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God will never regret saving you.

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It was almost 7 AM — opening time for a tiny concession stand dubbed the Eureka Café. I was there first, leaning on the counter and staring happily at the trademark: “We Proudly Brew Starbucks Coffee.”
I had expected this summer retreat center to be nestled miles away from a good cup o’ Joe. But according to the words on this sign, and the rustic fragrance that filled the air, I had found it. So I went on to order my coffee — a scene that repeated several times in the course of five days — and it didn’t take long to figure out that “proudly brewing” a brand of coffee and being an official institution of that brand are two different things.
Now don’t get me wrong, the coffee was great. But the Eureka Café was a far stretch from a bona fide Starbucks. Sure, the baristas were nice and the drinks were good, but there were several things you couldn’t get. The half-and-half didn’t need refrigeration. There was nowhere to sit. There was no music, nocoffitivity. Of all the similarities, it still wasn’t the real thing. You know what I mean.
It’s sort of like how we think about the Holy Spirit, when we think about him wrongly. We tend to make him the Eureka Café of God. Sure, there are important similarities, but he’s not the real thing. We know he is related to God, but we can easily hold back from thinking of the Spirit as God himself, which he truly is. And I’m afraid that until we really understand this, we sell ourselves short of living gladly in his benefits. I have two specifically in mind.

1. We Are Inseparably United to Christ

Because the Holy Spirit is God — not a mere emissary of God — it means that our union with Christ is inseparable.
The Spirit’s central role in the life of believers is to show us Jesus and unite us to him. He opens blind eyes to behold Jesus and awakens dead hearts to believe Jesus. The Spirit, through the life-giving faith he empowers, makes us born again (John 3:8). He makes us new creations (2 Corinthians 5:17). He brings us into Christ and becomes the bond of our union with him. Sinclair Ferguson writes, “The closeness of our union [with Christ] is dependent upon our mutual possession by, and possession of, the Holy Spirit” (The Holy Spirit, 106).
This is important. Our union with Christ is dependent upon the Spirit— not our will to believe, though the Spirit fuels our faith; not our intellect, though the Spirit gives light; not our affections, though the Spirit makes us feel; not our obedience, though the Spirit produces fruit. The Spirit himself is the bond of our union, which means, because the Spirit is God,the bond of our relationship with God is God himself. And that means there’s no going back.
This bond does not expire or dissolve. This is what the Spirit does and has always done. Before the foundation of the world, the Spirit was the personal bond of glorious love between the Father and the Son. And now, the Spirit is that love in us (John 17:26;Romans 5:5). He has brought us into an inseparable union — one that is as secure as the Father’s love for the Son, as sure as God’s love is for himself.
Because the Holy Spirit is God, we’re in for good.

2. We Are Inseparable Without Regret

Because the Holy Spirit is God, and therefore our union with Christ is inseparable, it means God will never regret saving us.
This part is more than a theological point of our security. It has to do with how we grasp it. It’s not enough to say that we are inseparably united to Christ. But how does God feel about that? What good would inseparable union do for us right now if we thought that God was unhappy about it? What tempered good is eternal security if we thought God felt stuck with us?
Because the Spirit unites us to Christ, it means that all of Christ’s benefits become our own. His sin-defeating death was where the guilt and power of our sin were defeated (Romans 6:3). His death-defeating resurrection was where the power and sting ofour graves were overcome (Romans 6:4). His vindication as God’s Son is a vindication in which we now share.
In Christ, as the Spirit himself bears witness, we are God’s children (Romans 8:16–17). We are fellow-heirs with Christ — beloved of the Father like he is. And this kind of love from this kind of Father is not begrudging.
Because we are united to Christ, and the bond of that union is God the Holy Spirit, then even in our worst moments, in our lowest lows, in our deepest darkness, God has never regretted saving us. Never.
He chose us for the praise of his glorious grace (Ephesians 1:4–6); he made us his own workmanship (Ephesians 2:10); he will complete what he began (Philippians 1:6) — all of which the Spirit guarantees (2 Corinthians 1:21–22). It really is true: God will never regret saving us. He is irrevocably glad in the inseparable union we have with Christ that he has accomplished by his Spirit.
You can’t get that at the Eureka Café.

Greater works than Jesus?

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A mentor recently told me that every 30 years or so evangelicals have a conversation about the Holy Spirit. The last really significant one, he said, was in the 1970s, and out of that came the revival known as the Jesus movement. It’s time, he said, for us to have another one.
In John 14:12, Jesus says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father.” Greaterworks than Jesus’s? That’s a little hard to believe. Have any of us ever preached with greater clarity, healed the sick with greater power, or prayed with greater compassion . . . than Jesus? No one in their right mind would claim that. But, because of the Spirit, our works are greater in two ways.

The Greater Miracle

The first is that while Jesus’s earthly miracles illustrated his power to save from sin, the greatest miracle of all is conversion from death to life. Jesus fed five thousand to show us that he was the all-satisfying bread of life. He walked on water to show that he was sovereign over all dimensions of the believer’s life. 
 Missionary Nik Ripken tells of Russian believers who are currently seeing miraculous signs that would rival anything in the Book of Acts. But these believers only use the word “miracle” to refer to conversion — because amazing acts of deliverance pale in comparison to what God does when he draws someone to himself (The Insanity of Obedience, 19). When we preach the gospel and sinners believe, we are doing the greater work: Jesus’s miracles were only signs. We get to participate in what those signs point to.

The Greater Range

The second way that our works are “greater” than Jesus’s is thatthey are greater in their range.When Jesus was on earth, the Holy Spirit focused his ministry in and through Jesus. But now he is on every believer, and the collective impact, Jesus says, of ordinary Christians filled with the Spirit would be greater than if even he himself stayed to lead the church.
In Acts 1:1–2, Luke says that in his former book — the Gospel of Luke — he “wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach, until the day he was taken up.” The implication is that Acts records what Jesus continues to do, through his church. It’s not that in the Gospels Jesus worked, and now we, in his absence, workfor him. It’s that during his incarnation Jesus worked throughhis earthly body and now he works through the entirety of his earthly body, the church.
Jesus’s vision for transforming society never consisted of platforming a few hyper-anointed megapastors to pack an auditorium with their electrifying sermons. His vision of the greatness of the church consisted in each believer being filled with, and used by, the Holy Spirit.
How we’ve built megachurches turns this on its head. We’ve acted like it’s about gathering a group of people to hear from one anointed guy. Did you know that of all the miracles in Acts, 39 of 40 were done outside of the church? Is that where most of our people expect to encounter the power of God? Most see the power of God as something that belongs to the pastor, in the typical routines of church life. But in a post-Christian age, fewer and fewer people casually “make their way” into our gatherings. That means people in our day will increasingly have to be reachedoutside the assembly, which makes it more important than ever that individual believers live filled with the Spirit.
If we want to see God’s power in our cities, we need to teach our people to listen for the Holy Spirit, to closely follow his guidance, the way the apostles did — not simply to think up a bunch of good ideas for ministry, but to tune their hearts to hear a few God-ideas.

Still Relevant Today?

Now, whenever I start to talk this way, someone inevitably says, “Well, you know, we can’t use Acts as a pattern for our time. Things are so much different now.” And I understand that Acts represents a unique period of apostolic history. But I am not convinced that the only book God gave us with examples of how the church operates is filled with experiences that have literally nothing in common with our own. The Holy Spirit appears 59 times in the book of Acts. In 36 of those appearances he is speaking. Has he ceased moving and guiding today? As John Newton said, “Is it really true that that which the early church so depended on — the leadership of the Spirit — is irrelevant to us today?” (“Letter IV: Communion with God,” 29)

Do we see ministry as something we are doing for God, or something God does through us?

Here’s a question I think every pastor would be wise to consider: Do our people see ministry as something they are doing for God, or something God does throughthem as they yield themselves to him? Do they know what it means to follow him, to move in his power? And do they know how to distinguish his leadership from superstition, whim, or heartburn?
The presence of the Holy Spirit was the key to the early church’s explosive growth. He is the key to revival in our generation, too. Christ in us, Paul says, is our hope of glory.
It is time we had another conversation about the Holy Spirit, time that we stopped bemoaning the fact that Jesus has left us alone, and instead started looking to, rejoicing in, and walking with the Spirit he’s given to live within us.

The Help Of God in Every Step.

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Dark shadows fall over the closing pages of John’s Gospel. For our Lord himself, there is the shadow of the cross; for the disciples, the shadow of his imminent departure.
He is leaving them to return to the Father, and they are utterly distraught. It is to this distress that Jesus addresses the words ofJohn 16:7: “It is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you.”
The words make two remarkable points. First, unless he goes away “the Helper” will not come. There is a divine order in the work of redemption, and in terms of that order there can be no Pentecost before Calvary. It is not simply that without the cross neither the disciples nor the Helper would have any witness to bear. There is a deeper reason: Only when Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law can we receive the promised Spirit (Galatians 3:14).
Before there can be communion, there must be reconciliation. But the converse is also true. Wherever Christ redeems, the Spirit ministers. This is why salvation can never be merely an external imputation of Christ’s righteousness. It is also profoundly inward. Wherever the blood is sprinkled, the Spirit transforms.

To Your Advantage

But then Jesus adds a second remarkable word: “It is to your advantage that I go away.” This was the last thing the disciples wanted to hear. What could he mean?
We all know the sentiment, “If only we could have been with him when he walked the hills of Galilee and strode the streets of Jerusalem!” But what if, when he walked those hills, we happened to be in Jericho, or Brazil? The incarnate Lord could not be in two places at once. But this is exactly what the coming of the Helper makes possible. Wherever we are, he is with us.
The word “Helper” (Greekparakletos) means, literally, one called to be beside us, but Jesus also spoke of him as being with us and even of his being in us. These words bespeak a remarkable intimacy between believers and the Holy Spirit. True, we see Jesus no more. But in place of that external presence, we now have an inner presence. We never walk alone. Whether on great missionary journeys, or languishing in prison cells, or fighting our own personal battles, the Helper is always beside us, always with us, and always in us.
But not as a replacement for Christ, as if he went away when the Spirit comes. Remember the words of John 14:18: “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” This cannot mean only that the disciples would see him again in his resurrection appearances. If that were all, then Christians would indeed be “orphans” for the whole period between Jesus’s ascension and his return. The truth, surely, is that in the Helper, Jesus himself comes.

He Is with You Always

This is what the church later expressed in the doctrine calledperichōrēsis: The three persons of the Trinity indwell and embrace each other so closely that where One is, the Three are (a doctrine based on Jesus’s own words inJohn 14:10, “I am in the Father and the Father is in me”). The Spirit is the Spirit of his Son; where his Spirit is, he is; and it is thus that Jesus fulfills his promise to be present with his church every day to the end of the age (Matthew 28:20).
Nor is this all. The Father, too, is with us. Here again the intimacy is remarkable: “If anyone loves me,” declared Jesus, “my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him” (John 14:23). The we is breath-taking. The Father, the Son, and the Spirit now live in the heart of every believer. Christ is no longer visibly present to us, but through the indwelling Spirit the triune God is with us every step of the way.

He Is a Person

What of the Helper himself? He is clearly distinct from Jesus, yet his work is a continuation of Jesus’s work. This is why the Lord calls him “another Helper,” and why John can later call Jesus himself a Helper (1 John 2:1). This underlines the fact that the Spirit, no less than Jesus, is a person, not some abstract force or mere spiritual fuel; and because he is a person, our relationship with him must also be personal.
He does not possess us, as demons possessed demoniacs, or overwhelm us, depriving us of the use of our own minds and wills. Nor are we absorbed into him, as in some great mystical ocean. Nor is he an intoxicant (Ephesians 5:18), destroying our self-control and giving us drug-like highs. He guides, teaches, witnesses, advocates, helps, encourages, strengthens, intercedes, and assures. And he expects us to listen, obey, follow and, above all, to keep in step (Galatians 5:25).

He Is Your Advocate

The word parakletos usually meant an advocate, and this applies to the Holy Spirit in two distinct ways.
First, he is Christ’s advocate in the world (John 16:8–11). The disciples (and the church) were given a daunting commission: the evangelization of the world. But how can we convince the world of its need of salvation? How can we convince it that one who died an ignominious death is its appointed Savior? And how can we convince it that every man will one day stand before his judgement seat?
The short answer is that we cannot. The relief is that the Holy Spirit can. He can convict the world. He can stand up for Christ and his witnesses, and then our poor, lisping, stammering tongues become words of life and power.
Secondly, he is Christ’s advocate in our hearts. He shall glorify me, says Jesus (John 16:14), by sharing with us his own vision of the beauty of the Savior. The Spirit sees Christ through the Father’s eyes (John 16:13). A believer sees him through the Spirit’s eyes.

He Is Your Helper

Still, there is a warmth in Jesus’s promise which the word “advocate” cannot convey. Remember that his words were addressed to the disciples’ fear of being left friendless and helpless. The comfort is that when he goes, he will send another who will stand by them and stand up for them, just as he has done. Far from being orphans, they have a Father in heaven, and through his Spirit he will provide for them as only a heavenly Father can.
Yet the mission of the Helper does not mean that there is no further place for hope, as if we already enjoyed all that God intends for his children. We still long to seehim (1 John 3:2). And completeness comes not with Pentecost, or with Spirit-baptism, but only in the glory of the resurrection.

God will give you something to say.

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I would like to encourage you to enjoy a particular experience of the ministry of the Holy Spirit promised by our Lord Jesus.
When he made this promise, he had in mind mainly the tense and dangerous moments when the adversaries of Christianity bring you before authorities and give you a chance to speak. For example, he said,
“When they bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and the authorities, do not be anxious about how you should defend yourself or what you should say, for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say.” (Luke 12:11–12)
Or later he said,
“When they bring you to trial and deliver you over, do not be anxious beforehand what you are to say, but say whatever is given you in that hour, for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit.” (Mark 13:11; compare with Matthew 10:19)
Perhaps something like this has happened to you. But most of us in the West have not yet encountered that kind of official arraignment for being a follower of Jesus.

Yes, It Applies to You

“The Holy Spirit will help us in the most frightening settings. How much more may we depend on him in less threatening situations.”

Does that mean this promise of Jesus has no application to us? No. It does apply to us. Notice, when Jesus says in Luke 12:11 that they may bring us before “synagogues and rulers and authorities,” he is not thinking of only one kind of arraignment. Being questioned in the synagogue was not the same as being interrogated by a Roman governor.
Jesus’s promise that the Holy Spirit will teach us what we ought to say is not meant to free us from anxiety in only one kind of trial and then leave us to ourselves in another. The promise is that the Holy Spirit will help us in the most frightening settings, and so how much more may we depend on him in less threatening situations.
One of the reasons I want you to enjoy this particular work of the Holy Spirit is that I have found it so true and amazing and precious in my own life. I am thinking particularly of two kinds of situations. One is cold-turkey street evangelism, and the other is spontaneous question-and-answer sessions in front of hundreds or thousands of people.

Jogging in Minnesota

During the eight months when I jog outside in Minnesota, I regularly carry booklets andGospels of John in my pocket. I pray for guidance for someone to talk to about Jesus, and for the help of the Holy Spirit in what to say. It is usually quite early in the morning, and I am running in what most people would call “the inner city.” If I find a guy standing alone, I may stop and say, “Good morning! My name’s John. I run through the neighborhood and pray for people. Is there something I can pray about for you?” From this point on, it is unpredictable.
But ordinarily, they will give me something to pray for. Now and then it is something really significant. A couple months ago a young man said his girlfriend had just kicked him out, and he was devastated. He thought it would be long term. Sooner or later in my interaction, I say something like, “Do you know the best news in the world?” Depending on what they say, I ask, “May I tell it to you?” Ninety percent of the time they say yes. So I put the gospel into as few words as a I can and see where they are willing to go with that.
I come away from these brief encounters thankful and amazed at what just happened. Yes, I am often frustrated that I did not say things better. But I am also really happy that the Holy Spirit gave me something to say. Not only that, he inclined me to say it. He caused me to love it. He awakened compassion. He overcame anxiety. He put hope in my heart. He fulfilled the promise of Jesus, “The Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say.”

Unscripted Q-and-A

One other situation where I enjoy this ministry of the Holy Spirit is during question-and-answer sessions at conferences or during media interviews. First, I pray for help (often using A.P.T.A.T.). If I know the general topic being addressed, I may think ahead of time about some biblical texts relating to the topic. But if I am asked whether I want to see the questions ahead of time, I say no, thank you. One reason is that, if I have the questions, I tend to feel more anxiety and then over-prepare. Another reason is that I really enjoy watching the Holy Spirit bring to mind answers on the spur of the moment. It is, to me, an amazing experience.

“Dozens of factors coalesce into a spontaneous witness to the truth. The Holy Spirit governs them all.”

Again, yes, I often feel afterward that I could have answered things better. Sometimes I kick myself for letting some unhelpful comment come out of my mouth. Sometimes I feel stupid for not remembering an obvious verse of Scripture that would have been, it seems, a perfect point to make. So you can see I don’t take Jesus’s promise of the Holy Spirit’s help to mean that I become infallible or flawless.
Even when Jesus promises inLuke 21:15, “I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which none of your adversaries will be able to withstand or contradict,” he doesn’t mean that we will always have the effect we want. Luke uses the very words of Jesus’s promise to describe Stephen’s speech before the council inActs 6:10–15. “They could not withstand the wisdom and the Spirit with which he was speaking,” but they killed Stephen rather than agree. This amazing ministry of the Holy Spirit is no guarantee of evangelistic or edifying success.

Not Anxious Rehearsal

Besides thinking that the promise gives us infallibility and sure-fire effectiveness, we also should avoid thinking that the promise implies that the Holy Spirit will give wisdom and grace and power to a mind that is habituated to foolishness, flesh, and self-reliance. The promise says we should not be anxious, not that we should be empty-headed. We should be free from fear, not free from truth and faith.
It is plain from the life and teaching of Jesus, and from the ministry of the apostles, that the work of the Holy Spirit in “teaching us in that very hour what we ought to say” does not include creating new Scriptures in our heads. The way the Spirit works is by calling to mind the biblical truth we have already treasured in our hearts (Psalm 119:11), and by helping us with clarity and conviction and timing and situational discernment and love. Dozens of intellectual, emotional, verbal, physical, and spiritual factors coalesce into a spontaneous witness to the truth. The Holy Spirit governs them all.

“The words of Christ are the raw material that the Holy Spirit works with as he teaches us what to say.”

But he does not start from scratch with every opportunity we face. He stirs up his people to “let the word of Christ dwell in [them] richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom” (Colossians 3:16). If we hope to lay hold on his promise to teach us what we need to say in a pressured moment, then we should remember another promise: “If my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you” (John 15:7).
The words of Jesus have already been given to us. The four Gospels, formed out of Jesus’s teachings, are a mountain of treasures. We are to listen to the words of Christ (Mark 9:7), and give them a home in our minds (John 8:37), and treasure them (Colossians 3:16). This is the raw material that the Holy Spirit works with as he teaches us what to say. He inspired the words of Jesus the first time. He loves to use them when the time comes.

How the Spirit Works

Jesus modeled this for us when he was led by the Spirit to give an answer in crisis. When Satan challenged him in the wilderness, Jesus was filled with the Holy Spirit (Luke 4:1), and was given the right word for every moment. It is written,
  • “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4).
  • “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test” (Matthew 4:7).
  • “You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve” (Matthew 4:10).
Jesus quoted Scripture every time. Clearly Jesus was not only full of the Holy Spirit, but full of the written word of God. This is how the Holy Spirit taught him “in that hour.”

Always Being Prepared

And that is how it works with us: “The word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one” (1 John 2:14). The Holy Spirit inspired the Scriptures in the first century. Then in our century, he moves us to love, and read, and understand, and store up the Scriptures. He transforms us by it. And then, in the moment of need, he puts that biblical truth to work in an amazing way as he teaches us what to say.
This is what Peter was getting at when he said,
If you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you. (1 Peter 3:14–15)
This is not a contradiction of Jesus’s instruction that we not “meditate beforehand how to answer” (Luke 21:14). Jesus is warning against fearful rehearsing. Peter is telling us to always be nurturing our hope by piling the kindling of biblical truth on the fires of confidence. If we feed the fires of our hope every day with reasons from God’s word, the Holy Spirit will take that fuel of “preparation” and “teach you in that very hour what you ought to say.”

Consider the Lilies

And lest we think that the only knowledge the Holy Spirit uses is Bible knowledge, remember that Jesus said, “Look at the birds of the air. . . . Consider the lilies of the field” (Matthew 6:26–28). In other words, learn, learn, learn from God’s world as well as from God’s word.
When you are before the court, or in front of the classroom, or over lunch, or doing an interview, or witnessing on the street, the Holy Spirit is always putting to use your experience of the word and your experience of the world.

It Is Supernatural

Nothing is more natural, therefore, than to be anxious about whether your storehouse will be sufficient for the moment of crisis. That is why Jesus promises something supernatural, not merely something natural. “The Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say” (Luke 12:12). God is going to work for you. God!
If you think you can know the Bible well enough, and know the world well enough, to take away your anxiety, you nullify this promise. The whole point is that what is needed in this moment is beyond you. You need the Holy Spirit. Jesus promises he will be there. So live with him day by day. And when the hour of trial comes, he will be there to give you what you need. It is an amazing and precious experience. Come, enjoy it.

What is the Unforgivable sin.

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ot be forgiven.”
It’s one of Jesus’s most enigmatic, controversial, and haunting statements. In the last two millennia, many a tortured soul have wrestled over this warning.Have I committed “the unforgivable sin”? When I addressed my angry profanity to God, when I spoke rebelliously against him, did I commit unforgivable blasphemy?Or, perhaps more often, especially in today’s epidemic of Internet porn, “Could I really be saved if I keep returning to the same sin I have vowed so many times never to return to again?”
Despite the enigma and controversy, we do have a simple pathway to clarity. Jesus’s “blasphemy against the Spirit” statement only appears in the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke). If we get a concrete sense of what he did (and didn’t) mean there, then we’re positioned to answer what such “unforgivable sin” might (and might not) mean for us today.

What Jesus Actually Said

Jesus hadn’t been teaching in public long when his hearers began comparing him to their teachers, called “the scribes,” part of the conservative Jewish group known as the Pharisees. The growing crowds “were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as the scribes” (Mark 1:22). The scribes heard the comparison and felt the tension, and soon escalated it (Mark 2:6,16), as these Bible teachers of the day, with their many added traditions, quickly grew in their envy, and then hatred, for Jesus. The threat is so great these conservatives even are willing to cross the aisle to conspire with their liberal rivals, the Herodians (Mark 3:6).
The showdown comes inMark 3:22–30(Matthew 12:22–32). Scribes have descended from Jerusalem to set straight the poor, deceived people of backwater Galilee. “He is possessed by Beelzebul,” they say. “By the prince of demons he casts out the demons” (Mark 3:22).
Jesus calmly answers their lie with basic logic (verses 23–26) and turns it to make a statement about his lordship (verse 27). Then he warns these liars, who know better deep down, of the spiritual danger they’re in.
“Truly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the children of man, and whatever blasphemies they utter, butwhoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin” — for they were saying, ‘He has an unclean spirit.’” (Mark 3:28–30)
It’s one thing to suppose that Jesus is out of his mind (his family fears as much at this early stage, Mark 3:21), but it’s another thing to attribute the work of God’s Spirit to the devil — to observe the power of God unfolding in and through this man Jesus, be haunted by it in a callous heart, and turn to delude others by ascribing the Spirit’s work to Satan. This evidences such a profound hardness of heart in these scribes that they should fear they are on the brink of eternal ruin — if it’s not already too late. Jesus does not necessarily declare that the scribes are already condemned, but he warns them gravely of their precarious position.

Who Did the Scribes Blaspheme?

Before we ask about our sin today, let’s gather the pieces in the Gospels. The teachers of God’s covenant people, here at this crucial and unique point in redemptive history, have God himself among them. God’s long-anticipated kingdom is dawning. “If it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you” (Matthew 12:28). The very day that their stories and prophets and Scriptures have prepared them for is being unveiled before them, and in their hard and impenitent hearts, they are rejecting it.
And not only are they cold toward how God is doing it, and murmuring about it to each other, but as teachers of God’s people, they now are speaking up to draw others away from the truth. And they do so by declaring that the power at work in Jesus, manifestly from God, is the power of Satan. Here Jesus warns them, “Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin” (Mark 3:29). Why so?
Matthew adds a detail we don’t have in Mark. “Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaksagainst the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come” (Matthew 12:32). Attacking Jesus is one thing. He refers to himself as “the Son of Man” — God himself among his people, but not yet fully revealed in his death and resurrection. Attack this enigmatic Son of Man, and the Spirit can overcome that. But it’s another thing to see what God is doing and turn to attack his Spirit. Who is left to help these scribes if they’re settling in against the Spirit of God? Insult, dishonor, and make enemies with the Spirit, and who is left to bring you back?
The reason these scribes are dangerously close to being guilty of “eternal sin” is because they are evidencing such a settled hardness of heart — not just against this mysterious “Son of Man,” but now explicitly against the Spirit — that their hearts may no longer be capable of repentance. It’s not that they may be genuinely repentant but given the stiff arm, but that they will “never have forgiveness” because they will never meet the simple, invaluable, softhearted condition for it: repentance.

Is Anyone Unforgivable Today?

When Jesus addresses the scribes in his day, it is on the brink of a seismic redemptive-historical change that comes with his life and ministry. So in what sense might his warning to the scribes about “blasphemy against the Spirit” be uniquely for Jesus’s day, on the cusp of the old covenant being fulfilled and a new covenant being inaugurated? Should these words fall in the same way on our ears twenty centuries later?
When we turn forward in the story to Acts and the Epistles, we don’t find anything called “blasphemy against the Spirit.” Which signals our need for exercising care in applying this precise term today. However, we do find a concept similar to “unforgivable sin,” even if the terms are not exactly the same. The essence of Jesus’s warning to the scribes in his day lands on us in some form, even if not in the precise way it did originally for the scribes.
Ephesians 4:30 speaks of “grieving the Holy Spirit,” but this is not the same as Jesus’s warning to the scribes. Those who “grieve” the Spirit are reminded that by him they are “sealed for the day of redemption.” However,Hebrews 10:29 speaks of “outraging the Spirit of grace,” and Hebrews 12:17 warns professing Christians not to be like Esau who “found no place of repentance.” Like Jesus’s warning to the scribes, we are not told that Esau asked for forgiveness but was denied. Rather, he “found no place of repentance” — his heart had grown so callous, he was no longer able to genuinely repent and thus meet the condition for the free offer of forgiveness.
Throughout his letter, the author of Hebrews warns his audience of this danger. In the past, they have professed faith in Jesus and claimed to embrace him. Now, because of pressure and persecution from unbelieving Jews, they are tempted to abandon Jesus to restore their peace and comfort. They have experienced remarkable measures of grace in association with the new-covenant people of God (Hebrews 6:4–5), but now they are nearing the brink of falling away from Christ — and Hebrews warns them of the peril: having known the truth, and rejected it, are they now coming into a kind of settled hardness of heart from which they no longer will be able to repent and thus be forgiven?
For Christians today, we need not fear a specific moment of sin, but a kind of hardness of heart that would see Jesus as true and yet walk away — with a kind of hardness of heart incapable of repenting. Again, it’s not that forgiveness isn’t granted, but that it’s not sought. The heart has become so recalcitrant, and at such odds with God’s Spirit, that it’s become incapable of true repentance.

Hope for Those Feeling “Unforgivable”

If you do fear you’ve committed some “unforgivable sin,” or even that your heart has already reached such a state of hardness, God does offer you hope. If you worry about unforgivable sin, then most likely you are not there. Not yet. Hearts with settled hardness against Jesus and his Spirit don’t go around worrying about it.
It’s easy to get worked up over this enigmatic “unforgivable sin” in the Gospels and miss the remarkable gospel expression of Jesus’s open arms that comes immediately before the warning: “Truly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the children of man, and whatever blasphemies they utter” (Mark 3:28). All sins. Whatever blasphemies uttered. Through faith in Jesus. This is where the Gospel accounts all lead: to the cross. This Son of Man, as he progressively demonstrates in the Gospels, is God himself and Lord of the universe. And he became one of us, and died for our sins, and rose to offer full and entire forgiveness for all who repent and embrace him as Lord, Savior, and Treasure.
If your worries about “unforgivable sin” relate to a pattern of sin and unrepentance in your life, your very concerns may be God’s Spirit working to keep you from continuing to harden your heart beyond his softening. Don’t despair. And don’t treat it lightly. As the Holy Spirit encourages his hearers on the edge of such danger, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts” (Psalm 95:7–8; Hebrews 3:7–8). You are not guaranteed tomorrow. But you do have today. It’s not too late, if you still have it in you to repent.

More Good News

However, we should be careful that the enigma and controversy over “unforgivable sin” doesn’t keep us from missing the main reality underneath this episode in Mark 3 and Matthew 12. Jesus’s main point isn’t that there is such a sin as “blasphemy against the Spirit,” but that there is such a person as the Holy Spirit! How remarkable that God has not left us to ourselves in the ups and downs of this life. As he did with his own Son in his full humanity, he makes available to us supernatural power by his Spirit.
How did Jesus, as man, perform his miracles? By the power of the Spirit. “It is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons” (Matthew 12:28). When Jesus hears the scribes say, “By the prince of demons he casts out the demons,” he hears an outrageous attack, not on himself, but on the Spirit. The last word in the story explains it all: “for they were saying, ‘He has an unclean spirit’” (Mark 3:30).
How amazing that the same Spirit who empowered Jesus in his earthly life, and on the path to his sacrificial death, has been given to us today. We “have the Spirit” (Romans 8:9, 15, 23;1 Corinthians 6:19). What a gift we’ve received (Romans 5:5;1 Corinthians 2:12;2 Corinthians 5:5; 1 John 3:24). How much do we underappreciate what power is available to us (and through us) by the Spirit?

How to Pray in the Holy Spirit.

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I spent five years immersing myself in the sermons of Martyn Lloyd-Jones. It was truly a transformative season in my life. What was the biggest takeaway? The answer may surprise you. He taught me how to pray.

“We must come face to face with our tendency to try to pray on our own.”

Those who really knew Lloyd-Jones will not find that answer surprising at all. His wife once said, “No one will ever understand my husband until they realize that he is first of all a man of prayer and then an evangelist” (Bethan Lloyd-Jones). In particular, Lloyd-Jones, as a man of prayer, taught me how to pray in the Holy Spirit.
My hunger for learning how to pray in the Spirit came from a perplexing problem. I readEphesians 6:18, “praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication.” This text really bothered me because I could parse the words and diagram the grammar, but I had this nagging sense that I was not experiencing the reality of it. Lloyd-Jones served as a mentor for me in making this verse a living reality. He led me on a three-stage guided tour of discovery: (1) what it is not, (2) what it is, and (3) how it is done.

What Praying in the Spirit Is Not

First, he helped me see what praying in the Spirit means by contrasting it with its polar opposite: praying in the flesh. Prayer in the power of the flesh relies upon human ability and effort to carry the prayer forward.
We all know what it is to feel deadness in prayer, difficulty in prayer, to be tongue-tied, with nothing to say, as it were, having to force ourselves to try. Well, to the extent that is true of us, we are not praying in the Spirit. (Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Living Water: Studies in John 4, 99)
How do we overcome this difficulty in prayer? Praying in the flesh calls upon human ability and effort to push past the difficulty. If we are tongue-tied in prayer, we may try to overcome that difficulty with a stream of many words. Jesus warned us against thinking we would be heard because we use many words (Matthew 6:7). If we struggle with wanting to give up after a short time in prayer, we may focus upon how long we pray. Success in prayer does not depend upon how much time we can log in prayer. Sometimes people try to overcome deadness in prayer by focusing on how well we can pray. We subtly trust in having perfectly composed, doctrinally correct prayers that rely upon the right diction, cadence, language, emotion, or volume.
These attempts to push past the difficulty in the power of the flesh are attempts to imitate the liveliness that the Spirit gives in prayer.
The Spirit is a Spirit of life as well as truth, and the first thing that he always does is to make everything living and vital. And, of course, there is all the difference in the world between the life and the liveliness produced by the Spirit and the kind of artifact, the bright and breezy imitation, produced by people. (Living Water, 99)
If praying in the flesh is the counterfeit or imitation of praying in the Spirit, what is the genuine article? The second part of the guided tour was discovering what praying in the Spirit is.

What Praying in the Spirit Is

Here is the key difference: in the flesh, we are pushing the prayers forward, while in the Spirit, we feel caught up in the way the Spirit carries the prayer forward. Praying in the Spirit is experiencing the Spirit of life bringing prayer to life.

“Sometimes praying in the Spirit will not feel electrifying at all. It will feel like groaning.”

Praying in the Spirit means that the Spirit empowers the prayer and carries it to the Father in the name of Jesus. The prayer has a living quality characterized by warmth and freedom and a sense of exchange. We realize that we are in God’s presence speaking to God. The Spirit illuminates your mind, moves your heart, and grants a freedom of utterance and liberty of expression.
Lloyd-Jones frequently used stark contrasts to make his point. He did not often go back and nuance the contrast between praying in the flesh and praying in the Spirit. He did not plot different degrees of experience; he simply posed sharp polarities to help us see the difference between the two.
It is helpful to acknowledge that there are varying degrees of experience when it comes to praying in the Spirit. It does not feel like revival every time we pray in the Spirit. There are varying experiences of feeling carried along or pushed forward. Sometimes praying in the Spirit will not feel electrifying at all. It will feel like groaning. The Spirit helps us in our weakness and intercedes for us according to the will of God (Romans 8:26–27).
I remember going on a bike ride where there was a gradual incline for the first half and a gradual slope down for the second half. I sometimes think of that as the experiential difference between praying in the flesh and praying in the Spirit. Praying in the flesh feels like an upward climb in which we are having to power up the hill. Praying in the Spirit reflects the reality of the downward slope. Obviously, there are degrees of decline. But the basic awareness of a downhill energy and momentum are present in all of the different degrees of a downward slope.
When we pray in the Spirit, according to Lloyd-Jones, we experience being carried or driven in prayer to God by the Spirit, but how is it done?

How to Pray in the Spirit

Praying in the Spirit has three aspects: (1) admitting our inability, (2) enjoying the creation of a living communion with God, and (3) pleading the promises of God with boldness and assurance.

Step One: Admitting Our Inability to Pray

We should start with confession: we must admit our inability to pray as we ought. We must come face to face with our tendency to try to pray on our own. We start with the recognition that prayer is a spiritual activity, and the power of the flesh profits nothing at all. We should feel our dryness and difficulty and confess to him our dullness, lifelessness, and spiritual slowness and sluggishness (Living Water, 86).
But this step is not passive; it is the act of yielding ourselves to the Spirit. Confession leads to expectation and prayerful anticipation.

Step Two: Enjoying Living Communion with God

You are aware of a communion, a sharing, a give-and-take, if I may use such an expression. You are not dragging yourself along; you are not forcing the situation; you are not trying to make conversation with somebody whom you do not know. No, no! The Spirit of adoption in you brings you right into the presence of God, and it is a living act of fellowship and communion, vibrant with life. (Lloyd-Jones, The Christian Soldier, 100)
The place where you pray seems to be transformed. I start out praying in my living room, and suddenly I sense that I am in the throne room.

“The result of the Spirit’s work is that we bow before God as humbled children of God in awe of God.”

One of the key differences here between praying in the flesh and praying in the Spirit is that you don’t feel the need to rush to say anything when you pray in the Spirit. The living reality the Spirit creates is the awareness of God’s presence. Experiencing his presence will seem much more important than any petition you are going to make (Lloyd-Jones,The Christian Soldier, 82). But the Spirit will not lead you merely to rest in God’s presence in a passive way. There will be a holy boldness to plead the promises of God.

Step 3: Pleading with Holy Boldness

The result of the Spirit’s work is that we bow before God as humbled children of God in awe of God. We don’t bow before an unknown or far away god, and we don’t skip into God’s presence with breezy familiarity. We come with an awakened sense of intimacy and awe. The Spirit also breathes bold life into our prayers — a holy boldness that pleads the promises of God with God in the presence of God.
The beauty of this boldness is that it is a humble and holy boldness. There is no presumptuous sense of demand.
Do not claim, do not demand, let your requests be made known, let them come from your heart. God will understand. We have no right to demand even revival. Some Christians are tending to do so at the present time. Pray urgently, plead, use all the arguments, use all the promises; but do not demand, do not claim. Never put yourself into the position of saying, ‘If we but do this, then that must happen.’ God is a sovereign Lord, and these things are beyond our understanding. Never let the terminology of claiming or of demanding be used. (Lloyd-Jones, The Final Perseverance of the Saints, 155)

Don’t Quench the Spirit

Lloyd-Jones once said that the quickest way to quench the Spirit is to not obey an impulse to pray. This point is very, very personal to me, so let me tell you a story from my own experience.

“Lloyd-Jones once said that the quickest way to quench the Spirit is to not obey an impulse to pray.”

Once I was driving home from working at UPS. I worked the night shift during my doctoral days and never seemed to get enough sleep. I was driving home very early one morning, around 4:30, and falling asleep at the wheel. I tried everything to stay awake. I turned up the radio and tried to sing along. I even slapped myself. The next thing I knew, I woke up in my driveway. I was more than a little shaken. I didn’t know how I got there.
I walked inside the house now eerily wide awake, and as I walked into our bedroom I noticed the strangest thing: my wife was wide awake, too. She would normally be asleep, but instead, she was sitting up in bed waiting for me.
She said, “Hi, honey, how was your drive?”
I said, “It’s funny you should ask. I really struggled to stay awake on the drive home. In fact, I don’t know how I got here.”
She said, “Yeah I figured. . . . ”
“Okay,” I said, “please continue!”
“Well,” she said, “I woke up at about 4:30 very suddenly, and felt this intense prompting to pray. I figured you must be struggling on the road since that is around the time you normally come home. So, I prayed for you.”
I think I am still alive, and typing these words, because my wife did not quench the Spirit in that moment. She obeyed the Spirit’s prompting to pray. I hope this story gives you a greater sense of what is at stake in prayer. Our tendency to quench the Spirit is not a small and inconsequential problem. Let us give ourselves to the reality of praying in the Spirit and renounce the temptation to try and pray in our own strength. And let us, after Lloyd-Jones’s example, always obey every impulse to pray.

Why Jesus needed the Holy spirit.

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Many Christians assume that Christ was able to perform miracles because he was God. It certainly is true that he is God. However, if we argue, for example, that Christ’s divine nature necessarily and always acts through his human nature, thus enabling him to perform miracles, a serious problem emerges concerning the many texts that speak of the Holy Spirit’s role in the life of Christ.
If the divine second person of the Godhead is the sole effective agent working on the human nature, then we need to ask ourselves a serious question: What is the point of the Holy Spirit in the life of Christ? Many Christians (and even some formidable theologians) seem unsure what to do with the Holy Spirit when speaking about the person and work of Christ.

Savior by the Spirit

For example, neither Roman Catholic nor Lutheran theologians can adequately account for a meaningful role of the Holy Spirit in the life of Christ if they remain faithful to the basic christology of those traditions. Roman Catholic and Lutheran theologians generally do not know what to do with Christ’s gifts and graces (for example, faith and hope).
However, the Puritan John Owen (as well as others) had an insightful way of explaining the relation of Christ’s two natures. To my knowledge, this had not been as clearly articulated by anyone before him. One of his chief concerns was to protect the integrity of Christ’s two natures (divine and human). In so doing, he made a rather bold contention that the only singular immediate act of the Son of God (the divine second person) on the human nature of Christ was the decision to take it into subsistence with himself in the incarnation.
Every other act upon Christ’s human nature was from the Holy Spirit. Christ performed his miracles through the power of the Holy Spirit, not immediately by his own divine power. In other words, the divine nature acted notimmediately by virtue of “the hypostatic union” (the joining of two natures in Christ’s singular person) but mediately by means of the Holy Spirit. The conventional way of understanding Christ’s miracles has typically been to argue that Christ performs miracles by virtue of his own divine nature. But on Owen’s (and others’) model, the Holy Spirit isactually the immediate author of Christ’s graces. This manner of understanding the relation of the Spirit to Christ’s human nature preserves his true humanness and answers a host of biblical questions that arise from a close reading of various texts.

He Took a Human Soul

Some Christians seem to imagine that Christ’s divine nature takes the place of his soul. This idea, though well–intentioned, is wrong. Christ was a perfect man with a rational soul as the immediate principle of his moral actions. In other words, Christ had a human self-consciousness. Some might say that the person of the Son is Christ’s self-consciousness, but as Reformed theologians argued, personality is not an act but the mode or identity of a thing. “Who is Jesus?” refers to his personhood. The answer: “He is the God-man” (which refers to his identity).
Importantly, Christ’s humanity, both body and soul, does not get lost in or “gobbled up” by his divinity. Because of this, Christ’s humanity needed the Holy Spirit in order to have communion with God. His prayers to God were never simply the prayers of a man, nor even the prayers of the God-man to the Father; but more specifically they were the prayers of the Son of God to the Father in the power of the Spirit. Never was a prayer uttered before God from the lips of Christ that did not have the Holy Spirit working powerfully upon his human nature to enable him to speak the words the Father had given him to speak. In this way, we aim to pray as our Lord prayed: in the Spirit.
Christ’s inseparable companion during his earthly ministry as a true man was the Holy Spirit. Therefore, at all of the major events in the life of Christ, the Holy Spirit took a prominent role. The Holy Spirit was the immediate, divine, efficient cause of the incarnation (Matthew 1:18,20; Luke 1:35). This was a fitting “beginning” for Christ since Isaiah spoke of the Messiah as one endowed with the Spirit (Isaiah 42:1; 61:1).
The New Testament confirms Isaiah’s testimony in several places, noting, for example, that Christ received the Spirit without measure (John 3:34). At Jesus’s baptism the Spirit descended upon him (Matthew 3:16); and the Spirit plays a significant role in leading Christ to and sustaining him before, during, and after his temptation (Luke 4:1, 14). In that same chapter Jesus reads fromIsaiah 61:1–2 (“the Spirit of the Lord is upon me”) and announces that he is the fulfillment of that prophecy (Luke 4:21). Christ performed miracles in the power of the Holy Spirit (Matthew 12:18;Acts 10:38). Hebrews 9:14 may be taken to mean that Christ offered himself up not by his own spirit but by the enabling of the Holy Spirit. Like his death, Christ’s resurrection is attributed to the Holy Spirit (Romans 8:11), and by it he “was declared to be the Son of God . . . according to the Spirit of holiness” (Romans 1:4; see also1 Timothy 3:16; 1 Peter 3:18).
Because the Spirit was Christ’s inseparable companion during his earthly ministry, there is little doubt that Christ called out (prayed) to his Father by the enabling of the Spirit, which would put an implicit christological emphasis uponRomans 8:26–27. The preponderance of references to the role of the Holy Spirit in the ministry of Christ finds its best explanation in the Reformed interpretative tradition.

He Humbled Himself

Given the basic christology above, Hugh Martin (1821–1885) argued that Jesus inevitably placed himself, therefore, in a position of acknowledged weakness and infirmity — of absolute dependence on God — a dependence to be exercised and expressed in the adorations and supplications of prayer. He was born of a woman, under the law — under the law of prayer, as of other ordinances and duties — the law by which a man can receive nothing except it be given him from heaven, and except the Lord be inquired of for it (Ezekiel 36:37).
Christ exercised, according to his human nature, faith, love, reverence, delight, and all the graces proper to a true human nature in the power of the Holy Spirit. Thus, he naturally would have desired to offer vocal requests and supplications to his Father in heaven. He also would have praised God with the knowledge he had of his Father. Additionally, he would have sought God out with a holy determination, making all other duties subservient to the duty of communion with God. In other words, true and proper humanity is realized only in communion with God.

Christ’s Gift to Us

What does this mean for us? Consider three truths, among others. First, the Spirit’s ministry to us comes from Christ (Acts 2:33). Just as Christ ministered to us on the cross, his heavenly exaltation continues his ministry whereby he pours out the Spirit upon us since he is now the exalted Lord of the Spirit. The Spirit, therefore, comes in his name (“the Spirit of Christ”).
Second, the Spirit makes us like Christ. What is the role of the Spirit who has been given to us from the hand of Christ? He takes the copy of Christ’s religious life in the Spirit and works those same affections and desires in us so that we are truly Christlike (Romans 8:29).
Finally, the Spirit glorifies Christ. The Spirit, who worked in and through Christ during his life on earth, now works in and through us. Just as the Spirit enabled Christ to bring glory to his Father, so now the Spirit enables us to glorify both the Son and the Father. In other words, a true understanding of the Holy Spirit’s work in believers begins and ends with the declaration that we are here on earth to glorify the Son and the Father by the power of the Spirit.
Jesus indeed has not left us as orphans (John 14:18). He has poured out on us and in us the very Spirit through whom he lived perfectly, died sacrificially, and rose victoriously.

Fill your mouth with Life Not Death.

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A lot is at stake in what we say today. “Death and life are in the power of the tongue” (Proverbs 18:21).
In literate societies, tongues include hands that write, type, paint, or sign.

The Power of the Tongue

People die because of something said. Tongues can be weapons of mass destruction, launching holocausts and wars. Tongues can also be the death of marriages, families, friendships, churches, careers, hopes, understanding, reputations, missionary efforts, and governments.
But people also live because of something said. The tongue can be “a tree of life” (Proverbs 15:4). Tongues reconcile peoples and make peace. “Blessed are the peacemakers” (Matthew 5:9). Tongues can make marriages sweet, families strong, and churches healthy. Tongues can give hope to the despairing, advance understanding, and spread the gospel.
So what will come out of your mouth today, death or life? “Sword thrusts” or “healing” (Proverbs 12:18)?

What Fills Your Heart?

It will all depend on what’s filling your heart. Jesus said, “Out of the abundance of the heart [the] mouth speaks” (Luke 6:45). A critical heart produces a critical tongue. A self-righteous heart produces a judgmental tongue. A bitter heart produces an acerbic tongue. An ungrateful heart produces a grumbling tongue.

“The words you speak will all depend on what’s filling your heart.”

But a loving heart produces a gracious tongue. A faithful heart produces a truthful tongue. A peaceful heart produces a reconciling tongue. A trusting heart produces an encouraging tongue.
So fill your heart with grace by soaking in your Bible. Soak in Matthew 5, or Romans 12, or 1 Corinthians 13, or Philippians 2. And be very careful taking in the words of death in the newspaper, the radio, the TV, or the blog.
And pray: “Set a guard, O Lord, over my mouth; keep watch over the door of my lips!” (Psalm 141:3).
The world is full of words of death. “The whole world lies in the power of the evil one” (1 John 5:19), who “was a murderer from the beginning . . . and the father of lies” (John 8:44). Let us not join him in his “restless evil” (James 3:8).
For “we are from God” (1 John 5:19), and we believe in his Son, Jesus, “the Word” (John 1:1), “the truth and the life” (John 14:6), and who alone has “the words of eternal life” (John 6:68). Let us join him in speaking these.

Today’s Words

Today, make your mouth “a fountain of life” (Proverbs 10:11). Be “slow to speak” in general (James 1:19). Encourage more than you critique. Seek opportunities to speak kind, tenderhearted words (Ephesians 4:32). Say something affectionate to a loved one at an unexpected time. Seek to only speak words that are “good for building up,” that “give grace to those who hear” (Ephesians 4:29).
Be a person whose mouth is full of life.
“And now I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up” (Acts 20:32).

The Power of words.

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The Power of Words
It’s been said that the eyes are the window to soul. I doubt it.
I don’t doubt for a moment, however, that the words we speak or write convey the inner workings of our minds and hearts. There is no better way to know a person than to listen to him or her speak, to know what they read, to understand whom they admire: if you know this, you know everything that is truly important to know about a person.
Words, spoken and written, not only indicate whether a person is educated, cultured, kind or venal, they also demonstrate if thoughts are ordered and cognition is intact or impaired. The choice of words and their arrangement are used by physicians and other health experts to evaluate emotional as well as organic pathologies.
Throughout history words have had as much power as the sword. Words shape ideas and give them form; our ideas shape our deeds and give them meaning. Over two hundred years ago Edmund Burke wrote that words are an expression of our passions and have more power than any other art form. He believed words are the most powerful force on earth because they communicate ideas more effectively than any other form of expression.
Words have always been the kindling and the continued energy that fuel our actions. Revolutions have begun with words, men have been stirred to battle by words, and dictators have manipulated whole countries by words, creating the vilest justifications for the annihilation of millions. Words give testimony and sway juries and send people to their deaths.
We understand what it means to “give our word” and pledge on our honor (maybe our very souls) to speak the truth. We use words to convey our patriotism to our country and, of course, we worship our God with words, whether spoken publicly or whispered in our hearts. Words convey love and build trust. They also shape character and tender hearts; certainly we know our words shape our children and if we are wise we choose them carefully. We know our words offend and that is why we sometimes bite our tongues. We choose them well when we interview for jobs. People have been soothed and comforted by words and cautioned to exercise the angels of their better natures. Words have the power to mend and heal.
Words are so powerful that the US Supreme Court has even weighed in on their restriction — perhaps nowhere as famously as in the case of Schenck v. US when Chief Justice Holmes emphatically stated that no one has a right to cry fire in a crowded theatre and cause panic.
Words are the most valued commodity of our species, the hallmark of our humanity, the singularly most distinct difference between man and animals. It is absolutely indisputable that words possess immeasurable power to shape individuals as well as history.
And now the very people who have used words to ridicule, distort, misguide, discredit, and defame — the very people who have openly and gleefully demonized others, spoken freely about assassination as a political tool, even attacked the children of this country’s public servants and suggested that they be destroyed to end a tainted lineage, now speciously claim that words are harmless, they have no consequence.
Words, these arrogant and shameful people (and their pathetic followers) claim, are meaningless. It is with great indignation that they purport there is absolutely no possible nexus between the deeds of others and their own spoken words. They ask us to abandon the proofs of history, the dictates of civil societies, and even the wisdom of our own grandparents and believe instead that we should not hold them accountable or call them to task.
Indeed. How curious. How convenient. How utterly cowardly.
How I am so not surprised….
Their disclaimers beg the obvious question “if words mean nothing, if words do not influence people, then why do these people speak to us at all? Why do they have rallies and radio and television shows if not to influence people?
If words mean nothing, then why the hell are they always talking or writing articles and books?

Peace in the world Begins with you.

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This may be the ‘prime directive’ of effective spiritual practice, social action, and peaceful living. Don’t let the behavior of others (who are actually an expression of our greater whole) destroy your inner peace. This is why the Dalai Lama meditates for several hours every day. It is why Mahatma Gandhi prayed and meditated daily.
For those of us who wish to help bring greater peace to the world, it’s important to stay balanced, mindful, calm and grounded. Especially in chaotic times like this, especially in the light of the tragic and terrible recent events in Orlando and elsewhere, we need to make our own inner peace a top priority.
Imagine if you saw a group of people drowning in a fast-moving river. If you swim out alone to try to help save them you will drown too. Better to stay on dry land, tie some ropes to trees and then throw them out to help the others. If we did go in, it would be wise to have friends standing on dry land and to tie a rope around ourselves before entering the dangerous waters.
Tai-Chi-Park-2

We Are the Seeds of the Future

Every time we turn on the news we see violence, suffering, and injustice happening on our planet. Sometimes we are silent, sometimes we speak out and take action.
But how we act and what we say is always guided by our thoughts and feelings, and that (our own state of mind) is the one area of the world that we each have the most influence over; the most responsibility for. Only by first “being the change” as Gandhi put it –being peaceful, being loving and calm –can we bring greater peace, love, and wisdom to the world around us.
The human family is going through some very chaotic times now, but the problems we see around us are not new. For over two thousand years the dominant paradigm of the most powerful civilizations has been one of materialism, conquest, greed, militarism, war, injustice, inequality, violence, and dualistic thinking.
That paradigm is collapsing now, mindsets are shifting. We can all be a part of something new that is more in tune with the ways of Nature, more balanced, holistic, compassionate, creative, loving and wise.
peace-begins-with-you_meditating-rooftopPeace in the World starts inside.
We are the seeds of the future, but it’s up to each of us to tend and care for our own inner garden first. Then, when we try to help and guide those around us we will be stronger, calmer, more loving and effective. We will be able to lead others into Peace, rather than getting drawn into their conflict and the endless cycle of action and reaction that only leads to more and more violence.
There is increasing evidence to suggest that being peaceful, for example through yoga, tai chi or focused meditation, can have a direct and measurable impact on the world.
Praying, meditation and other peaceful spiritual practices help us wake up to the fact that the unity of the human family with this Creative Universe that has brought us into being is not a metaphor, but the actual underlying reality which conflicts ignore and hatred obscures.
How we respond to terrible incidents, like Orlando, matters. It matters because we have an opportunity to break the cycles of violence, fear, and hatred- to help one another to wake up. By keeping our hearts and minds open we model how not to walk blindly down paths that lead towards only more hate and revenge.
Be the peace you want to see in the world. It starts within the hearts of each of us and spreads out from there.