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Holy Spirit disruptions: Confess and admit

Lynne Baab • Friday August 6 2021

I’m reading a book on narcissism. The author has a list of ten things people with narcissistic personality order don’t do. Number one on the list is apologize and number ten is admit vulnerability. Most of us, and most Christians, have at least a slight tendency toward narcissism – after all, we are really only aware of our own situation, emotions, priorities, values, etc. – and for many people, admitting wrong-doing or vulnerability doesn’t come naturally. The Holy Spirit disrupts our sense of complacency and self-righteousness by asking us to confess our sins, which requires some level of vulnerability.

I think there...

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Holy Spirit disruptions: Ignite holy fire

Lynne Baab • Friday July 30 2021

In the West of the United States these hot summer days, fire is terrifying. Here in Seattle, the winds have blown from the west for several weeks, so the smoke from the fires in Eastern Washington is blowing away from us. My friend in the Minneapolis area, however, is dealing with the kind of smoke that we’ve had many recent summers in Seattle, and that we will have when the wind changes. The smoke around Minneapolis, my friend tells me, is coming from fires in Canada to the northwest of them.

Yet despite its enormous destructive power, fire as a tool shaped...

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Holy Spirit disruptions: Wait

Lynne Baab • Thursday July 22 2021

Some of Jesus’ disciples are terrified. Jesus has died, his body has disappeared, and some of the other disciples are saying they have seen him alive. The ones who haven’t seen him yet wonder if Jesus has become a ghost, and they don’t know what to do with their questions and strong sense of loss.

Then Jesus appears among them.

When they see him, he does look like a ghost to them, so Jesus asks them to touch him. He requests something to eat, affirming that he’s still living in a body. Then he teaches them from the Old Testament scriptures about the...

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Holy Spirit disruptions: Go/Wait

Lynne Baab • Friday July 16 2021

The Bible and Christian history are full of stories of God telling people to go somewhere. The command to wait is quite frequent, too. God’s word to us to go, as well as God’s instructions to wait, often come to us as a disruption.

Elizabeth Elliot (1926-2015) was a hero of mine when I was a young Christian. Early in my twenties, I heard her speak, and I was captivated by her description of the obedience that took her first husband, Jim Elliot (1927-1956), to a South American tribe to share the Gospel. Instead of becoming Christians, the people there killed him and...

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