I am looking forward to having this passage read on Sunday. To close
our Prayers of the People each Sunday, we use the words "We gather
all our prayers together, the spoken and the unspoken, the sighs too
deep for words and the joys too deep for naming ...." I am not sure
that all the folks know that the "sighs too deep for words" is taken
from scripture. I love a chance to teach! ( : Blessings LGB
LBG, I' ve just formed an intercessory prayer group here and it met
for the first time on Wednesday. I, too, am looking forward to
including this passage in my sermon on Sunday. As you said, a
wonderful opportunity to teach! It is verse 26, which will help me,
as there are still some who want intercessory prayer to be about
their topics for prayer, as opposed to allowing the Spirit to tell
us. When they did try to interject their agendas, I felt the Spirit
sighing deeply within me! Blessings, Don in Ontario
"We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains
until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the
first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for
adoption, the redemption of our bodies." Romans 8:22-23
The following quote from Hans Urs von Balthasar in "The Christian
Anxiety" speaks to this mystery:
"The ultimate meaning of the anquish experienced in the contraction
of teh birth canal becomes clear: it is a subjective feeling of
narrowing during an objective process of expanding, in accordance
with the paradox expressed in Psalm 4 (Vulgate): When I was in
distress you enlarged a place for me. .... And what experientially
seems contricting and frightening to the believer is in truth
enlarging, a fruitful dilatatio of the birth canal, an interior
trembling that expands faith, hope, love. Even if subjectively it
were mortal terror, objectively it is greater blessedness, a
participation in the everlasting trinitarian ecstasy."
tom in ga
We wait for adoption!
It is something really wonderful and it will change our lives. We
have the first fruits but mostly it is still future tense.
It is not just heaven but some earthly transformation. What is this
transformation?
We have heard terms like, new creation or new being but just what is
it? Manzel
Wesley understood a difference between justification and
sanctification. Justification might be equated with what some call
"being saved". But sanctification was the process of being perfected
in Christ. So what does this sanctification look like? How will our
lives be different then? How do we catch a vision of this great
hope?
God who searches the heart. Billy Joel's River of Dreams talks about
In the middle of the night I go searching for something. It comforts
me to think God has this kind of passion in searching my heart to
know me, to appreciate and comfort me and to bring healing where it
is needed deep within my heart.
I don't see the word travail here but it is one of the very poinient
expressions in this powerful chapter. It discribes both great pain
and pain that is a part of a process of new birth. It is pregnant
with a sense of purpose. It puts the suffering in a context that
gives us strength to cope, and hope.
A few years ago our U.M. bishop preached about how the bumpiest part
of a plane ride is while the plane is getting up speed for take off.
Sometimes turbulence means great transition is emminent. What great
things are eminent for the church? If the church takes on a new
being, what would that look like? If Christ's nature becomes more
fully revealed in us and in the church what new forms will that
take?
Today across America more people are starting to think and believe
that they have a spirit. They are starting to believe that there is
more to them than the physical. The yearning has started. God is
working. Now when will we as the Church get our act together and
start being what we are truly suppose to be? We ourselves must let
the Spirit lead us. But alas we are led by feelings not yearnings of
the Holy Spirit. I believe we get the two confused....We must ask
ourselves when we think we are following the Spirit’s lead, "Who
will it benefit?" If the answer is ourselves or just our church not
the Church then we should rethink and check our attitudes. Christ
sent us into the world not to feed our flesh but to obey the will of
God. Even today in our churches we must ask ourselves , “Why do we
come to worship?” Do we come to feed our flesh or our spirit? Do we
come to worship or to be stroked? Must we always go home feeling
good or can we gone home being challenged. Challenged to be more
like Jesus. The yearnings of the Spirit will lead us into truth and
once we understand and accept the truth then our desire will be for
the Spirit’s lead and we will be set free and be what God’s wants us
to be. Fear will be gone and love for others and God will overcome
our fleshly desires ..... they will fade and the love and joy of the
Lord will grow stronger each passing day until in us others see
Jesus. This is what God wants. This is our true worship. This is
what will glorify God. LPinPA
I am struggling to speak to the spiritual yearnings so apparent in
society. We are dying (literally) for an infusion of the Holy SPirit
in our darkness. Common to both the Epistle and the First reading is
the idea of waiting. The disciples were waiting. They had been for
10 days now. IN the Epistle, St. paul tells us that we wait with
patience. How hard it is to wait. INstead we fill ourselves with
other things. We cram our lives with "stuff" because we are so
uncomfortable with the nothingness of a life of faith. The spirit
comes to us in the moments of nothingness. It is there in the Dark
of the Night, that we become most aware of the presence of God. It
is in the silence, in the waiting, in the pain of life that we are
most receptive to the coming of the Holy SPirit. We run from these
moments because they make us uncomfortable. We fill our emptiness
with meaningless things (sex, drugs, possessions, career, etc). Life
in the power of the spirit(per Moultmann) begins when we embrace the
nothingness of our existance. I'm not sure where this is going, but
these are some ramblings to begin the week. Grace and peace. UM in
Pa
I am using the sermon title, first fruits. I will speak of penticost
as first fruits with the implication there is more to come.
Penticost is the birthday of the church yet the church is still in
travail, waiting to bare more fruit. Any suggestions?
Manzel
For into his hope we are saved. A hope we cannot see. Preciselt
because it is hope. And we wait patiently. In our waiting hope
filled lives the Spirit intercedes.
This is confirmation Sunday at our Church. We conitinue to meet
without a physicall church structure as we are a new church start.
Kind of like the saints oft he early church.
It is our hope that gives us strength to carry on ( and carry boxes)
We hope for a Church Building. The confirmands are real witnesses to
that faith. Even as a new church with all of its difficulkies we
still have young people willing to turn their lives over to the will
of Christ.
My sermon title is "My hope is built on..." Salvation, Patience, the
Holy Spirit.
SunCityRev
"Pentecost" is the Greek term for the Jewish feas of Weeks, which
fell on the 50th day after the ceremony of the barley sheaf during
Passover. It marked the beginning of the offering of the first
fruits. This is very significant in understanding Paul's use of the
term first fruits.
While the NT, when it refers to Pentecost, still thinks of it in
terms of the Jewish feast, the Church remembers that it was on
Pentecost that the Holy Spirit came giving birth to the Church (Acts
2).
The Holy Spirit dwells in us as the first fruit even as we wait for
full adoption. The Petersen translation says the "God has taken up
residence in our lives."
I see three important faith characteristics: 1. The faithful will
sense, even in the midst of pain, the potential birth of God's
future. They will wait like a pregnant woman, full of high hopes and
great expectations knowint that God is about to do something great.
2. The faithful will know that even in pain, God is with us and
within us searching and interceding with sighs too deep for words.
There is a peace and confidence when all human searching offers no
good reason for such peace and comfort.
3. The faithful know that God is victorious despite the powers
against them. All things work together for good, even the bad
things. That great hope for tomorrow gives strength for today.
Fred in LA
