk; it is living by God’s power.

2 Corinthians 12:9 God said, “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.”

Gideon, self-identified as the least important member of the weakest family in Israel, hid at the bottom of a winepress to thresh wheat for fear of the cruel oppression of Midianites.

(Remember Jesus’s disciples hiding in a locked room for fear of the Jewish rulers?)

Out of all Israel, the angel of the Lord appeared to this frightened young man and greeted him with “Mighty hero, the Lord is with you!”

(Remember Jesus’s disciples hearing him say to them, “I am with you always, to the end of the age”?)

It must have felt to Gideon like a sarcastic joke. I picture him, startled, looking around the small space where he was hiding to see who this strange guy was talking to. It couldn’t be to him. Mighty hero??

Gideon responds with bitter questions, an overflow of anguish ending with, “The Lord has abandoned us.” How could this stranger possibly believe the Lord was with them?

(Remember that on the mountain in Galilee where God gave the disciples the Great Commission, Matthew makes a point of telling us that some of them doubted—even after walking so closely with Jesus for three years?)

And the angel, speaking for God, says, “Go with the strength you have, and rescue Israel from the Midianites. I am sending you!” Gideon replies, “But Lord, how can I …?” (Judges 6:14-15 and on). He didn’t realize that the strength he had was God’s strength, not his own.

(Remember Jesus saying to the disciples, “I have all authority … therefore, go”?)

The unlikely interchange between Gideon and the angel of the Lord reminds me of Moses at the burning bush. “Who, me? You want me to do what?? You’ve got to be kidding! Send someone else better qualified!”

You know these stories, right? If not, read Judges 6 and 7 and Exodus 3. If you’re like me, you’ll find a LOT to identify with in Gideon’s and Moses’s protests.

I am with you. With God’s call comes the power to accomplish what God asks of us. And because we know our own inadequacies, we know it’s only the Lord who can fulfill through us his purposes. All glory goes to him.

The Lord walked closely with both Gideon and Moses, patiently encouraging them and giving them specific instructions along the way. In each case, they started from a place of acknowledged, painful loss and defeat and failure. Their relationship with God was transparent from the beginning, with no pretense of being worthy of God using them. They learned to recognize and rely on the Lord’s voice. They depended absolutely on him.

In both cases, later, after God successfully accomplished his initial call to them, Gideon and Moses tried to go forward on their own and got into trouble. King Saul is another biblical example of the way self-confidence can become self-defeating (1 Samuel 15). The author of 1 Chronicles summarizes Saul’s life in this terse statement, “Saul died because he was unfaithful to the Lord. He failed to obey the Lord’s command” (10:13).

We don’t ever outgrow our need to depend on the Lord and submit ourselves to him. We are always beginners in this walk of obedience and faith; forever, the rest of our lives, learning and growing.

And on the flip side, in our desperate dependency, we can feel the delight of watching God do through us what we could never do in our own strength. I experience this every time I hear someone say that the Karis book has encouraged or challenged them in some way. I wrote that book with so much fear and trembling, so keenly aware of my own inadequacy.

Like Gideon and Moses, I tried to get out of doing it, asking God to choose someone else, a better writer, someone with a platform and experience in the publishing industry. Someone not so closely tied to Karis. I feared being accused of bias and lack of objectivity; that what I wrote couldn’t be relied on because I am her mother. I feared not being capable of summarizing her thirty years of life in a way that would do justice both to her faith and the Lord’s faithfulness to her. I fussed and protested for months.

And in the end, holding this little book in my hand three years later, I experienced the truth God’s Spirit expressed to Paul, which became Karis’s life verse: “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.”

How is the Lord stretching you? What is he asking of you that seems impossible?

Can you hear him saying, as he did to Gideon, “I am with you”?

Are you willing for the Spirit to clothe you with power to do what he is asking you to do?

God of wonders

But God’s Spirit participated in the creation of the world

Genesis 1:1-2 In the beginning God [plural] created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep waters. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.

For the last few weeks, we’ve been looking at the fruit of the Spirit as Paul lists the qualities of agape love in Galatians 5:22-23. Since we remembered and celebrated last Sunday (Pentecost) the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the believers in Jerusalem, it seems fitting that we continue deepening our understanding of the Holy Spirit.

Also, I’m interested in this topic because of the book I’m writing for kids, hoping through story to communicate more about the Trinity than they typically learn in Sunday School. Not that I “understand” this mystery!

The Trinity is present in Scripture from the very beginning. The name for God used in the creation account in Genesis 1, Elohim, is plural. And immediately, the Spirit is singled out, hovering over formless, empty darkness (1:2). Then Elohim said, “Let there be light” …

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89) heartening poem “God’s Grandeur,” referencing Genesis 1:2, could have been written today.

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast and with ah! Bright wings.

God of Wonders by Steve J. Hindalong and Marc Byrd, Third Day

Strengthen self-control

But God’s power must be used rightly June 5, 2025

Galatians 5:22-23 But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!

Proverbs 16:32 Better to have self-control than to conquer a city.

Proverbs 25:28 A person without self-control is like a city with broken-down walls.

I’m writing today in lovely Meridian, Idaho, remembering the impact on me of previous experiences in this beautiful state and their influence on Treasure Hunt 1904, book two of the Cally and Charlie historical fiction series. My sister Jan and I are here for a few days visiting our sister Marsha and brother-in-law Vance. I’ve not been here before in June. The flowers are stunning.

Marsha’s roses

The themes of Treasure Hunt 1904 directly relate to the final virtue in Paul’s description of agape, the lovely fruit the Spirit produces in our lives when we give him freedom to garden our hearts.

Self-control, translated “temperance”—moderation, self-restraint—in the KJV, is enkrateia in Greek, derived from the word kratos, which means strength. Like praos (see the last blog about gentleness), enkrateia is a strong word. It calls us to the right use of power. That power, as we know, is the operation of the Spirit of God in our lives, which we will recognize and celebrate this Sunday, Pentecost.

Along with the other virtues, gentleness calls us to choose how we treat others. Enkrateia reminds us we have the ability and responsibility to choose how we manage ourselves, circling us back to “Love others as you love yourself,” as Jesus taught us (Matthew 22:39). The Spirit empowers us to do both with godliness (God-likeness, the God who is love) as we practice agape.

Paul uses enkrateia (as a verb): we must discipline ourselves to win the race of life. Not to win temporary earthly rewards, but an eternal prize: God’s “Well done, faithful servant” (see 1 Corinthians 9:24-27; Philippians 3:12-14; Matthew 25:21).

So, what’s the connection with Treasure Hunt 1904? Using the motifs of a multi-layered treasure hunt and of water (see John 7:38-39), so critically important to transform into fruitfulness the fertile deserts of Idaho, we see Cally grapple with the wounds of trauma in her life (book one), emerging from the grief and paralysis of victimhood into proactive purpose. As she grows into acceptance of the love the Malcomson family offers her, Cally begins to recognize her own power. She can make choices for herself, rather than being controlled, for good or ill, by others.

This book also includes scenes of the devastating, ongoing impact of previous decades of misuse of power, sometimes, tragically, in the name of God, as western settlers and the U.S. government claimed a “manifest destiny” over the lives and territory of native Americans and others. Is not this false equivalence, still plaguing the world today, a breaking of the third commandment and of Jesus’ command to love others as he loves us?

Pentecost Sunday initiates the liturgical season of “ordinary time.” Ordinary, for you and me and all followers of Jesus, means practicing the wonderful fruit of the Spirit, in the agape love of the Father, empowered by Jesus’ conquest of sin and death by his sacrifice on the cross and his resurrection. “Live clean, innocent lives as children of God, shining like bright lights.. your faithful service is an offering to God” (Philippians 2:15-17).

In ordinary time, let’s shine! Let’s bear fruit that adorns the world with joy.

Holy Spirit, today I offer you freedom to grow the good fruit of agape love in my heart, in all its dimensions. Pull out the weeds, heal the wounds, rebuild healthy boundaries, and water the fertile soil of God’s love. Amen.

A challenging choice today

But the Spirit’s fruit is always in season

Hosea 1:7 I [the Lord] will show love to the people of Judah. I will free them from their enemies—not with weapons and armies or horses and charioteers, but by my power as the Lord their God.

Zechariah 4:6 It is not by force nor by strength [that God’s plans will succeed], but by my Spirit, says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.

God spoke these words to and through Hosea and Zechariah at times of challenge and crisis, when it seemed there was no way for God’s people to overcome their enemies and return to peace and blessing.

We need these words today. I need these words today. My personal wellbeing depends on choosing to put my full trust in God’s sovereignty over history and nations and people. His plans will succeed—though not likely the way or in the timing I think best.

Meanwhile, despite my grief as I watch current events hurt people I love, I have the opportunity today, and then tomorrow, and then the next day, to affirm and to stand on God’s promises. And to open myself to the Spirit’s work—his way of doing things—in the garden of my heart, even when pulling out the weeds is painful.

The Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives:

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Shutterstock: MVolodymyr

My daughter Valerie reminded our family yesterday of several of Martin Luther King Jr.’s sayings. One that particularly struck me is this: “Let no man pull you so low as to hate him.”

Hatred isn’t the Spirit’s way. It hurts us, and it hurts others. I’m challenged to put my mental, emotional, and spiritual energy into Spirit ways, while trusting God to manage what I can’t control anyway—even when I don’t see what he’s actively doing behind the scenes.

I’m remembering too one of my son’s middle school teachers telling him, “Don’t let people or circumstances rob you of your joy.” Letting myself savor joy—an expression of trust in God, even in the midst of grief—will accomplish more good in my small world than any amount of “warfare.”

It’s the Spirit’s way.

The fruit in our lives comes from God

But God makes fruit grow

Hosea 14:8 [The Lord says] Stay away from idols! I am the one who answers your prayers and cares for you. I am like a tree that is always green; all your fruit comes from me.

John 15:5 [Jesus said] I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing.

Shutterstock: MVolodymyr

We’re home from our vacation, spent tucked away in a small town in Ohio. For two weeks, Dave and I delighted in extended devotional times, hiked in the snow and cold, played games, built jigsaw puzzles, read books, had important conversations, slept (!), and watched a few movies. We are grateful for this restorative time, balancing and healing the intense stress of the last weeks of 2024. The challenge now will be not to get sucked back into running on adrenaline 24/7, as we are both committed to big projects in 2025.

I found myself drawn to the prophets, particularly the minor prophets, those I don’t often read or pay attention to. So from now to Easter, I plan to deep dive for “pearls” from the prophets to share with you.

In light of the work Dave and I believe God has called us to, I chose Hosea 14:8, quoted above, as my “year verse” for 2025. It reminds me of how easily I can get distracted from what God wants for me and make other things more important. These “idols” don’t yield good fruit. Neither do our own efforts, in themselves. The fruit in our lives comes from God, from his life active in us.

I would love for you to join me in exploring “pearls from the prophets”—not just reading my thoughts, but sharing your own as well.

A new heaven and new earth

But God says, “Make every effort”

2 Peter 3:13 But we are looking forward to the new heavens and new earth God has promised, a world filled with his righteousness. And so, dear friends, while you are waiting for these things to happen, make every effort to be found living peaceful lives that are pure and blameless in his sight.

The most memorable statement in the sermon about Jesus’ ascension yesterday, I think, was “Jesus decided to work from home.”

One day, we’ll share his Home (Revelation 21). Meanwhile, the Holy Spirit, first poured out to the believers on the day we celebrate next Sunday, Pentecost, joins us in the trenches as we stay the course, faithfully pursuing “long obedience in the same direction,” as Eugene Peterson so famously put it.

Like perennials, Jesus will come back!

Jesus warned us there would be bumps and bruises along the way. “Here on earth, you will have many trials and sorrows” (John 16:33). Why are we surprised and resentful when this proves to be true? Could it be that we’re seduced by the idea that this is all there is, that life ends with death?

I had the interesting experience Saturday of attending a memorial service immediately followed by a birthday party. Funerals, of course, always make me think of Karis. Perhaps that’s why I found myself telling someone at the birthday party that Karis longed to go Home. In her last year of journaling, she wrote repeatedly, “Father, I can’t do this anymore. Please take me Home. Please.”

So in our sorrow and missing her, we know Karis is exactly where she wanted to be, living her best life. Glimpsing ahead of time the “new heavens” promised to us.

The writer of Hebrews tells us the heroes of faith “agreed that they were foreigners and nomads here on earth. … they were looking for a better place, a heavenly homeland” (11:13, 16).

I think the promise of a new heaven and new earth, where there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain (Revelation 21:4) gives us perspective on our trials and motivation to make the most of our time here, doing with the energy the Spirit gives us whatever God has asked us to do. Peter and other New Testament writers liked the phrase “make every effort,” or “work hard” as some versions translate the phrase:

Make every effort to respond to God’s promises (2 Peter 1:5—see also 1:10, 1:15).

Make every effort to live in peace with everyone (Hebrews 12:14).

Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (Ephesians 4:3).

Make every effort to do what leads to peace and mutual edification (Romans 14:19). … Never pay back evil with more evil … If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone (Romans 12:17-18).

Some versions use the word “harmony” instead of peace. Peace, of course, begins in our own hearts. Worth thinking about, for as long as we’re on this side of the story.

This World Is Not My Home, by Albert Brumley, sung by Jim Reeves.

A new commandment–illustrated by pancakes!

But Jesus adds the essential ingredient

1 John 2:7-8 Dear friends, I am not writing a new commandment for you; rather it is an old one–to love one another. Yet it is also new. Jesus lived the truth of this commandment.

John 15:9, 12, 26 [Jesus said] I have loved you even as the Father has loved me. Remain in my love. … This is my commandment: Love each other just as I have loved you. … I will send you the Spirit of truth. He will come to you from the Father and will testify all about me.

And they’re off on the thousand-mile drive to Oklahoma: Linda, my brother Dan, his wife Diane, and friend John, sharing the driving of the moving van and Linda’s car. The end of a chapter in Linda’s life, and the beginning of a whole new adventure.

Saturday I made pancakes for the crew. I doled out the first six pancakes on the griddle and placed toppings on the table while the pancakes cooked. They looked weird, though, flat and rubbery. I stared at them, puzzled, and suddenly realized I hadn’t put baking powder or soda in the batter.

Everything there except one essential ingredient.

The difference between the first batch and the second was notable enough to take a photo.

It occurred to me that my pancakes could be an analogy of trying to love in our own power vs. including the Holy Spirit to help us love like Jesus did. On my own, my love for others can be flat and flabby. When the Holy Spirit is in charge, though, everything changes: gentleness, beauty, and good humor take the place of tension, stress, and conflict. Have you noticed that?

So now I have another image to remind me of the Holy Spirit “essential ingredient”: pancakes WITH leavening. “Don’t try harder,” they remind me. “Try smarter. Invite the Spirit to work his magic. Then relax into Jesus’s gracious love; his understanding of what each of us needs.”

A new way of living

But the Holy Spirit prays for us

Romans 7:6, 8:26 Now we can serve God, not in the old way of obeying the letter of the law, but in the new way of living in the Spirit. … And the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. For example, we don’t know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us.

We got home at midnight last night from our mission retreat in Colorado, where we focused on the theme of aging faithfully. Since the age range of our mission team is from early 60s to mid-80s, this was appropriate! We studied the wonderful book Aging Faithfully by Alice Fryling as preparation for the retreat, which allowed us to go deeper under the leadership of our facilitators.

I have a lot to continue thinking about, but one highlight for me was realizing I’ve tried to do marketing of my books within a transactional framework (if I do this, I will get that result), rather than transformational, in which I depend on the Spirit’s leading and don’t get stressed over the kinds of results most marketing approaches work toward. As a start, I’m switching in my own mind from using the term “marketing,” to the word “sharing” of what God has given me. I feel hope about an area of my life that I’ve found extremely stressful. Hope for a new way of living guided by the Spirit.

This weekend our family will be saying goodbye to my older sister, who will be moving from a town an hour north of Pittsburgh to a retirement village in Oklahoma. So I’m thinking about the “new way of living” she will soon undertake. There are obvious benefits—like being able to simply open her door to be with people and participate in activities, in contrast with the increasing isolation she’s felt as her vision limits her ability to drive.

At the same time, she’s leaving behind so much that is dear to her, from possessions to people whom she loves. Starting over in a place where no one knows she was a college professor, published author, chaplain, ordained deacon in the Anglican tradition, and cared for 23 foster children over the years—along with her skills in so many areas, her creativity, her wisdom about surviving trauma, and so much more … Well, it’s daunting, to say the least.

A planter Linda built last spring–just one of so many things she’s leaving behind.

As I feel with her the stress of this move and grieve for myself the distance that will shortly exist between us, I am comforted by these words from Romans: the Holy Spirit, so attuned, so active, so perceptive of what God wants for us and what we need. I hope thinking about this will comfort you too, especially if you are in the throes of embracing any kind of “new way of living.”

But the Holy Spirit makes us holy

Romans 15:14-16 I am fully convinced that you are full of goodness. You know these things so well you can teach each other all about them. … I bring you the Good News so that I might present you as an acceptable offering to God, made holy by the Holy Spirit.

1 Peter 1:16 “You must be holy because I am holy” (quoting Lev. 11:44-45, 19:2) [You must be continually be made holy.]

Revelation 22:11 Let the one who is holy continue to be holy. [Let the holy continue being made holy.]

Last week we hired two men to clean up our yard and garden and prepare it for winter. They did more in two days than I had managed to do in several weeks. I am SO relieved and grateful.

I thought of this when I read this next “Holy Spirit” passage in Romans. The decision to hire two men to help me required admitting I couldn’t do it myself. It cost us cash we wouldn’t normally spend like that. It pinched my pride. But every day, several times a day, I look outside and say, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” I’m sure our neighbors are grateful too.

*Weeded, mulched, our side of the hedge trimmed, three baby trees protected from deer… Thank you, thank you, thank you!*

“There was a boy named Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.”

Remember Eustace in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by CS Lewis?

When Eustace decided he wanted to change his dragon life, he tried in every way he could to do so himself. Failing, he finally allowed Aslan to dig deeply enough to do it for him, a painful but gloriously freeing intervention that transformed him from graceless to gracious.

To better understand Paul’s wordplay, “made holy by the Holy Spirit,” I did a small study of the Greek words translated “holy.” The two words most used in the New Testament, including this phrase, come from the same root. Hagios is a description of something or someone, declaring them to be sacred, pure, blameless. It’s a state of being, not an attainment, eg. the Holy Spirit whenever he appears, and God saying, “I am holy.”

Hagiazo, by contrast, is a process; it means to make something or someone holy; to purify, sanctify, consecrate, hallow. We can’t make ourselves holy, no matter how hard or how long we try. Only the Holy Spirit can do this for us, because innately, we are not holy. We are being made holy (hagiazo) by the Holy (hagios) Spirit—and this is ongoing, as long as we live in this fallen world. Our human goodness—acknowledged by Paul in verse 14—is not adequate to the purity God desires. Only he can do that in us, as any of us who have tried to “be good” can easily acknowledge.

Because of Jesus sacrifice on the cross, we don’t have to be “good enough” to please our Father. His love for us doesn’t depend on that. But he does want us to grow in holiness and in every virtue, for the sake of his needy and broken world, for the sake of our relationships, for the sake of our own joy.

Our part is to submit to God’s work in us through the Spirit, as Eustace submitted to Aslan in Lewis’s story. As Paul told us repeatedly in Romans 8, we can do this with confidence. We can trust the Holy Spirit’s work in us, because he is pure love.

Read back over the Holy Spirit references I’ve been highlighting in these blog posts, to remind yourself how trustworthy he is. Not always to protect us from pain, because growth and change are painful. But to accomplish his purposes in us when we reach the place, like Eustace, when we desire his holiness more than we desire our own comfort; when we desperately want his healing and restoration; when we know we can’t do it ourselves and cast ourselves on his mercy and grace.

This prayer-hymn keeps coming back to my mind as I’ve thought about these Scriptures and have sat with him, asking him to do the work I need today in my heart-garden.

Heavenly Father, in you we live and move and have our being: We humbly pray you so to guide and govern us by your Holy Spirit, that in all the cares and occupations of our life we may not forget you but may remember that we are ever walking in your sight; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.