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Today is the third Sunday of a sermon series Im sharing called, How to bless others. This series began at our Property Celebration last month when I said that the next task for us as a new congregation is to bless the people who live near our property. We want to be a blessing However we cant share what we dont have. Blessing others is a paradox. We naturally think of blessing as doing something for another person, but we often miss a first step. The step is realizing and trusting how each of us has been blessed. Until each of us realize how deeply we have been blessed by God its almost impossible to consistently bless others. So in this series Im talking about six blessings or gifts that God shares with us. The aim is for each of us to know how deeply we have been blessed by God, so we can bless others. I started out by looking at the gift or blessing of salvation. God delivers us from situations that we cant deliver ourselvesin this life and in the life to come. This is salvation. Last week I talked about unconditional love and unconditional acceptance. God knows every part of us and judges us. The judgment is I love you and accept you where you are on your journey. Acceptance is important to us at Chain of Lakes New Church because weve identified it as one of our eight Core Values. We understand it to mean that We accept people without judgment regardless of what has happened in their life or where they are on their faith journey. I concluded the sermon by giving a tip on resisting judgment or really criticism. The tip is when you hear someone talk about another person who isnt present, gently ask the person who is talking if he or she has shared that information with the person who isnt present. Basically dont talk about others behind their back unless youve talked to them first. This is how we love each other at Chain of Lakes New Church. We dont talk about others who arent present unless were first willing to share that information with the person.

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I saw this happen at one of our meetings this past week. Somebody said, lets not talk about this person (who wasnt present) unless we talk to the person first. I was praising God all night. Yay God!! Today Im talking about the gift of the Holy Spirit. I especially want to encourage you to use this brochure this week. The Holy Spirit is an idea that has confused many people. I dont want us to be confused. I shared six readings about the Holy Spirit in this devotion. I believe that by using this devotion daily each of us can become clearer in our own understanding about the Holy Spirit. On this brochure youll find a place to take sermon notes and a place for prayer requests. When I was in college I participated in an Intervarsity Christian fellowship group. I developed a friendship with a classmate. One day he came over to my dorm to pray with me. We went to the lobby of our hall and started praying. As we were praying he started using these words that I had never heard before. They werent English words and they didnt sound like another language. I dont know what was going on. When we were done praying I asked him, Were you speaking Hebrew? It sounded very spiritual, and I thought, maybe its Hebrew. He smiled and said no. He went on to tell me that he spoke in tongues. He said that that God had given him this gift and when he prayed he would often speak in tongues. . How many of us know of someone who has been given the gift of speaking in tongues? Do any of us speak in tongues? For those of me who were like me in that room speaking in tongues is a prayer language that God gives to some people. When you listen to someone speak in tongues it sounds like gibberish, but it sounds very spiritual. Ive had a few friends who speak in

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tongues. All of them were like my college friend in that they didnt try to bring attention to themselves because they spoke in tongues. They didnt use this gift in a prideful way. Praying in tongues is a gift of the Holy Spirit. Often we get confused by the Holy Spirit because odd things can happen around the Holy Spirit. We think the Holy Spirit is speaking in tongues or doing faith healings or doing something else that just seems weird. These are charismatic expressions of the Holy Spirit. They are quite appropriate. For Presbyterians who value the intellect and rational expressions of the faith, the Holy Spirit unfortunately just seems weird. I dont want us to think that the Holy Spirit is weird. I love the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit has done terrific things in my lifeevery significant event in my life has been led by the Holy Spirit. I want the people at Chain of Lakes New Church to love the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is confusing. It didnt help that the Holy Spirit for a long time was called the Holy Ghost. How many of us grew up saying Holy Ghost? If you only get one thing from this sermon get this, the Holy Spirit is not a ghost. Ghosts come out on Halloween. Most ghosts scare us. Ghosts have big sheets over them and eyeholes in then. Thats not the Holy Spirit. There is a tradition of referring to the Holy Spirit as a ghost. One of the first creeds of the churchthe Apostles Creedused the term ghost. How many of us have a King James Bible at home? The translation for the Holy Spirit in the King James Bible is ghost. Look up John 20:22. When Karen read it we heard her read, Receive the Holy Spirit. The King James translated this verse as Receive the Holy Ghost. The Holy Spirit doesnt have to be confusing. Let me share an image of the Holy Spirit that I think can help.

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SLIDE

The image is Footprints in the Sand. Im guessing a lot of us have seen this image

before. Footprints in the Sand is a poem that is often put on a bulletin folder at funerals. The poem describes a person having a dream. In the dream a person was walking with the Lord on a beach reviewing his life. For each scene there were two sets of footprints. In the last scene there was only one set of footprints. The man asked God why there was only one set. God said in the most difficult times in our life God was carrying him. There was only one set of footprints. The Holy Spirit is a set of footprints. We cant see what causes the footprints, but we know something beautiful caused them. We trust their existence. When we look back at a situation we can see that God was present and that God was moving. We never saw God, but we know that God was therea footprint. Thats the work of the Holy Spirita footprint in the sand of our life. Its not a perfect image because the Holy Spirit does more than work in a crisis situation. The Holy Spiritfootprint in the sand. Let me share two points about the Holy Spirit. You might want to write these down. We might ask the question, Who is the Holy Spirit? The Holy Spirit is God. The Holy Spirit is just as much God as God the Father or Creator and God the Son or Jesus. In the Nicene Creedone of the Ecumenical creeds that bind together Christianswe say this about the Holy Spirit: Say these words with me: SLIDE We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets. Once when I spoke about the Holy Spirit someone came up to me and said, You know. We think of the Holy Spirit as the other guy. Its Father, Son, and that other guy.

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The Holy Spirit is not that other guy or that other person. The Holy Spirit is God, just as divine as God the Creator and God the Son, Jesus. 2nd point Where does the Holy Spirit come from? The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God the Spirit comes from God. We can see this in the New Testament story that Karen read. Its a great story. Its the night that Jesus was resurrected. The disciples were afraid for their lives, so they had locked themselves in a room. Then Jesus suddenly appears. WE arent told how Jesus made it through the locked door . Jesus showed up. He said, Peace be with you, He showed them the wounds in his hands and side to prove that he was really Jesus. The disciples rejoiced at seeing Jesus. Jesus told them again, Peace be with you. Then he commissioned his followers to go out into the room. Just as Abba Father has sent me, so I send you. Then he did something remarkable. He breathed on them. Often when we talk about the Holy Spirit we say it is the breath of God. That breath is God. It comes from God. In the first reading that Karen shared it talked about the wind of God moving over the waters of creation. That wind of God is also known as the ruah. It is literally the Spirit or the Holy Spirit. We dont have to do anything to receive this gift. Its part of us. Every time we celebrate a baptism we celebrate that the Holy Spirit is sealed in the person being baptized. The person does nothing to earn the gift. This is why we baptize infants. Its a total celebration of God. This idea that the Holy Spirit is a gift is really important for people in the suburbs. We live in a culture where were taught that we have earn everything. We get what we deserve. If we do well we deserve it if we do poorly we deserve that too. Thats not how it works with God. We dont deserve the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is a gift.

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The Holy spirit is just as much a part of us as the blood in our body. It flows through us; we have it whether we want it or not. If someone tragically suffered a deep cut and too much blood came out the person would bleed to death. Having blood is part of being alive. The Holy Spirit keeps us spiritually alive. Fortunately the Holy Spirit never leaves us. Ive had people tell me, I dont feel anything. I dont feel the Holy Spirit. We dont have to feel anything. Who feels their blood? Sometimes we feel blood, but not always. But we know that the blood is there. Sometimes we feel the Holy Spirit, but many times we dont. Just as we know that our blood is there we know that the Holy Spirit is present. Finally the Holy Spirit is mysterious. For people who have a math and science background the Holy Spirit can be a difficult idea. For we cant prove the Holy Spirit to anyone. Ive had many examples just in the last month of the footprints of the Holy Spirit. I cant prove it to you, but I believe. The day after the Property Celebration I had a nudging to go to the Property. When I got there I met a man who was going for a prayer walk. We prayed together. I cant prove to you that this was a footprint of the Spirit. I believe that it is. Today we have Kristel Peters with us for the first time. Before we hired her, I prayed 15 minutes a day on my knees for almost two months. I implored God to bring us someone. Kristel was living in Bemidji. She found out about this job from a friend who saw a flyer that Betty Long put in a Caribou coffee shop. If someone had told me at the start of our search that the person we would hire was living four hours a way and would find out about this because a friend saw a flyer at Caribou coffee. No way. I cant prove to you that this a footprint of the Holy Spirit. I believe that it is. Or just worshipping here. I shared this story last week. One day a pastor from another church told us about Da Vinci Academy. We showed up unannounced about ten days later. We had been looking very hard for a place to

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worship without any luck. All of a sudden this place came to us in one day. I cant prove to you that this is a footprint of the Holy Spirit, but I believe that it is. The Holy Spirit commands us to create a better world. Our relationship with God is more than personal faith. The Holy Spirit wants to create a better world. The Holy Spirit is prompting us to do better. Look at these statistics on poverty. SLIDE SLIDE SLIDE SLIDE dump. If anything I hope that these statistics would want us to leave this place, wanting to change the world. The Holy Spirit is driving us. Finally a tip How can I see these footprints? The best way is through prayer. It doesnt even have to be a long prayer. Ive taught you a form of this prayer before. In the New Testament reading, Jesus said receive the Holy Spirit. Try this prayer. Lord help me receive the Holy Spirit. Direct my head, heart and feet. Try this prayer this week. Say it on the hour. Set an alarm to Groups 50 percent of the world lives on less than 2.50 a daythats 3 billion people 80 percent of the world lives on less than $10 a day 22,000 children die each day because of poverty Yesterday children had to scavenge for food and something to sell in a garbage