Daily Reception of the Holy Spirit Through Meditation and Prayer

Transcript (edited for readability).

Just imagine if you said this: "Look, since I had a drink of water 50 years ago, I don't have to drink today or tomorrow." We need water to sustain us. Water is life-giving, refreshing. Without water we couldn't possibly survive. You don't just bring water once or occasionally—let's say once a week—but you drink water every day. Most of us drink water, and if it's not water, it's coffee, which is water with some nasties added. Or we drink water with spirits. But still we need to drink in order to survive as human beings.

The same is true spiritually. We need to drink the water of the Spirit every day for us to live and act as Christians. Our spiritual life is a receptive life. So I wanted to speak today about the daily reception of the Holy Spirit. In the last session yesterday I spoke about receiving the Holy Spirit every week when we go to church. The church is the place where the Holy Spirit is. That's where you go to receive the Spirit, and you receive the Spirit through baptism, through the preaching of the word and the hearing of the word in faith, and through Holy Communion. You go there to drink the water of the Spirit that flows from the side of our risen Lord Jesus.

Some years ago—it's quite a number of years ago now—there was a very curious incident that happened one day when I was at lunch at the seminary. At that time we used to have communal meals at midday, and all the members of the community—the teachers, all the staff, students, but also boarders who were living in spare rooms around the seminary, boarders who were university students, college students—would have meals together. And I still remember vividly this one day when this guy who was doing some pioneering research on solar energy came to lunch, the midday meal, with two very curious toys. Well, gadgets they were, things that he had invented. He was doing work on solar cells, solar cells that generate electricity from light.

Now, the first toy that he produced was a very strange thing indeed, an Irish invention if ever there was one. It's a solar torch, we call it. You call it a flashlight, don't you? A solar flashlight. Now, what's the use of a solar flashlight? Because a solar flashlight will shine only when it is in the light. It doesn't work when it's in the dark. It only shines when it is in contact with the light. A solar flashlight.

That's the way we are. We are called to shine the presence of the living God out into the world. We are called to show the light of God's grace to people as pastors and as Christians. We are called to pass on the energy of the Holy Spirit to others. But we don't generate that out of ourselves. We can only do that as long as we receive it. So we receive it, and then we pass it on to others. As Christians, we can only shine as long as we are in the light. We can't hand on anything to others that we don't receive from God.

Now, this is very, very important for our Christian life. We don't generate anything out of ourselves. We're not self-generators. We're not flashlights that generate their own electricity, but we are flashlights that receive the energy from the sun. Imagine a flashlight, a solar flashlight, lamenting the fact that it couldn't do what it's supposed to do, saying, "Okay, here am I. I'm supposed to shine in the dark and show people what's going on. I'm supposed to show people what is happening. I'm supposed to show people where they're supposed to travel. And I can't do it. It's impossible. I'd better give up being the flashlight. What a stupid flashlight." Because a flashlight, at least a solar flashlight, is not meant to shine in the dark. A solar flashlight can only shine as long as it receives power from the sun. We can give only as we receive.

By the way, the other very curious gadget that he made was a little solar fan. You had that solar cell at the side, and there was a handle to hold it, and then there was this fan. It happened to be a fairly hot day. The problem was, we were in the dining hall, we produced this, and it didn't work. But then he shifted just a little bit further, and there was a shaft of sunlight coming into the room, and so he held it here. Nothing was happening, and then he put it over here, and you had this draft of air that cooled us.

Now, as Christians we need ongoing empowerment by the Holy Spirit, to believe and to love and to hope and to do the work that the Lord calls us to do. We cannot do it out of our own strength. It's impossible, no matter how energetic you are, and no matter how gifted you are naturally. You can't do it from yourself. Just as we pray for daily bread in the Lord's Prayer—"give us this day our daily bread"—we need to pray for daily power, daily strength, daily energization with the Holy Spirit.

Paul said in Corinthians chapter 4, verse 11, "What do you have that you did not receive?" And that's the motto of our Christian life. What do we have that we don't receive? And then, secondly, what can we give except what we receive? So we receive in order to give. And that's a daily business. It's not in advance. It's not a bit like your normal flashlight, where you have a battery that's charged in advance and you have this store of energy in it. God doesn't charge us up in our baptism so that we can then run on that for the rest of our lives. But we are like that solar cell. We need to be recharged directly by the light of the sun.

Now, one of the favorite passages for many Christians over here is what Paul says in Philippians 4, verse 13, when he says, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." Well, that sounds as if Paul's Superman. There's nothing that he can't do because Christ strengthens him in everything. But that's taking it out of context. I don't know whether you've ever noticed the context of that wonderful statement in Philippians chapter 4, verses 11b to 13. He says, "I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content," or to be sufficient, content in the sense of being sufficient. It's not just the feeling of contentment, but whatever situation I am in, whatever I need, I have. Do you have the basic idea? Whatever situation I am in, what I need in that situation, I have.

Well, how does that come to be? "I know how to be brought low"—bad times—"and I know how to abound in any and every circumstance." Now, abound means to flow over, to overflow. It's the picture of a spring. "I know what it's like to be brought down low, and I know how to abound"—not occasionally, but in every circumstance. Abound means overflow. Then he goes on: "I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me." This doesn't mean he strengthens me to do anything, but whatever circumstance I'm in, whatever the Lord calls me to do, he gives me what I need to have in order to do what he calls me to do—and not more. He doesn't give me more than I need. And the important thing is not just what I need for myself, but to overflow, which means not just what I need in any circumstance, but whatever the people that I minister to need, the Lord will give—not to me, but through me to them. And it's in that context that Paul says, "I can do everything"—now, that the Lord calls me to do—"through him who strengthens me."

We talk a lot about leading sustainable lives. And it strikes me always when I come over here—even though things are quite good in Australia at the moment economically—that America is a wasteful society. There's a lot of waste here. And God is humbling America and the whole West, calling us back not to lead wasteful lives, but to lead sustainable lives in the long run. And the same thing happens to us and God calls us to do in our Christian life and in our ministry.

What's the secret of living a sustainable life? What's the secret of a sustainable ministry—not just a flash-in-the-pan ministry? You come in with a blaze of energy and turn your congregation upside down, and then, before things catch up with you, you move on, and somebody else has got to come and clean up the mess that you've left behind. But what's the secret of a sustainable ministry, a ministry that lasts for as long as you live—not just to your retirement, but, like me, continues when your energy starts running out when you hit 65 or thereabouts? There's only one way that we can live sustainable Christian lives, that we can operate a sustainable ministry of the gospel, and that is through the daily reception of the Holy Spirit. You can only do that by the power of the Spirit, day by day, as you need it.

Now, one of the big problems that we have in the church—and I don't know how old it is, but it's very much a uniquely modern problem—is that we have the idea that we possess the Holy Spirit, that we own the Holy Spirit, that we possess the Spirit just the same way as I possess my wristwatch, and I possess this Bible, and I possess my car, and I possess my house. And for Lutherans this comes through a misunderstanding of baptism, a misunderstanding of what Paul has to say in Titus chapter 3, verses 5 to 6, that you know very well from Luther's Small Catechism, where Paul says God saved us "by the washing of rebirth"—or regeneration—"and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior." Notice the picture of the pouring out of water, that picture of water again—filling with water, pouring out water. That picture runs through the whole of the New Testament.

Now, from this passage we very often deduce that since I'm baptized, therefore I have the Spirit, and that's all I need, and my batteries are charged up for the rest of my life. The problem then is that we disconnect the Spirit, if you like, from the daily life of faith and our daily Christian living. We have the Spirit, therefore we don't need to receive the Spirit. We own the Spirit, we possess the Spirit.

Now, the Scriptures teach us that the Holy Spirit is given to us, made available to us, in baptism. But it's made available to us not as a gift that we possess, but as a gift that is available to us. Think of this Sizzler super-voucher. The super-voucher doesn't actually deliver the meal. You need to take the voucher down to the shopping plaza in order to eat the meal that you want to have—and eat the meal every time you're hungry. It's the same too with the Holy Spirit.

Now, the term that scholars use is that the Holy Spirit is a gift that's given to us, and therefore it's something that we have in the sense that it's available to us as a gift, but it's not a gift that we own. It's an emanating gift. It's a gift that comes from Jesus and continues to come from Jesus, an emanating gift. It's a bit like the light of the sun. Today we have the light of the sun. It's there for us. It's available to us. But we can't take hold of the sunlight. We don't own the sunlight. It emanates from the sun and is given to us. We receive it, but we don't possess the light of the sun.

That's the Lutheran misunderstanding. I've spoken about it previously, but I need to mention it again now, because a lot of the troubles that we have in making sense of and in making use of the Holy Spirit come out of that misunderstanding.

Then, in contrast to that, you have the classical Pentecostal teaching, which comes from the book of Acts. You know, they have their scriptural texts too, even if they are not used correctly. Their understanding is that you are born again when you are converted. And then, as a sign of your commitment, as a sign of your faith, you are baptized, preferably by immersion. And then you have, as a second stage of your Christian life, being filled with the Spirit. So first of all you're born again—stage one, that's pass grade—and then credit grade or distinction grade is being filled with the Spirit, and that happens when you speak in tongues. It doesn't necessarily happen through speaking in tongues, but speaking in tongues is the sign that you're filled with the Spirit. It's proof to you and to others that you are filled with the Spirit. So if I speak in tongues, that means I'm filled with the Spirit, and people can see I'm speaking in tongues, which means I'm filled with the Spirit.

Now, that teaching comes from the book of Acts, and Acts chapter 19. It's a very interesting context. Paul comes to visit Ephesus, where there's a tiny little Christian congregation. There aren't many people at all, probably much smaller than your own congregation. I don't know whether you realize that most of the congregations that Paul's writing to aren't mega-churches. They're tiny little congregations. Now, I always had the picture that he's writing to these big churches, but they are little churches, probably smaller than any that you have. And Ephesus at this stage was a very small congregation.

Now, the church there had been started by Apollos. Apollos was a bit of a charismatic superstar. He was a Jewish man. He was eloquent, a very good, gifted public speaker. He was versed in the Old Testament, and he had mastered it. He knew it back to front. So he's eloquent, he's versed in the Old Testament, and he was a very skillful teacher, a good catechist. He was filled with the Spirit. Acts says he was fervent, aglow with the Spirit, ablaze with the Spirit, if I could use a term that's been popularized over here in recent times. Fervent doesn't necessarily mean to be ablaze, but the picture is like yeast with dough, or like yeast that produces alcohol. So that's the picture. He's fervent with the Spirit.

There's only one problem in his ministry, and his ministry is very successful. He hadn't been fully catechized himself. He knew about the baptism of John, the baptism by water for repentance, in hope of the forgiveness of sins when the Messiah came. But he didn't know the baptism of Jesus. He didn't teach about the baptism of Jesus. So when Paul comes there, he asks the Christians there two simple questions. He says, "Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?" And they look at him blankly, saying, "What are you talking about? Receiving the Holy Spirit when we believed?" And then he asks them the next question: "Well, were you baptized?" And they say, "Yes." And then he says, "Which baptism were you baptized with?" And they say, "The baptism of John, baptism for repentance, for the forgiveness of sins, toward the Messiah who was going to come in the last judgment on the last day."

And so Paul then catechized them in baptism, and he baptized them. And then, when he baptized them, he did this. This is Acts chapter 19, verse 6: "When Paul placed his hands on them," after he baptized them, "the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied." So, just as we do, Paul baptized them in the name of the Lord Jesus, and then after baptism he laid his hands on them, prayed for the gift of the Spirit, and blessed them with the Holy Spirit, laying his hands on them, very much as we do today. But then what happened? They spoke in tongues and they prophesied.

Now, the Pentecostal teaching is that what happened here sets a precedent that should happen with every Christian. It's not enough just to be baptized with water in the name of Jesus, but then you need to have the laying on of hands—not so much for the gift of the Holy Spirit, but for the filling with the Spirit. And what's the sign of the Spirit? That you, like those Christians in that particular place, speak in tongues. It's interesting that they didn't pick up the thing about prophecy, but they focus on speaking in tongues as evidence that you've received the Spirit, that you're filled with the Spirit.

And so, Pentecostals—have any of you been to Pentecostals and experienced this? What do they do? Yes? How did it happen for you? "Well, I went to a healing meeting for a while." Yes, here we are. "And every service, seemingly, there'd be prayer, and they'd pray over people, put their hands on people, and they'd fall down." And sometimes that would be—that's called being slain in the Spirit. Yes, okay, that's a later development in Pentecostal circles, being slain in the Spirit. And very often that's also accompanied then by speaking in tongues. Sorry, what? Speaking in tongues, yes, okay. But, okay, you lay hands on people, you pray for the gift of the Spirit, and then you encourage people to start talking and to speak in tongues. So you speak in tongues. There's the prayer, the laying on of hands, prayer, and then the result of that is speaking in tongues. And so tongues is the initial evidence of baptism with the Spirit.

Now, coming out of that, you get the teaching, which is very, very common now, of two baptisms. There's water baptism and there's Spirit baptism. And you all know that goes back to John the Baptist. John the Baptist says, "I baptize you with water, but one who comes after me will baptize you with the Holy Spirit." Now, they take that not just as to do with John's baptism as compared to Jesus' baptism, but as what happens with every Christian. You have two baptisms: baptism with water, baptism with the Holy Spirit. And that despite the fact that Paul says in Ephesians chapter 4, verse 5, that we have only one baptism. There's one baptism, just as we have one faith, one hope, one Lord; we have one baptism.

It's true that the New Testament quite often speaks about receiving the Spirit, or being filled with the Spirit, or having the Spirit, or the Spirit being poured out on us, as if it were a past event—because it is a past event. It's something that happens in our lives. But in other places it clearly speaks about it not just as something that's present, but as an ongoing activity. So, for example, in 1 Thessalonians 4, verse 8, it speaks about God the Father as the one giving his Spirit to you—plural. Sometimes passages are mistranslated because they're translated by Protestants here in North America. So God the Father is the one who—"the one giving," the present participle—"his Holy Spirit to you," plural.

You see, the Holy Spirit is a person. Now, you can possess things, but you can't possess people. You can try and possess people's bodies, but you can't possess people. The Holy Spirit is a person and not a thing. You receive the Spirit, but you never possess the Spirit, just as you never possess your spouse. You never possess love or friendship or sunshine. All these things are given, but they are never possessed. You can't pocket love. You can't pocket friendship. You can't own your wife, you can't own your husband, in the same way. We cannot possess the Holy Spirit, because the Spirit is a person, not a thing.

So, in Ephesians—just taking one example, because of the language that's used so frequently now about being filled with the Spirit—one of the passages that speaks very clearly about being filled with the Spirit is what Paul says in Ephesians chapter 5, verses 18 to 19. Now, the context is Paul here speaking to the Christians, a congregation in Ephesus, and he's speaking about what happens in the divine service, in worship. He says, "Be filled with the Spirit, speaking to each other with spiritual psalms and hymns and songs, singing and making melody"—or making music—"in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." Notice the structure here. Be filled, and then this is what happens—three things that happen: be filled, then speaking, singing, making music, always giving thanks.

Now, notice that this is addressed to people who are already baptized. This is spoken to people who, to use Paul's picture, are already sealed with the Holy Spirit. Now, people in the ancient world used to put seals on possessions, seals on letters, to show that they belonged to them. So if I was a man in the ancient world, I wouldn't be wearing my wedding ring, but I'd be wearing my signet ring, and my personal seal would be put on there. And instead of writing my name here, I would seal the book. I'd stamp this with my personal seal to show that this belonged to me. So being sealed with the Spirit doesn't mean that you own the Spirit, but it's the other way around: the Spirit owns you. You belong to the Holy Spirit. So it's spoken to people who already, if you like, have received the Holy Spirit. And yet Paul says, "Be filled with the Spirit"—not just once, but every Sunday when you come to church, be filled with the Spirit.

The second thing that I'd like you to notice is this funny passive imperative. Paul doesn't tell them what they are to do, but commands them to have something done to them. It's a passive imperative, which is impossible, because you don't do it—you receive it. It's something done to you. Now, these passive imperatives indicate always in the New Testament that God is the one who's doing the thing that has been commanded. So "be filled with the Spirit" means "let God fill you with his Holy Spirit," or "receive, be filled with the Holy Spirit, as God fills you with the Spirit." A passive imperative, a theological imperative, a divine imperative. Now, if you read Paul's letters closely—there are lots and lots of them—they are receptive imperatives. They don't indicate what you are to do, but what you are to receive or have done to you. And that happens in worship.

And what's the result of being filled with the Spirit? Well, the result is praise, singing, praising, the singing of praise. And there are three dimensions of praise, the praise that's produced by the Holy Spirit, who fills the congregation. So the evidence that the Spirit is there is the song of praise, which is sung by the congregation. And it has three dimensions.

The first dimension is the communal, congregational dimension. What does the congregation do, and what do people in the congregation do? They speak to one another with spiritual psalms and hymns and songs. Now, quite often I think it's mistranslated. We translate it as "psalms and hymns and spiritual songs," but "spiritual" should refer to all of those. Now, what does "spiritual" mean? Remember I spoke about that yesterday? It means psalms that are inspired by the Holy Spirit, that are produced by the Holy Spirit, and that inspire you with the Holy Spirit. Notice, first of all, psalms. They are the songs from the Old Testament. So what happens in the church in Ephesus? The congregation sings psalms, psalms that are inspired by the Holy Spirit, that are the word of God, and therefore inspire you with the Holy Spirit. I want to come back to that. But not just psalms, not just the psalms of the Old Testament—they are hymns, and we have a number of hymns in the New Testament and the Old Testament. And you have other songs. There are songs which are not necessarily scriptural, but which take the words of the Bible and sing what is said in the Bible. So we speak the word of God to each other by singing the word of God to each other in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. And these are not only inspired by the Holy Spirit, but they inspire you with the Spirit. The Spirit is the praise leader, the producer of praise. That's the first dimension.

And it means that we actually confess our faith. I don't know whether many of you have been taught by Dr. Norman Nagel—how many of you here? What does "confess" mean? Say back to God what he has said to you. Right, to say back to God what he has said to you. It means literally saying the same thing. Homologeo is confession. Logeo is speaking, homo is same—same speaking. So when I confess something, I say the same thing as you. And when the congregation confesses, they don't have many voices saying many different things, but they all together say the same thing. And they say the same thing as Jesus says, as God the Father says. So what God the Father says, we say; what God the Son says, we say; and what I say, you say, and what you say, I say. So there is a single message. We together say or proclaim the same thing. And you can do that best by singing. It's in singing that we are all in sync with each other, and we say the same thing as God's word says, together, and we proclaim the word of God to each other in our congregational service. So that's confessing the faith, confessing what we believe. That's the first dimension.

The second dimension is singing—and notice the next one, "making melody in your heart to the Lord," making melody, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord. The picture here is of your heart as the musical instrument. So you use your heart to make a song, make a melody, a tune, to the Lord. So, singing and making music in your heart to the Lord. That's the personal devotion, or inward, dimension of praise. And it's interesting: the more we sing the word of God to each other, the gospel to each other, the more we sing the gospel into our own hearts, and our heart begins to sing—not just the words, but our heart takes up the melody, the tune, if you like, of the song that's being sung.

I don't know if you have a song that we have, which is a lovely old one: "Our song shall be of Jesus, whose mercy crowns our days, who fills our cups with blessing, and tunes our hearts to praise." Let me say that again: "Our song shall be of Jesus, whose mercy crowns our days, who fills our cups with blessing, and tunes our hearts to praise." And that means, if your heart is tuned to praise, your heart begins to sing. It doesn't stop singing when you go home from church. It doesn't even stop singing when you fall asleep. It continues to sing all the time, even when you're not actually verbally singing out loud. Because, you know, one of the things about music is that a good tune hooks into you, and you can't get it out of your mind. That's if you are at all musical. My wife's a musician, and she's constantly got these tunes running all the time in her head or in her heart, and she can't get rid of them. The only way she can get rid of them is to replace it with a better song that hooks in.

And you can see that happening sometimes, surprisingly, in the night. You wake up and you find that you have been singing—not out loud, but singing inwardly. How many of you have experienced that? Just put up your hand, so we see how common it is. That's what Paul's talking about. That's just one facet of this. That's what the Holy Spirit does. When we sing, when the Holy Spirit fills us, he inspires us to sing the same song of praise within the community, and he takes that song from outside of us and puts that song inside us, so it continues all the day long. And it fills our whole being. It's a physical thing as well as an emotional thing and a mental thing.

And then comes the most important dimension of this: that we are filled with thanksgiving to God the Father. "Always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." The grace of God, which we proclaim to each other in song, produces the song of praise within our heart that tunes our hearts to Jesus, and that then goes upward and backward to God himself. So his grace, charis, produces eucharis, thanksgiving, in the congregation, to God the Father, in the name of Jesus.

There's a lot that I could say there about thanksgiving, and the connection between thanksgiving and the work of the Holy Spirit. But I only say this one simple thing. As a teacher of theology, and now as a retired man, I do a lot of preaching outside. I don't normally preach within my own congregation, but I preach all around Australia and sometimes overseas. Now, when you come into a congregation, one of the important things that you need to do is to sort of put your finger up and get a sense of what kind of a congregation this is. Is it spiritually healthy or unhealthy? Are people receptive or not? Are they conflicted or not? There's one simple criterion that I use to find the spiritual health of the congregation, and I can't do it in advance. It's not that they're friendly to me or unfriendly to me—I mean, that doesn't indicate anything spiritually. But it is how they sing. How they sing. Do they sing the praise of God from their hearts? It doesn't mean that the music is super-duper. It doesn't mean that they are all good singers. It might be a little bit out of tune and disjointed, but whether they are filled with the grace of God, whether the gospel has taken hold of them, and so they are just filled with gratitude and praise—now, where that happens, no matter what's going on, you have a spiritually healthy congregation, and I know that the Holy Spirit is very powerful and active there.

Now, what's the opposite of this? If I come to a congregation that's critical, that whinges and complains, I know that Satan has been working very hard to silence the voice of the Holy Spirit—a congregation that's a thanksgiving congregation or a complaining congregation. Now, notice I'm not saying a complaining congregation doesn't have the Holy Spirit, but this is a mark of spiritual health in the congregation.

I don't know whether you've noticed here, there's a kind of a circuit. If God the Father fills us with the Holy Spirit, what's the result? We will sing one song of praise, a single song of praise, a song of praise not to ourselves but to Jesus. So being filled with the Spirit leads to praise singing. But then it comes back: as we praise the risen Lord Jesus, as we praise God the Father, we are more and more filled with the Spirit. So you get a kind of circuit here, the spiritual infilling circuit, that goes round and round and abounds. We therefore abound in the Spirit. What does "abound" mean? Overflow. The spring is opened up. So faith is produced by the gospel, that produces praise singing. The Holy Spirit fills us, and as we're filled with the Spirit we're filled with the song of praise, and the more we are filled with the song of praise, the more the Holy Spirit flows out from us—not just into us, but flows out from us, to each other, and out into the world. So you get this circuit of the Spirit, this abundance of the Spirit.

In the opening song that we sang this morning, St. Ambrose spoke about the plenteousness of the Spirit. What was that wonderful phrase? The Spirit's plenteousness, meaning that there's always more and more and more of the Holy Spirit. So, in short, the Holy Spirit is always received and never possessed. And that means that you need to receive the Spirit over and over again. The reception of the Holy Spirit, for me, is something like the ongoing reception of love from my wife in marriage. That's what it's like for us Christians who are baptized. We have entered that covenant with Jesus, and the result is that the Holy Spirit's available to us. And that leads me now into the whole issue of daily devotions.

Fortunately, Howell's spoken about this passage here. I don't know whether you realize someone's going to speak about it. No, okay, that's the Spirit's work. So he says the same thing as me. And if we both say the same thing, you know it's kosher. Yes. Yes, Mark.

"Just to kind of recap what we said before, I thought, was the ingredients: how Lutherans see baptism, comparing that to how the Pentecostals see it, obviously speaking in tongues. And I hadn't quite thought about the Pentecostals—speaking in tongues, they're really looking for that initial speaking in tongues to indicate you have the Holy Spirit."

Yeah, they're not so concerned about it when you speak it later.

"Right. And that's kind of the way we do baptism. And then, so the ongoing thing is not really brought out."

That's right. Mind you, sometimes they're not so concerned about the ongoing speaking in tongues, although that's sometimes sought and desirable, but the important thing is that initial evidence. That gives them this certainty—not of their salvation, but the certainty of their filling with the Spirit, their empowerment for service. Yes, that's very, very important, and you won't understand the appeal of Pentecostalism unless you see it from inside and what it delivers. And it's something that's very attractive. Yes?

"The baptism of the child, and Apollos baptizes them, the Spirit shows up, they speak in tongues and prophesy. Do we do that? Is the reason why they were speaking in tongues, doing miraculous things, to prove that what they had before wasn't the real baptism, but because they were baptized by Paul according to the baptism of Jesus, that this is the real deal, not what you had? This one is proof that now you have the real baptism, and what you had before was not the real baptism?"

Yes, provided you don't play off the two baptisms against each other and say that's the phony one. That one was valuable, but it had limited value. It was baptism that belonged to the old age, baptism before Christ's glorification. It puts you back in the Old Covenant. Remember, Apollos is a Jew, and at this point he's still living as if before Jesus. So, okay, that was of value, but limited value. Now you have the real deal, the full issue. And yes—not so much proof; you can go down the wrong track there. It's evidence or a sign that this is the real thing, and that's the one that gives you the plenty of the Holy Spirit, the ongoing giving of the Holy Spirit, not that former one.

"That's right. Can you repeat that again for everybody's benefit? That the baptism that Paul performed is the one that gives you the Holy Spirit, that continues to keep on giving, whereas the baptism of John was to pave the way?"

Yes, it runs out. There's not the abundance of the Spirit, the superabundance of the Spirit. Yes?

"I want to get on a bit of a sidetrack here, but was it impossible without being baptized? Oh, there we see the Baptist will come. It appears that in Ephesus and Acts 19, it was not the genuine baptism, but they didn't even know there was a Holy Spirit. It should be that there was a Holy Spirit. So it's not that John's baptism was somehow deficient, because the apostles were not rebaptized."

Yeah, and they didn't need to be baptized. Why didn't they need to be baptized? Because they had Jesus physically there with them. Well, who received the baptism of John? And then he who baptized them, if you like—on Easter Sunday evening when he said, "Receive the Holy Spirit," which is what Christ says to you in your baptism: "Receive the Holy Spirit"—but not just now, receive and keep on receiving the Holy Spirit. Yes.

Okay, let's have a look, then, at Jesus' invitation on the Feast of Tabernacles, on the last, the great day of the feast, which focused on water. Because, as Howell said, the highlight of that day was that water would be drawn in a golden jug from the pool of Siloam, down outside Jerusalem, which was the main source of water for the city. It would be drawn out, and there'd be a great procession up through the city into the temple, and that water would be poured out on the altar as Psalm 118 was sung. So if you want to get the setting, the people would go in procession around the altar, the water would be poured out, and the people would go in a great procession around the altar.

Now, this is what Jesus says. "On the last and greatest day of the feast"—that's the culmination of Tabernacles, which, by the way, is the harvest festival, the vintage festival—"Jesus stood in the temple, and he said in a loud voice, 'Let anyone who is thirsty come to me. Let anyone who believes in me drink.'" Drink what? "'As the scripture has said, out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water.' By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not yet been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified."

Now, Scripture says—and this is not one single quotation, but it's a collage of a number of Old Testament passages—"out of his heart," and it's actually out of his inside, out of his belly, "shall flow rivers of living water." Now, there's a deliberate ambiguity here, because out of whose heart shall flow rivers of living water? First of all, it's this—Jesus. Out of Jesus' side, out of his physical human body, flow rivers of living water. And as Howell said in John's gospel, this is what happened when Jesus died. What did it cost Jesus to give us the Holy Spirit? It cost him his life. So he gave up his spirit so that we could receive his life-giving Spirit, his life-sustaining Spirit. He gave that up into death so that he could give us his Spirit. And you have a sign of that then after the death of Jesus. Remember, the soldier shoved a spear into the side of Jesus, and out of his side overflowed what? Blood and water. Water, life-giving water, flowed out of the side of Jesus. So Jesus died, gave his Spirit. But that Spirit then is given to the faithful through the blood of Jesus and through the water that flows from the side of Jesus. You get the basic picture? So the water that flows from the side of Jesus is our life-giving water.

Now, that water comes at the cost of Jesus' death. He had to die so that that spring would be opened up. That's the first way that John intends us to take it. I don't know if you've been taught—done that study on John—but John is full of double expressions, things that are to be taken in two ways. Take, for example, "when I am lifted up." It means being lifted up on the cross, but it also means lifted up in glory, and so on. "Born again of water and the Spirit" means born again, but also born from above, of water and the Spirit. Now, this is a case of a double meaning, not ambiguity, but two senses. Okay?

If we come and drink from the spring of the Holy Spirit that flows from the side of Jesus, what do we become? We become life-giving springs for others. What flows into us from Jesus flows out from us, from our hearts, our bodies, into other people. Can I repeat that again? What flows into us from Jesus—the Holy Spirit, the life-giving, thirst-quenching water—flows out from us to give life and to quench the thirst of the people round about us. So we are sent out into the world as artesian wells, if you like, as oases, life-bringing oases to others. Yes? Here's a microphone, please. Yes.

"It flows from us to others in words, probably primarily, right? But is there a sense of—there's also a sense of martyrdom also?"

That's the ultimate expression. It's martyrdom, because martyrdom means nothing else but bearing witness to Jesus. We bear witness to Jesus in three ways. We bear witness to Jesus with words, but also in deeds, by being. Now, our lives, if you like, are advertisements—living, walking, talking advertisements for Jesus. We bear witness to him. We don't just witness to him by what we say, but in our lives, to bear witness to Jesus. And the ultimate bearing witness to Jesus is that of being a martyr, and bearing witness to Jesus by dying for our faith, and dying together with him, and suffering together with him.

By the way, just as a little aside here, we need to recapture that theology of martyrdom, which for many people who are old and infirm and suffering terribly—suffering from cancer, or, say, Alzheimer's, all sorts of terrible sicknesses now that people are living on, living older—these people quite often ask, "Why doesn't the Lord take me? I've got nothing to do anymore. My work's finished." No, their work's not finished. They are called to bear witness to Christ by their suffering and their dying. And that will witness more powerfully to the members of their family, to the people who know them, than anything else in their lives. So don't restrict martyrdom just to the death. It's the whole suffering, which leads to death. Not just by the living—if you like, we bear witness to Jesus by our living, but also by our dying. And the Holy Spirit uses that most powerfully. And you've seen that again and again, when people, when you get this happening, say somebody who's a very pious Christian, suffers terribly, and the whole family is drawn into that, and then those parts of the family that have drifted away from the faith are once again drawn back to the grace of God—not by what Dad, or Grandpa, or Grandma says, but by the way they suffer this and bear this.

Yes, was there somebody else that wanted to say—yes, please rush the boy. Just put that a bit more in the center then, if you don't mind, so it's accessible.

"I was just wondering if you could confirm for me. I made the connection in sermons before, but John does not have the word 'compassion' as much as other gospels, and I know it's kind of a buzz thing now that everybody talks about compassion, the spewing forth of Jesus' guts. Is that why in John's gospel there is the connection, because of Jesus' compassion, the Spirit flowing from his side? When we think of compassion, like splanchnizomai—I can't say the word—is that the same thing?"

Yeah, I don't know why John doesn't use it. In fact, contrary to what people say, the word "compassion"—or there are a number of words for compassion—are rarely used in the New Testament. There's splanchnizomai, which means that your stomach is in a knot because of the pain that you feel for somebody else. It's not what people in your society talk about when they talk about compassion in a political or social sense. It means sharing the suffering of somebody. And then there's the more accurate one, which is the word for "suffer" and "with." So you suffer with somebody. Now, the most common uses of those are in the letter to the Hebrews, where Jesus sympathizes with us, suffers with us. And we are then called to suffer with those who suffer. I'd rather use that term, because the term "compassion" has been corrupted—by the way it's been used and abused in our society. An aside, by the way.

Ah, okay, now take the picture. Jesus says, "If you're thirsty, come to me." Well, who comes to me? Those who believe in me. So this is not the thirst of unbelievers, but this is the thirst of those who believe. There's a funny phenomenon. You would expect, from our popular theology, that people who didn't know God and weren't believers would be thirsty for God. In fact, in reality, very few of them thirst for God. Who are the ones that have the greatest thirst for God? Believers. If you like, the thirst begins once you become a believer, once you become a Christian. You develop an appetite, if you like, or a thirst for the Holy Spirit. And just as you don't drink once in your life, but you drink whenever you're thirsty, and that means at least three or four times a day, so as Christians we come to Jesus in order to drink in the Holy Spirit.

Now, that's the best picture that I can have for what I'm trying to talk about in terms of daily devotions, which I'm going to come to in a moment. Just as I drink water and beverages again and again every day, so I need to drink in the Holy Spirit if I'm going to live the life of the Spirit, the life of a disciple.

Now, how do we receive the Holy Spirit every day? Well, the clearest teaching on this comes from Jesus' teaching on prayer. Remember that Jesus was praying one day, and when he finished praying, the disciples came to him and asked him, "Lord, teach us to pray." Now, I can't go into unpacking all of that, but if you haven't got my book, Grace upon Grace, I unpack this wonderful, wonderful teaching on prayer that Jesus gives. But basically, Jesus does something rather surprising. The disciples said, "Lord, teach us to pray, the way John taught his disciples how to pray," and Jesus doesn't give them any instructions on how to pray. He gives them his own prayer, the Lord's Prayer. And so he says, "Okay, when you pray, join with me in praying this prayer. Act as if you are me, and my Father is your Father, and you don't have to look for words. This is what you say"—the Lord's Prayer. That's the first answer to that request.

And then he tells them the parable of the unexpected visitor at night, to a person who has nothing to present to this guest who's come in the middle of the night. So he goes and borrows what he needs from his friend next door. How does God, how does Jesus, teach us to pray? By sending unexpected visitors into our lives that make demands on us that we can't fulfill. That's what ministry is all about. People come to you with demands that you can't possibly fulfill. You can only fulfill that if you borrow from whom? From Jesus and God the Father. And that's what prayer is—going next door and borrowing from your friend.

And then the third way Jesus answers the question, teaching us to pray, is by giving them commands, three commands and three promises. He says, "Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock on the door, and it will be opened to you." And then he ends with a little comparison. He says, "If you who are good know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give…"—and I'd expect him to say "good gifts to you, if you ask for them." But he says, "No, if you who are fathers, if you who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give…"—what? The Holy Spirit. To whom? To those who ask him. It's as simple as that. Do you want the Spirit? Do you need the Spirit? You pray for it.

By the way, then, that's a solution to the problem of praying that I spoke about yesterday. Do you have problems with prayer? You don't try harder, you don't try and become more disciplined, you don't crank yourself up. What you do is you pray for the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit will help you to pray, praying in you, praying through you, guiding you, leading you, praying with you. It's as simple as that. So we receive the Holy Spirit by praying for the Spirit.

So, for example, in the book of Acts, in Acts chapter 8, we have an account of how the Holy Spirit was given to people who were baptized. People were baptized, and then the apostles laid hands on them and prayed for them. So you can receive the Holy Spirit for yourself by praying, but you can also, if you like, give the Holy Spirit to others by doing what? Laying on hands, which indicates you're identifying with them and you're giving it to them and praying for them. Pentecostals have got that right. Did you hear me? Pentecostals have got that right—the connection between receiving the Spirit and praying, not speaking in tongues; receiving the Spirit and praying, and giving the Spirit to others in prayer.

Now, quite often we Lutheran pastors get it wrong, and we think if somebody wants the Spirit, then I've got to give them a sermon. They don't need a sermon, because the sermon's already been preached. They have faith—otherwise they wouldn't want the Holy Spirit. So what do I do if somebody comes to me for the Holy Spirit? I lay my hands on them and pray for the Holy Spirit. Whether they've been baptized or not, whether they go to church or not, whether they commune or not, I just simply lay my hands on them, pray for them, and give them a blessing for the gift of the Holy Spirit to them. You can do it for others as well as for yourself. And that's what Paul does in Ephesians chapter 3, verses 14 to 19, that I read yesterday, where he prays this prayer that God will strengthen the Ephesian congregation through his Holy Spirit so that Christ will dwell in their hearts through faith.

Now, let me give you something that I've learned from bitter experience as a pastor, as a Christian, and particularly, supremely so now, as an old Christian and as an aging man. One of the signs of aging is that you have less and less energy. It doesn't mean necessarily that you notice your aging. It's a funny thing, you just feel as young as ever, inwardly. But what's the sign you're aging? You just lose energy. And the things that were once easy become hard. And you not only find it more difficult to generate energy, but you find it more difficult to energize other people. I don't know whether you realize how important it is that we energize people. We don't just teach them, but we energize them. How are we energized? How can we energize others? There's only one way that I know. And that, for me, is my daily prayer: "Come, Holy Spirit, Lord and giver of life." The daily prayer for the daily gift of the Holy Spirit, the energy, the empowerment that the Holy Spirit brings.

Notice what Luther has to say about the reception of God's Holy Spirit, not just through prayer, but also through meditation on God's word. So, if I am going to live by the Spirit, if I am going to be empowered by the Spirit, if I'm going to do what's impossible—which is the schedule I'm on here at the moment; I haven't shaken off jet lag yet, and last week I had a very bad cold, and I dreaded today, and yesterday, and I dread the next InSight conference—okay? Something that's impossible. Now, I've already done a lot. Where can you get the energy to energize other people? And I see my basic task here as to energize you with the Holy Spirit, to empower you with the Holy Spirit, by teaching the word of God, building up your faith and your love and your hope. How can I do it? By praying for the Holy Spirit, and by meditating on the word of God.

Listen to what Luther says about daily prayer. This is daily devotions. Here Luther is talking about what he does in his daily devotions. First of all, he begins his devotions, his daily prayer, by prayer to God the Father, through his Son, for the gift of the Holy Spirit to be his teacher. Now, "teacher" here doesn't mean teacher of theory. This has all the theories, all the theology, but "teacher" in the sense of mentor, somebody who teaches you practically, teaches you to do what you need to do and how to do it. So he says, "First of all, you must know that the Holy Scriptures is a book that makes foolishness of the wisdom of all other books, because none of them teaches eternal life except this one alone." Now, there's a difference. You get much that is of value in all human books and human things, valuable for earthly life. But there's only one book that can teach you practically how to live an eternal life already now, here on earth. How do you live a heavenly life here on earth? There's one book. There's one handbook for that, and that's this.

"Therefore, you must straightway despair of your senses and reason, for you will not attain it by these"—by senses, your five senses, or your reason, your understanding. "Rather kneel down in your closet"—in your study, in your bedroom, or wherever you can have some privacy—"and pray to God in true humility and earnestness that through his dear Son he may grant you"—what?—"that he may grant you his Holy Spirit, to enlighten, guide, and give you understanding"—to enlighten your soul, your mind, your spirit; to guide you, show you what to do and how to do it; and to give you understanding, so that you understand what he's showing you and saying to you and giving to you this day. That's the first. You pray for the gift of the Spirit.

Secondly, you meditate on the word of God. You meditate on the Scriptures for what purpose? Not in order to prepare your next sermon, or to straighten out your dogmatics, or to feed your mind—although that will happen. You meditate on the Scripture for what purpose? In order to receive the Holy Spirit. You meditate on the Scriptures to receive the Holy Spirit. This is what Luther says. "You should meditate, not only in your heart"—that's by thinking to yourself—"but also externally, repeating out loud and rubbing at the written word." The picture here is rubbing at the written word like an herb, which you need to crush in order to release its smell, its fragrance, but also its healing properties. An herb, to make the smell, but also medicine. So, "repeating out loud and rubbing at, crushing the written word, reading and rereading them with careful attention and thought as to what the Holy Spirit means by them." Now, "reading" here means reading out loud, not reading silently, but reading out loud, putting that word, chewing at it in your mouth, so it comes into your ears, and so that it can bring the Holy Spirit from your ears into your heart. "For God will not give his Holy Spirit apart from the external word. Be guided accordingly, for it is not for nothing that he commanded that his word should be externally written, preached, read, sung, and spoken." Okay?

So, how do we receive the Spirit for our daily empowerment, our energization, to do the work that God calls us to do? We pray for the gift of the Holy Spirit. But then we go to the place where we can be sure that we receive the Spirit. What's that place? The written word. But that word needs to go from the pages into the mouth, into the ears, and into the heart. And so that word needs to be spoken, and when it is spoken into the heart, it brings the Holy Spirit into the heart.

Now, there's a very common misunderstanding of this teaching of Luther that I've picked up as being quite common, particularly in your circles: that you misunderstand what Luther says when he says God will not give you his Spirit apart from the external word. Now, a lot of people then say, "Okay, God must give me his Holy Spirit immediately. And the Holy Spirit will never be given apart from the time when I'm actually reading or meditating about the word." Okay? So that physical contact with it needs to be given directly and immediately. It doesn't happen that way. It comes that way, but then it takes a while usually before the penny drops. What you need to do is to bring the word from outside, inside you, and to seed it there. Now, very often, in most cases, it doesn't bear fruit immediately. It might be later in the day, next week, next month, or 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 years down the line. But the word has been placed in your heart. The word dwells in your heart, and if the word dwells in your heart, it means that the Holy Spirit can do what? He can use that word to reach out to you, to give himself to you, to enlighten you, to energize you.

Now, if you hear people's stories, and if you look at your own life, this happens all the time in ten million ways. One of the pictures that I love best of all comes from Peter, in his first letter, chapter 1, verse 23, where he talks about the imperishable seed. What's the imperishable seed? The seed of God's word. Now, a seed doesn't sprout immediately. It doesn't sprout immediately, and you don't see it sprouting as soon as the farmer puts it in the ground. In the same way, God's word is seeded in our hearts and minds. And once it's been seeded in there, nobody and nothing can destroy the seed of the word. It'll remain dormant there until the right time, when the Holy Spirit awakens it, and the seed produces its harvest in your life. So, don't be too rigid in connecting the word and the reception of the Spirit too immediately to each other. There's quite commonly a time lag between those two.

"Could you connect for me, then—you just talked about how we can give the Holy Spirit by praying for the Holy Spirit for someone, if we want to extend the Holy Spirit. So, are we saying that our prayer for the Holy Spirit better contain the Word of God, so that that seeds that Word?"

Absolutely, so it grows. Because Christian prayer is not any prayer, but just as preaching is not any form of proclamation, but we preach the word—we preach not only the word, but we preach with the word. God gives us his word, this, not only to preach and teach. But he gives it as our prayer book. Did you hear that? This is our prayer book. His word teaches us to pray, and we can pray rightly for the Spirit and in the Spirit only if we pray with the word of God. And in that circumstance, praying for God to give his Holy Spirit to a person is not a new means of grace. It is using the same means of grace that you use when you preach. What's that means of grace? His word. So you use his word not only to preach the Spirit to people. You use his word to sing, to praise the Spirit, if you like, to people. But you use the word of God to preach the Spirit to people. It's using the word, and that's what Luther assumes here. That's what I'm—thank you for picking that up. I should have made that quite explicit.

Now, as soon as the word begins to deliver, to bring the Holy Spirit into our hearts, all hell breaks loose, because that begins to threaten the interests of Satan, the evil one. And he will do everything in his power to drive the Spirit of God and the word of God out of our hearts. And so we have what Luther calls Anfechtung, attack, temptation, to drive both the Word and the Holy Spirit out of our hearts. But God allows that, because that is counterproductive for Satan, because when Satan attacks me, the only way that I can defend myself is by going back to the word of God, and calling on the power of the Holy Spirit, to protect me, to strengthen me, to keep me holy and keep me safe.

Okay, now, what that means is that your daily devotions are not an optional extra for you as a Christian. They're not an optional extra for you as a pastor, but they are part of your bread and butter. You cannot survive and thrive as a pastor unless you have a very strong, evangelical, devotional life. Now, it's a conviction of that that led me to write that book over there, Grace upon Grace. So you need your daily devotions.

And what's the connection, then, between daily devotions and the receiving of the Holy Spirit? Two words from our Confessions. The first one comes from Dr. Martin Luther in his Large Catechism. He's talking about the need for us to pray the Ten Commandments, the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, every day of our lives, to use that both to meditate and to pray. And he has this to say: "It is highly profitable and fruitful to read it"—that's the catechism, to read it, which is the Ten Commandments, the Creed, the Lord's Prayer—"daily and make it the subject of meditation and conversation. In such reading, conversation"—which means speaking, and speaking out loud—"and meditation, the Holy Spirit is present, and bestows ever new and greater light and devotion, so that it tastes better and better and is digested." Just read that whole part of the Large Catechism and dwell on every single word there. We need to meditate on God's word, and the catechism helps us to meditate on what's central to the word of God, not for new dogmatic insights, not cognitively, but in order to receive the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit does what, then? Bestows new and greater light, enlightens us, fills us with light, increases our devotion, and enhances our appetite for the word of God, the grace of God, and helps us to digest the word of God. So meditation is digesting the word of God, so that it nourishes us every day. Just as I need two or three meals every day, so I need daily devotions to be nourished spiritually, to be nourished by the word of God. So we receive the Holy Spirit by using God's spirit-filled word in our daily meditation on his word, and in daily prayer for the Holy Spirit. And daily prayer for the Holy Spirit, not just for ourselves, but also for others. So one of my default prayers for people, if I don't know what their needs are—guess what I pray for? The Holy Spirit for them. Because if they have the Holy Spirit, then all their needs are met.

And listen to what the Formula of Concord has to say. "In addition, after God has made his beginning, through his Holy Spirit, in baptism"—notice the reference to baptism—"the beginning of the life of faith and love, and has ignited"—set on fire—"and has produced true knowledge of God and faith"—true understanding of God and faith—"it is necessary"—no, it's necessary there, this is not an option, it's necessary—"to do what?—to pray unceasingly, day by day, that day by day, through the same Spirit that he gave to us in baptism, and the same grace that he gave to us in baptism, through this he strengthen this faith and preserve his heavenly gifts in us, by means of daily exercise in the reading and use of God's word." Reading means reading out loud the word of God, meditating on it, and using it then to meditate and to pray.

So we are, by our daily devotions, by meditating on the most holy of all holy things, which is the word of God, we receive the Holy Spirit, who makes and keeps us holy. And in this way, we are not only sanctified every day for our daily work and our daily life, but we are empowered to fulfill our priestly vocation, our vocation to be priests, wherever God has placed us, to fulfill our Christian vocation—pastor or mother or father, or whatever our vocation is, in our station and vocation. So daily reception of the Holy Spirit, through prayer and meditation, sanctifies us to do our priestly work in our station and vocation.

Is this Lutheran teaching? Well, if you don't believe me, go to the Small Catechism. What explanation—what surprising explanation—does Luther give for the second petition of the Lord's Prayer, "Thy kingdom come"? He says nothing about kingdom, rule, government. But how does God's kingdom come to us and in us and through us, to others? This is what he says: "God's kingdom comes when our heavenly Father gives us his Holy Spirit, so that by his grace we believe his word, we trust his word, and live a godly life on earth now and in heaven forever." We pray the Lord's Prayer every day. We pray the Lord's Prayer for daily bread. But we also pray the Lord's Prayer for the coming of the kingdom, which means the reception of the Holy Spirit every day, so that God gives us his Holy Spirit, so we can live the life of faith, which relies on the grace of God, and so that we can live holy lives, godly lives, in our station and vocation.

What's the secret of sustainable Christian living? What's the secret of a sustainable ministry of the word and sacrament in the church? The daily reception of the Holy Spirit in meditation and in prayer. Thank you.