Home & Blog | Lynne Baab

Holy Spirit disruptions: What if something being hard shows we’re doing it right?

Lynne Baab • Friday July 9 2021

The sermon at our church last Sunday focused on Jesus’ sending of the 12, two by two, to preach the Gospel, heal, and cast out demons (Mark 6:1-13). Our preacher talked about the opposition that Jesus encountered in Nazareth right before he sent out the disciples, an incident that prepared the disciples for their ministry. Our preacher mentioned that when we experience opposition, we so often think we have done something wrong.

That idea has been a big theme in my pondering for the past few weeks. In my family of origin, when something was hard, it meant that you were doing...

Read full article »

Holy Spirit disruptions: We are God’s beloved

Lynne Baab • Tuesday June 22 2021

If you read your Bible, pray, fast, keep a Sabbath, or engage in other ways of drawing near to God, then God will love you more. Right?

Have you ever believed that? Does a part of you still believe it?

For six years in a row, March through May, I have taught a masters level course for Hope International University, a Christian university. The topic of the class is leading groups into communal spiritual practices. After a week of definitions of spiritual practices and categories, I spend the whole second week, one week of eight, on the motive for spiritual practices, and one...

Read full article »

Holy Spirit disruptions: Pride and ego

Lynne Baab • Wednesday June 16 2021

Being a writer/teacher/preacher has created a form of pride or ego in me that the Holy Spirit has been disrupting pretty intensely during the pandemic. You might think the biggest form of pride or ego for writers/teachers/preachers would be the conviction that we are right. That has certainly been an issue for me for much of my life, something that my family members have mentioned dozens or even hundreds of times. It feels like I’ve learned a lot about that. Maybe I will have more to learn at another time, but that hasn’t been the pandemic pride/ego issue.

The form of pride...

Read full article »

Holy Spirit disruptions: Embodiment

Lynne Baab • Wednesday June 9 2021

My mom and her mom were always very slender, and my mom at 96 still looks great in her clothes. My mom had seven aunts on her father’s side who were all plump or significantly overweight. Most of them were also mean. My mother grew up associating being overweight with being a less than admirable person.

When I hit puberty and began to get a more rounded build than my mom had ever had, she started telling me stories about my mean, overweight aunts. I became so certain, deep inside, that being slim was virtuous. As a teenager, I loved Seventeen magazine,...

Read full article »

<< Newer | Older >>