Deeper Still by phil mccallum

Press the arrow to listen Need to Breathe sing “Yaweh” while reading today’s devotion on the anointing of the Holy Spirit

Scripture
The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon me….Isaiah 61:1

Observation

Here are some thoughts about the anointing of the Holy Spirit.

1. The anointing is on the person and not on the role that he or she fills. A business card does not give anointing nor does the lack of one make any difference. An anointed person will make a difference wherever he is placed.

2. The anointing comes first before anything else will happen. Organization, education, networking nor technology do not create the anointing. They can enhance it and convey it, but the touch of God on a human life is first before anything else happens.

3. The anointing is more than personal, he is a Person. The Holy Spirit of Adonai Yahweh body wraps himself around our spirit and works through us.

4. The decision of whom to anoint is not made by a leader, a committee or a popularity contest but by the Lord God himself. Sovereign means God does the choosing; we must do the waiting.

5. The anointing comes from the God whose name is not a noun but a verb. All human names are nouns because a person is limited; God’s name is a verb because he is a Lord of action. When the anointing comes on me things will change.

6. The anointing is expressed through spoken words more than anything else. These are words that announce, comfort, bind up and more. Our words matter.

Application
I need the anointing of Adonai Yaweh on my life.

Prayer
Father, today I stand in need of your anointing touch on my life. The work I do and the place I serve do not give me anointing; in fact they drain that. Instead, you are the anointed one and you pour your anointing on my life. You alone do the selecting; it is not of me. Oh Lord, pick me! Amen.

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Song: Michael Card Listen

Scripture
On the way they were asking each other, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” But as they arrived, they looked up and saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled aside. Mark 16:3-4

Observation
Sometimes the best way to deal with a problem is to walk away from it and to leave it in the Lord’s hands. Without brooding over our worries, our absence gives God room to do his work on our needs. The Friday night before the women had left their grief behind and traveled home to rest. On Sunday morning they returned and found their problem solved. Sometimes we do need to take a trip away from our troubles in order to thoroughly leave them in the hands of the Lord. It is not the choice of abandonment, for we will return. Rather it is the decision to release and to give the Lord the space that he needs to work.

How silly the women must have felt when they thought back on their talk in transit to the tomb. They fretted over the stone, that huge slab of hopelessly heavy rock that none of them could budge. Little did they know they were driving into the headlinghts of the resurrection. There was a miracle ahead. Perhaps it is when we leave our problems that we imagine that God comes with us and leaves our worries behind. But this is not the case. When we release our troubles the Lord not only goes before us but he also stays behind to solve the matters we cannot reach. We should not be surprised to return to find the door opened that we thought was sealed tight.

Application
Journeys change us and they change our home conditions; it is my prayer that my journeys will be the same.

Prayer
Father, you have my journey today. Use it for your glory. Amen.

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Song: Fearless Building 429

Scripture
But when you are arrested and stand trial, don’t worry in advance about what to say. Just say what God tells you at that time, for it is not you who will be speaking, but the Holy Spirit. Mark 13:11

Observation
Where is the place we can meet personally with the Holy Spirit? I imagine worship saturated auditoriums or idyllic rain forest waterfalls or the like. But that is not how Jesus imagined places to find the Holy Spirit.

Instead he painted this picture.

Imagine a place where you heart beats at twice the speed, where your throat tightens so that you cannot turn up the volume of your voice, where hundreds of eyes are focused on you and your head spins into that out of body experience that comes with public speaking. If you can imagine a place where you are afraid to speak then you have just identified where the Holy Spirit would like to meet with you. The trysting places are the trying times.

But when you are arrested and stand trial, don’t worry in advance about what to say. Just say what God tells you at that time, for it is not you who will be speaking, but the Holy Spirit. Mark 13:11

Jesus made no promise that we would not be afraid under trial. What he did promise is that the words we speak won’t be our own. Hostile audiences can bring God’s best out of us.

Application
There are places I speak where I can hear an audience wordlessly ask, “And who are you?” Those are the moments I must ask, “Who is God?” If I do what Jesus asked me to do I can hear God’s voice even in the most fearful places.

Prayer
Lord, speak to me that I may speak in living echoes of your tone. Amen.

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Scripture
And the angel replied, “Your prayers and gifts to the poor have been received by God as an offering! Now send some men to Joppa, and summon a man named Simon Peter. He is staying with Simon, a tanner who lives near the seashore.” Acts 10:4-6

Observation
Why did Peter need a squad car to persuade him to preach at Cornelius’ house? The men that the commander sent that day to fetch Peter were very likely military and Roman. Their shadow in the doorway would have been foreboding. Peter would have felt the pressure.

Why did it take that much persuasion? Why did God use an angel to get Peter out of bed? It had worked for him when Peter was snoring in prison. Why didn’t God add a little more to the vision? A dream worked for Paul to go to Macedonia why not to get Peter to walk down the road to Caeserea?

Peter needed persuasion because God was about to do something that was out of his field of vision. Peter was a Jew pickled in the brine of pharisaism. He had never walked into the home of a non-Jew before. He had never touched bacon. He did everything his mother told him since he was a boy. God, however, was about to move the boundary markers of his life. What had been off limits was now going to become commonplace in his ministry. He would need persuasion to do something he had not done before.

Application
When God intends to do something new in our lives we should not be surprised when he does something to shake up our world view. If something comes to pass that is out of the ordinary that shakes up our perspective we should not be in a rush to return to normalcy. Surprising events could very well be an indication of fresh footsteps of the Lord.

Prayer
Father, when the unexpected comes knocking at my door, let me be discerning but not suspicious. Help me to follow without reluctance. Amen.

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Scripture
And everyone present was filled with the Holy Spirit.…Acts 2:4
“In the last days,” God says, “I will pour out my Spirit upon all people.” Acts 2:17

Observation
Most of us have a bathroom mirror experience of God for we see only how he affects our own individual life. When we have an encounter with the Lord we think of how it affects us and benefits our lives but not often of others.

God doesn’t see his touch on our lives in an individualistic way. Selfishness is unknown to God so he expects nothing less from us. The Lord vision is for all the members in a church to simultaneously experience the fullness of the Holy Spirit. Simultaneous experience was the way he worked at first in Jerusalem, then with Cornelius’ household in Ceasarea and finally at Ephesus. Communal experience of the Holy Spirit is God’s ideal.

So why is our corporate experience of God sometimes so ho-hum that we turn to worshipping God in the mirror of our self-centeredness?  We need to take lessons from the first Christians to be open for more.

For starters, they gathered together in Jerusalem, Casearea and Ephesus. We need to do more than just ‘go to church’ but make a choice to dissolve our importance and become part of the church. We are in this thing of following Jesus together so we will all get there together.

There was a sense of openness, vulnerability and approachability at Jerusalem, Casearea and Ephesus. In all three experiences God’s people were ‘all ears’. They were unexperienced and unaffected. They simply wanted more. What would happen if we could drop all of the theological hopscotch about the way the Holy Spirit works and simply come to church open and predisposed to say ‘yes’? Probably more would happen than we would expect.

They were obedient to take action with what God had given them to use. They spoke for God. They acted for God. They loved for God. There were no spectators. There were only participants. It is only as all of us in the congregation use what we have been given that a local church will come close to what God has in mind for them to achieve.

Application
I want more than an experience of the Holy Spirit, I want to be part of a congregation that corporately and continually is filled with the Spirit.

Prayer
Father, I come to you open and ask that you would navigate my life among those open to more of you. Amen.

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My son Levi with his friend Simeon on a campout together with me at Fraser Island at Lake McKenzie.

Scripture
Life will flourish wherever this water flows.� Ezekiel 47:9

� Observation
Through the fields around my father-in-law’s house in South Dakota are a winding parade of Cottonwood trees in the middle of treeless rolling acres. He explained that a stream had been diverted for the housing development but the trees remained. Water has such power to bring life. From 32,000 feet in an airplane the power of water is evidenced with the snaking lines of green that hug the riverbanks below.�

When I review the road map of my life I wherever there has been any tinge of green life in any place I’ve ministered it has not been the result of organization or leadership.� Lush growth in my ministry has only come because the river flowed.�

No wonder Ezekiel wanted to go wading through that river until he was over his head. The presence of God’s Spirit is a precious thing.� In fact when it comes down to it, it is all that we have.

� Application
Jesus took this chapter from Ezekiel and stretched it one more step. He said that this river can flow out not out of rock but out of a human heart.� If I will make the simple confession that Jesus is the Messiah, the answer to the meaning of life question, then out of me the river of God will flow.

I want the river of God to come wherever I go.�

� Prayer
So today Lord I ask that you would release your flow through me and bring verdant life.� Amen

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