Heart, Mind and Soul

What is it like to follow Jesus with everything you are?  To give Him your heart, mind and soul?  To seek Him with all your strength?

Pretty much how it sounds.  You are consumed by Him.  Your first thought in the morning is Him, your last thought at night is Him, everything you do in between is about Him and you dream about Him.  Sound extreme?  It is.  And it should be.

If you are going to be obsessed with or addicted to anything, it should be Jesus.  This life we are living right now is a blip on the radar of eternity.  This life and this world are only a little bit of each of our story.  After this is the rest of forever and there are two options.  Spend it with God or don't.  The second option is going to be really unpleasant.  All sorts of pain and suffering and gnashing of teeth, because it will be away from God.

If you have ever thought this life was rough, it will seem like roses compared to a life of forever away from the One Who Created you.

What does that have to do with being obsessed with Jesus?  Believing in Him is the only way anyone gets option one, spending eternity with God.  He is the only way to avoid option two.

When we believe that Jesus was sent to save us from hell, it is really hard not to become obsessed with Him.  That is an incredible gift.  But that is not all He offers.  Through His spirit, He can offer us comfort while we are waiting for this life to end and the real one to begin.  He can begin to transform all the broken parts of us into glorious ones.

If you are reading this, chances are, He has 'flicked on your switch'.  He has woken up your spirit to realize there is more to life than what you can see.  So you need to ask Him to complete the deal.  Give Him permission to come into your life and start comforting and transforming you and healing you and helping you.  It is easy.

Jesus, I know that I have been separated from You and God the Father.  I don't want to be separated from either of You anymore.  I am sorry that I have been separated from You.  Fill me with Your Holy Spirit and pour new life into me.  I want to spend eternity with You, not separated from You.  I give You permission to work in my life.  I want to be obsessed with and addicted to You and only You.  Help me to do that, because I know I can't do it myself.

And now you can thank Him.  You surround yourself with people who also follow Jesus.  You listen to music that glorifies Him, you read books that teach you about Him, you ask Him to make the Bible come alive to you.  He will set you on fire with passion for Him, but you have to ASK.  And you have to BELIEVE.  One of the many cool things about Jesus is that you can even ask Him for that.  Ask Him to help you believe in Him and have passion for Him.

And then set your eyes on Him.  And remember He is at the right hand of the throne of God.  So when your eyes are set on Jesus, you are actually staring directly into heaven.  And when you are staring directly into heaven, you realize that this world is not the reality.  Ask Him to help you focus on reality, which is not this life but the next.  And when He settles that in your heart, you will be completely overtaken.  It is truly the best place to be.  Looking forward to the next place and working with Him to tell others about it.

And then you and He will have done it together, you will have committed heart, mind and soul to something so much bigger than what you are in right now and you won't remember anything different and you won't want anything different anyway.  Committed, heart, mind and soul.  It really is that easy.  Just ask.

Holy Spirit

Hi!  My name is Aubrey.  I am a human.  To be precise, I am a female human.  This gender distinction entitles me to a number of roles in life, mother, sister, aunty, to name a few.  When I have my mother hat on, I have many privileges such as encouraging people to do homework, washing stinky socks or wiping noses and butts.  When I have my sister hat on however, my privileges change.  I get to encourage, harass and have the occasional chat via phone or Skype.  When I am in Aunty mode, I get to snuggle, huggle, oogle and google and only maybe once in a blue moon change a diaper.  It is a good thing that my 'duties' in each role are different because in some instances things could get awkward.  For instance, if I had to wipe butts in the sister role.  I don't think anyone would enjoy that.  But no matter which role I am in, I am still Aubrey.  My personality is still the same, just different parts of it are in use in each instance.  I have all the same skills and abilities no matter who I am dealing with, I am just employing different ones depending on the circumstance.  Get the picture?  Always Aubrey, just different parts of me being expressed and imparted in different scenarios.

God is exactly the same, only way better.  He expresses Himself in three different 'persons' or roles.  God the Father, Jesus the Son and the Holy Spirit.  God the Father created everything.  Jesus and the Holy Spirit were with Him, but He was the 'Mastermind' behind it all.  He still is the 'Mastermind' behind everything.  He knows everything, sees everything, is everywhere, can do anything.  He is straight spirit.  God the Father expresses Himself as the ultimate 'Overseer'.

Jesus is God in a human body.  Humans had worked themselves into a pretty serious problem.  God's solution was to become one of us, do life from our perspective and then set the whole situation straight again.  And to do that, He had to live like we live, become what we are.  Jesus' spirit and God's spirit were the same.  They thought alike, acted alike, were identical.  The human nature part of Jesus still had to make the decision to activate that connection, but once He did they were completely alike.  There really are no words to completely describe how He did it.  He will show us when this world is over.  For now, we just need to know that the 'Jesus' role of God was to walk with us on earth and go through every emotional and physical experience that we do as humans.  He wanted to feel what we feel, how we feel it.

Jesus and God the Father knew that when Jesus was done what He needed to do on earth, we would still be floundering about and need help with this whole faith thing.  They couldn't just leave us to go it alone.  So after Jesus returned to heaven, where He received a new body, like we all eventually will, He 'sent in' person number three to look after us until we could join Him on the new earth.  Thus enters the Holy Spirit, which is really just a specific name for 'God's Spirit' or 'Jesus' Spirit'.  He is Jesus without skin on again.  Which is a challenge for us, because we like to see things before we believe in them.  That is the hard part of faith.  We have to believe the Holy Spirit is in us, working, even though we can't see Him.

When a person prays or spends quiet time with God, they are spending time with Jesus and the Holy Spirit as well.  The three are so wrapped up in each other that they can't do anything without the other two participating.  The Bible specifically tells us though that the Holy Spirit, or God and Jesus in the form they are dealing with us in now if you prefer, is a teacher and a comforter, among many other things.  So He is the power in you that makes the Bible make sense or that gives you peace when everything is crazy and you shouldn't really have peace.  He is the power that keeps our human nature in check when it wants to rage about inside us and amongst those around us and cause chaos.  He is also the power that will do battle for us against assaults of the enemy in our minds and hearts.  The angels deal with the demonic stuff in the spirit realm.  The Holy Spirit deals with the demonic and human nature stuff inside us.

So really, when you 'invite Jesus into your heart' you are inviting the Holy Spirit.  'Inviting Jesus' are just the words we have chosen, but the Bible clearly states that when you 'believe' in Jesus and what He did to save us, the Holy Spirit 'fills' you and marks you as belonging to Them.  So, we believe in the 'Jesus' role and that 'God the Father' somehow was playing both of those roles at once and then the third role, the Holy Spirit, is unleashed in our lives.

Now, add to the picture - denominations- which are completely a human invention.  The Father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit did not create denominations.  The reason denominations add some confusion to the situation is because they all have a different spin on how it should look if the 'Holy Spirit' is part of your life.  In the Bible this is not confusing at all.  Let me repeat, this is only made confusing by humans.

When you make the realization that your life is messed up and you can't get through it without divine help and you tell Jesus He can be in charge, you have the Holy Spirit.  Done.  End of story.

What you choose to ask the Holy Spirit to help you with however, is a story only you can write.  The Holy Spirit is always around you and with you and in you, but He never does ANYTHING in you or with you unless YOU ASK.  YOU HAVE to give him permission to conquer your human nature.  He doesn't just come into your life and start karate chopping all the funky parts of your personality or the jumbled up parts of your past.  Let me say this again.  YOU HAVE TO ASK.  But first you HAVE TO BELIEVE that the 'person' you are asking even exists.

So back to some of the confusing things that humans have added to this already mysterious process.  Some people think that if you are really filled with the Holy Spirit, you will speak in tongues.  This is possible, but not mandatory.  But honestly, I don't know why anyone wouldn't want to speak in the tongues of angels or all of a sudden be able to preach the gospel in Mandarin Chinese.  That is the stuff of science fiction movies, which we all watch, and we can have it for REAL.  IF WE BELIEVE.  In other words, turn off our 'adult thinking and figuring out heads' and turn on our 'little kid I still believe in unicorns heads'.  If we quit being all self conscious and self centered and realize we can have real power in the spirit realm to help people, we'd see some pretty amazing stuff shake down.

But I digress.  Other denominations say that if you don't bark like a dog or bray like a donkey during worship services, you aren't really filled with the Holy Spirit.  They are wrong.  Again, the Bible does mention that the Holy Spirit groans and does intercession in ways our humanness doesn't understand and yes, if we give Him permission, He will work that way through us.  He never, however, turns off our brains and flails us about the sanctuary.  

The Holy Spirit will also use us with our permission to tell people things about themselves that we never could have known about them.  These are called words of wisdom or words of knowledge.  And God the Father usually uses them to encourage believers or make unbelievers understand that He is paying attention to them and wants a relationship with them.

I have not included all of the 'gifts of the Spirit' and the 'fruits of the Spirit', but the principal is the same for all of them.  First we have to believe the Holy Spirit is real, then we have to believe His power is real, then we have to give Him the go ahead to work in and through us.

Mostly what the Holy Spirit does in our lives, AFTER WE ASK HIM, is transform us to be more like Jesus by teaching us more about things of God and by comforting us when we are having a hard time in this life.  But He can and will WITH OUR PERMISSION partner with us to do miraculous things in the realm that we don't see and is hard for us to remember is there.

So, yeah.  That's a small piece of the picture of the Holy Spirit, one of the roles God plays in our lives.  Clear as mud?