Forgotten God

Okay so I told you how I am starting the Francis Chan bible study, Forgotten God, right? Also, real quick someone remind me do you italicize book titles or underline them?! Ugh couldn't they just stick to either or?! Well I wanted to share just a bit of chapter one that I thought was very powerful. Keep in mind the whole premise of this book is how we neglect the Holy Spirit. Which is just crazy because when Jesus died and went to be with God in Heaven he clearly gave us something so powerful and useful.





"And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever- 17. the Spirit of truth. The World cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. 18. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. 19. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. 20. On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you."





John 14:16-20 (NIV)





Upon reading that verse I can't help but agree with Chan on this one, in the sense that my beliefs, especially about the Holy Spirit are shaped more from my experiences as a "normal" christian who has always been fed by great leaders instead of shaping my beliefs by reading the scripture and taking it to heart on my own. If I took that scripture to heart, then why would I ever feel like I am alone in this world? Why would I ever want to do anything else but praise him and give him glory? How wonderful! We get to see God every second of our lives because HE lives in us. It is a lot to think about really.





Jesus also reminded the disciples that, "It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you." (John 16:7 NIV). Obviously this "Counselor," A.K.A The Holy Spirit is so powerful and important that Jesus had to go back and be with his father in Heaven for us to obtain this Counselor, Advocate, Comforter, or Helper as other versions describe the Holy Spirit.





A lot to chew on- but here are some definite highlighting material I discovered in this chapter.





Francis Chan wrote: "We don't expect the Holy Spirit to act."





"...many of us are fairly capable of living rather successfully (according to the world's standards) without any strength from the Holy Spirit."





"Yet when those outside of the church see no difference in our lives, they begin to question our integrity, our sanity, or even worse, or God. And can you blame them?"





"Have you ever thought about the significance of having "another" Counselor who is 'just like Christ?





Stay with me because my favorite part of this chapter was a beautiful analogy of a caterpillar. Funny how I am a sucker for any sort of animal comparison ;)





Francis Chan asks the question, "Have you ever wondered what caterpillars think about?" I certainly don't. He goes on to talk about how for a caterpillar their whole life as they know it consists of crawling around on the dirt and then one day they take a nap and they wake up to become a beautiful flying butterfly. Then he talks about that as believers we should act in this way about the gift of the holy spirit. Francis says, "We should be stunned in disbelief over becoming a "new creation" with the Spirit living in us." We can and should live differently knowing that the Holy Spirit is within us. I will leave you with this life altering sentence from Chan.





"I don't want to keep crawling when I have the ability to fly."





Love you all and praying you seek out this great gift God has left for us,





Karen