DAY 278 - How Is Your Spirituality

I Corinthians 2:6-16 (NASB) ⁶ Yet we do speak wisdom among those who are mature; a wisdom, however, not of this age nor of the rulers of this age, who are passing away; ⁷ but we speak God’s wisdom in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God predestined before the ages to our glory; ¹¹ For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. ¹² Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God, ¹³ which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words. ¹⁴ But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him…

How is your spirituality? Granted, this is not the kind of question you are likely to be asked at a party, or even in the vestibule of the church. The question may pose a special problem for those of us who have not emphasized the spiritual life the way we should, and who tend to use our head before we engage our heart. Perhaps we can connect mind and heart together in remembering and recognizing this reality called spirituality. Spirituality is usually known in the heart before it is recognized and realized by the mind.

Paul speaks of the natural person as one without the gift of spirituality, someone who has a “this world only” mind-set, whose goal in life is to get all the goodness of life that this world has to offer. Some are non-religious and have no interest in the things pertaining to God or to the spirit. Some are anti-religious and see religion as the spoiler of fun and fulfillment. They especially see religious institutions as repressive and restrictive of the good life, and perhaps not without some justification. And, some natural people are religious but their god is a serviceable god whose main role in life is sparing them the inconveniences and hardships of life. 

But the spiritual person receives the Spirit which is from God. And in receiving that Spirit they sample a new reality called spirituality. Spirituality is an awareness of our connectedness to God and some kind of awareness that this connectedness should be influencing and shaping our life. Paul implies that all of us are given the same evidence and experience. The difference lies in the response to the evidence and experience given, the decision to accept or reject. Do we accept and savor and allow the Spirit into our soul, aware of God’s work?

How is your spirituality? Connected? Real? Loose? Vague? Alive and well or teetering on the breaking point? However we answer that question may we accept whatever gift of the Spirit God wishes to impart to us.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope June 13, 1993

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell

DAY 277 - A Matter of Life and Death

Luke 12:15-21 (NIV) ¹⁵ Then he said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.” ¹⁶ And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. ¹⁷ He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’ ¹⁸ “Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. ¹⁹ And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’ ²⁰ “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’ ²¹ “This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.”

Romans 8:5-6 (NIV) ⁵ Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. ⁶ The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace.

Living according to the flesh sounds a little menacing, but it seldom looks that way. Jesus described such a person. The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? Jesus does not say that the man was greedy, or dishonest, or immoral, but only that he was a fool. His foolishness laid in the trust he placed in his barn. He lost his life in his livelihood.

The mind governed by the flesh is death – it is a living death while the body still breathes. In its milder forms the focus on the flesh and reliance on self-will leads us to an empty life, to the feeling that we are going through the motions but not really living. In its more stressful form this living death is a struggle. It may be felt as the struggle to survive, to be happy. We wonder what we can do to push the right buttons, to say and do the right things that will make life work out the way we want. And we do this until we are weary and worn out. The one thing we do not do is question our right to rule. But the self cannot deliver us from the damage done to us by the self. To even state the dilemma sounds confusing.

To live according to the Spirit is to recognize that life is the work of God, we are dependent on God, and life comes from being responsive to Him. To live by the Spirit is to be alive to the existence of a world unseen, to realize that the common ways of life are continually penetrated by the Presence of God. To set our mind on the Spirit does not mean that we think about God all the time. It means we submit to God. To set the mind on the Spirit means that in whatever we are doing there is space in our mind and heart for God to speak and act as we do our work, as we interact with family and friends, and as we enjoy some time for fun.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope May 30, 1993

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell

DAY 276 - Worth the Effort

Mark 1:16-18 (NIV) ¹⁶ As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. ¹⁷ “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.” ¹⁸ At once they left their nets and followed him.

Philippians 3:13-16 (NIV) Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. ¹⁶ Only let us live up to what we have already attained.

Paul says that the goal of life is neither material success nor moral perfection, but rather as being what Christ saved us for and being who Christ wants us to be. Though we may not fully attain it, the goal is worth the effort, worth the work, worth the sacrifice.

God gives our goal one piece at a time, and comes to us not as a blue print but as a list. A blue print lays everything out for us. We would like that sort of instructions for life, but even if that’s what we received from God it probably would not match the hopes and desires of our hearts. God does give us the next item on His list for the fulfillment of our life. And that next item may seem very mundane and ordinary, but it is a part of the larger goal.

It was in this way that Jesus called the disciples. The work He called them to did not seem that spectacular. They did some very ordinary things. They walked with Him and listened to His words. They did what He told them. It may have all seemed too simple and perhaps even a little uncertain.

And so it happens to us. A chance meeting with someone who presents us with a new opportunity for work, a remark is just what we needed to hear, or an idea dawns on us, and the call of God is heard. The next step is taken. And that sense of fulfillment that eludes us in the search for success is found and savored. It is given as a gift in the midst of a rather routine day.

We press on toward the goal, for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. We take the next step, and then the next, and the next, and that is enough. We don’t have to arrive. We don’t have to get there. We only have to move in the right direction, in response to the call of God as best we understand it at the moment. And, even if we don’t fully understand, we press on. Forgetting what lies behind, forgetting past failures and past successes, we press on to the next God has in store for us.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope May 23, 1993

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell

DAY 275- Angels Watching Over Me

Psalm 91 (NRSV) ¹ You who live in the shelter of the Most High, who abide in the shadow of the Almighty, ² will say to the Lord, ‘My refuge and my fortress; my God, in whom I trust.’ ³ For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence; ⁴ he will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness is a shield and buckler. ⁵ You will not fear the terror of the night, or the arrow that flies by day, ¹⁴ Those who love me, I will deliver; I will protect those who know my name. ¹⁵ When they call to me, I will answer them; I will be with them in trouble, I will rescue them and honour them. ¹⁶ With long life I will satisfy them, and show them my salvation.

The Psalmist is celebrating an occasion when he has known the protection of God. And we experience those occasions as well. God sometimes works through the circumstances of our lives to protect us. We are at the right place at the right time. Accidents are avoided. People change their minds. With no pre-planning on our part, we are spared. Call it the work of the Lord, angels having charge over us, or synchronicity, sometimes events happen that give protection to our life and well-being. We believe the hand of God is at work in these events, but God is under no obligation and sometimes life caves in around us. Even if our mind knows better, our heart feels betrayed. Our understanding of God’s work is partial. It needs to be complemented by an understanding of God’s work within us.

God does give protection, sometimes by engineering the circumstances of our life, but always by giving us the inner resources we need. And, He is generous in providing us with people and prayer and the Scripture and whatever else we need as armor to combat the terror that comes by night and the arrow that flies by day. The Psalmist says that God provides these gifts to those who live in the shelter of the most high, who abide in the shadow of the almighty.

Abide means to stay with or to remain in. The opposite of abide is to run off, to become separated from. Not abiding is the senseless sin of self-protection. It is a frantic, futile effort that ignores the truth that to be human is to be insecure.  And self-protection has a bad habit of backfiring on us. Abiding is the continual action of trusting in the trustworthiness of God. It is perseverance in surrendering to God’s work and God’s will. It is a constant whispering of “yes” to God.

We fall back on our belief that God is good because God has declared that goodness to us through the instrument of the Cross. The Cross declares to us that in the worst of circumstances, when God appears absolutely uncaring and uninvolved, that those are the times when He cares the most and is most intimately involved. We are not spared life’s problems and pains. That much is obvious. But the Cross also declares that when pain and problems and danger and death have done their worst, we are saved and safe, held by the strong thread of God’s good will. 

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope May 9, 1993

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell

DAY 274 - The Launching of A Life

Matthew 3:13-17 (NIV) ¹³ Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptized by John. ¹⁴ But John tried to deter him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” ¹⁵ Jesus replied, “Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness.” Then John consented. ¹⁶ As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. ¹⁷ And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”

John 6:28-29 (NIV) ²⁸ Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?” ²⁹ Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”

Most of us have had some kind of launching event in our life. It may have been when we went off to college, or to the military, or to our first job. For Jesus, that event was His baptism in the River Jordan. The baptism of Jesus is an event with many meanings. It is the way He launched His public ministry, identified Himself with sinners, and affirmed that John’s call for repentance was true and important. It was the way God revealed His approval of Jesus. But, more than all those meanings, the meaning Jesus Himself gave was this: Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness.

Righteousness meant conformity to God’s will. It meant doing what was right in God’s eyes and revealed in His word. It meant a right relation to God, conduct that conformed to God’s will, inwardly and outwardly, and an ordering of society where people were treated fairly according to God’s standard of fairness.

Certainly, Jesus did not mean He had to be baptized to become righteous. His baptism was a public statement and pledge that He would live His life and carry out His work on God’s terms, as God required.

Do we accept God’s terms for our relationship to Him or do we set the terms? God’s terms are not too tough to handle or too stifling to obey. Baptism tells us that the first requirement in our relationship with God is one of trust. We place our lives, as sincerely and completely as possible, in God’s hands, entrusting the direction of our life to Him. We confess our inability to direct them by ourselves. We acknowledge that we often have a hard time knowing clearly and convincingly what He wants, but we are committed to find out.  

The fist requirement in our relationship to God is one of trust. The central issue of our life is no longer one of whether we are succeeding or failing, whether we are being liked or rejected, whether we are getting our way or being frustrated, but whether we are being faithful or unfaithful, whether we are adventuring with Him or against Him.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope January 8, 1989

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell

DAY 273 - Freedom

Galatians 5:13, 17-18, 24-25 (NIV) ¹³ You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. ¹⁷ For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. ¹⁸ But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. ²⁴ Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. ²⁵ Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.

Why do some live with a wrinkled brow of worry while others seem to exude an air of peace? This question is about living freely, and the answer lies in remembering there are two sides to the Cross. The front side of the Cross is what happens when human beings get their own way … the most devious people but also the most decent. The front side of the Cross is the bondage we make for ourselves as we try to control and manipulate life independently of God. But there is another side to the cross, the side no one noticed that day on Golgotha. From the backside we see that the Cross was a freely chosen strategy of God in His Son to subject Himself to all of our bondage that He might loose us from it.

Paul says that the world has been crucified to him, both the good that the world has to offer and the worst that the world might attempt to do. When the world gave to Jesus its worst, He continued to trust, and God honored that trust in raising Jesus from the dead. And that is what Paul means, that he has already died to the worst that the world can do to him. And, of course, no one can ever live entirely free until they have broken the bondage to fear of death’s finality.

What is true of the best the world can offer is certainly also true of the worst that the world can do to us. The world can offer us success but it can also deny us success and give us failure. The world can offer us love, but it can also deprive us of love and give us loneliness. But certainly the worst of the worst that the world can do to us is what it did to Jesus. It can take our life and give us death. Death is ultimate bondage and the most convincing evidence that you and I are not in control, that life is not at our beck and call, it is not organized around our needs and wants.

The cross is the dividing line between believing in ourselves and our dreams for our life and trusting in God who has His own plans for us. The Cross is the place where we either put to death His sovereign will over our life or we die to our own efforts to keep everything under our control. We stand either on the front side of the Cross in bondage to the best that the world has to offer and the worst that the world promises to do, or we stand on the backside where we are set free.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope October 23, 1988

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell

DAY 272 - Deliver Us From Evil

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Galatians 1:1-4 (RSV) Paul an apostle -- not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead -- and all the brethren who are with me, To the churches of Galatia: Grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father; to whom be the glory for ever and ever. Amen.  

“Grace to you,” Paul says, “and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age.” Commentaries point out that “deliver” here does not mean deliverance from the presence of evil, but deliverance from the power of this present evil age.

Evil is a pervading power to influence us to do wrong. Evil is more than a flaw or a character defect that we can overcome by self-effort. Evil breeds out of more than being raised in a dysfunctional family, or because we were poor, or because we were too easily wealthy, or for any other purely human reason. Evil is always more than the person or group doing evil. And evil is always deceiving. Even the wicked often claim they have a righteous reason to do evil, and often religion helps them find that righteous reason. The final answer to why human beings make each other miserable has to do with the presence and power of evil.

How powerless Jesus appeared against the power of evil. How could this Galilean carpenter turned itinerant preacher who draws after Him a motley mob of religious bureaucrats, prostitutes and a garden variety of sinners conquer evil. How could this Jesus whose life ends on a Cross as an object of ridicule believe His death would conquer evil? Yet, Jesus saw the conquering of evil to be His mission on earth, to set the prisoners free from the clutches of evil.

Jesus saw Himself as the strong arm of God, armed with God’s power, spearheading the attack on the power of evil, but He appeared so powerless, crucified on a Cross, King of the Jews written on a placard over His head as a kind of joke. But, the joke backfired and Jesus proved to be a King in a way that no one could have possibly imagined.

Jesus did more than teach us how to deal with a few moral flaws in our lives. Jesus did more than offer teachings on raising our children so they would turn out good. To be delivered from this present evil age is to be delivered from the fear and terror that some people seek to inflict on others. Jesus is the power of God for salvation to deliver us from this present evil age.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope November 4, 2001

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell