Demonstrating The Gospel: Part 2
To Come & Become
by Bethany Allen & Gavin Bennett
Begin with prayer (5 minutes)
Gather together as a Community in a comfortable setting. Have somebody lead a prayer asking the Holy Spirit to lead and guide your time together.
Read this overview (5 minutes)
As we continue to learn more about the person and life of the Holy Spirit, we are reminded that he is not a set of beliefs, but person through whom we can encounter and experience the person of God. Who he is and how he moves is deeply connected to and cannot be divorced from the realities of suffering and hardship in this world. The Holy Spirit is not a worldview or a philosophy, he is a person. A philosophy can’t save or heal you, but the Holy Spirit can. So life with the Holy Spirit is not a set of beliefs, but more like a series of encounters.
All through the Scriptures the metaphor of water is used to describe the Holy Spirit. Through this metaphor, we are invited to come and to become.
First, we are invited to come — to quench our thirsty souls with the waters of the Holy Spirit and be healed. But for many, that’s not as easy as it sounds. It’s easy to study the principles and ideas around the Spirit, and never actually experience God. For this to shift, we will have to have an actual experience with the Holy Spirit. In Jesus' words, all of us who are thirsty get to come to him and drink. Rather than standing on the riverbanks, we are invited to wade all the way in.
Then, we are invited to become. As we experience the healing that comes from wading into the Holy Spirit’s waters, where chaos becomes order, the second invitation is to become a part of the current that heals our world. In so doing, we join millennia of Jesus followers who sacrificed their comfort to make a home in the dark corners of the world and befriend forgotten people. One of the beautiful things about life in the Kingdom is that our healing becomes our calling. And as our wounds become wells of living water, the dead places in our city become filled with the very life of God. The powerfully healed became powerful healers.
This week, we want to dive deeper into the reality that God has more for us than warm sentiments, but life to the full.
Work through these discussion questions together as a Community & pray (30 minutes)
Life with the Holy Spirit is not a worldview or philosophy, it’s a practice. It is not just a set of beliefs, it is a series of experiences. With that in mind, take a second to share your responses to these questions and then pay through each. It may be worth breaking into triads or smaller groups to have enough time to pray over each other.
Where do you need Jesus to speak peace to the internal chaos of your life? Said another way, where are you thirsty and what are you thirsty for?
Where have you let philosophy dictate your healing over the power of the Spirit?
Where do you sense an invitation to become a healer out of your own healing?
Discuss the coming week’s Practice (5 minutes)
As we’ve discussed already, we’re all in different places on our journey with the Holy Spirit. So this coming week, take whichever of the following invitations best fits where you are.
To Become: The first Practice is to ask the Spirit where he is calling you to become an agent of healing, as you reflect on where in your life where the Spirit has healed or delivered you. This will look different for every person. If you experienced loneliness for much of your life but now you have close friends or a family, perhaps practice looking out for the person who eats alone at work or school. If, after many years of addiction, you are living a life of sobriety, perhaps look into mentoring at a local rehabilitation clinic or 12 step program. If you experienced physical healing through prayer, offer to pray for someone who needs healing.
To Come: If you’re not ready for the “To Become” Practice, that’s absolutely ok. The Practice for you is to get together with a friend and speak out the places in you that still need healing. And then pray together and ask him to actually do it. Lastly, with a holy imagination, pray and ask the Holy Spirit what it could look like for you to one day become a wounded healer out of your own healing. What dreams or images or ideas come to mind as you consider your own healing? What might the Spirit free you to do as he heals you?