Author: Danny Panter

Re:Verse passage – 1 Thessalonians 1:2-6 (day six)

Have you considered, what in your life requires faith? Choosing one thing over another because its future reward is greater than the immediate promise of the other?

Because of persecution, the Thessalonians had to decide if this Gospel was true and worth it. Was it worth giving up safety and security, for a future promise? Was it worth putting their family through almost certain hardship, maybe even death? At any moment, with a word, they could have chosen safety over the promises of the Gospel. But they didn’t because their assurance and joy in the future promises of the Gospel were greater than the temporary promise of safety in abandoning the Gospel. Paul attributes this kind of faith and assurance to the Holy Spirit.

I have never had to ask myself those kinds of questions. Never.

Do you have the kind of faith that is super-powered by joy in the Gospel? Would it sustain you through suffering that you could otherwise avoid?

Even though I have never faced persecution for following Jesus, would Paul describe my faith in the same way? I sure hope so. While I don’t share in their persecution, I do share in the Holy Spirit. My faith can muster, because the power of the Spirit is the same in me, as it was in the Thessalonians in the first century.

Re:Verse passage – Ephesians 5:18-19 (day six)

This is no surprise, the Holy Spirit’s end game is our transformation into the likeness of Jesus, but often that is not what we think of when reading Paul’s words, “be filled by the Holy Spirit.”

Instead of transformation, we tend to think possession; an intermittent movement of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer. While He may do that, and often does, I don’t believe that is what Paul means at all. Paul is alluding to a way of life, the steady drinking from the fountain of God’s revelation through the Holy Spirit that a rewires our way of life.

Being filled with the Holy Spirit is hearing and following the Word of God.

Re:Verse passage – Ephesians 4:25-32 (day six)

And do not bring sorrow to God’s Holy Spirit...Ephesians 4:30

We don’t often think of the Holy Spirit in personal terms, like having sorrow or grief, and yet clearly he does. In fact, according to this verse we can be responsible for His sorrow when we neglect our new heritage as children of God.

The Holy Spirit is not a force, or a particular feeling; He’s not goosebumps, or overwhelming emotion. He is a person. If you want to hear his voice, read the Bible. If you want to follow his leadership and bear His fruit, obey what He has written.

Don’t neglect what the Holy Spirit has clearly revealed to us in pursuit of a mystical experience that may be more of your own making than His.

I promise, He will take it personally.

Re:Verse passage – Ephesians 1:13-14 (day six)

Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. Ephesians 1:4

In the spring of 2015 I stood under a canopy of stars in the heart of Ethiopia. There were no other lights other than those twinkling back at me. It is likely, growing up in Africa, I had seen similar night skies, but I couldn’t remember. It was as if I was seeing them for the very first time.

Vast. Beautiful. Incomprehensible.

There wasn’t a vacant spot, without a star beaming in it. And like a glistening vail, the Milky Way appeared to hold stars in their place.

In those moments I felt so small against the back drop of the immeasurable. Stars that would swallow our own like a whale swallowing a speck of plankton. Distances measured in billions of years.

I didn’t just feel small. I was in awe. Enraptured. Seeing, but capturing only an infinitesimal fraction of the universe’s truest nature.

I imagine, even in eternity, that is how we will feel gazing into the full scope of God’s sovereignty.

Re:Verse passage – Romans 14:17-19 (day six)

The kingdom of God is not a matter of what we eat or drink… Romans 14:17

“I’m more concerned with what comes out of your mouth than what you put in your mouth.”-Jesus, Matthew 15:10-11 (my own paraphrase)

We can make such ado out of the most insignificant things (what we wear, eat, drink…); building our own little kingdoms around matters that have very little to do with God’s. As lord’s of our own kingdoms, we tend to pass judgment rather than build alliances. We dig moats and draw bridges, rather than avenues for peace.

One is the work of the flesh…the other of the Spirit.

Pursue the latter, abandon the former.

Re:Verse passage – Romans 8:26-27 (day six)

…the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God’s own will. Romans 8:27

This is a Trinitarian text. It captures the heart and mystery of the union of the Father, Son, and the Spirit…harmony. James, the brother of Jesus, wrote, “you don’t have because you don’t ask, and when you do, you ask with the wrong motives.” That’s the opposite of harmony; the Spirit never asks with the wrong motives, only ones in perfect alignment with the Father’s will.

Listen, when the Spirit pleads for us, the Father’s answer is always, always,

“Yes…my will be done.”

Why? Because of Trinitarian harmony. In all  life’s bumps and bruises this side of eternity,

our weaknesses (vs. 26), or what we suffer now (vs. 18), 

the Spirit asks and acts to fulfill the Father’s will, His Son-exalting, Jesus-conforming will.

Can’t think of a greater guarantee than that. I can hold on to that, even when I can’t see or feel what God is doing,

especially when life hurts the most. Harmony.

Re:Verse passage – Romans 8:5-11 (day six)

“I am the way, the truth, and the life…”-Jesus

New faith inaugurates a new journey, a new way. Just like Jesus, we are led by the Spirit of life into the desert of the world. With new ways of beholding and rejoicing in truth, and loving, and living, a new identity emerges, or should I say is realized.

Up until the moment Jesus returns, when even our bodies are made new and glorious in freedom, that’s our journey this side of eternity. Walking, even running at times, but not on our own, the Spirit seals, and prompts, and gifts; shaping new thoughts, rejoicing in new things, fulfilling new purpose.

We are the children of God, clothed in the very righteousness of Jesus, that’s for certain, but with every Spirit led step and thought, the more of His righteousness we will actually see take shape.

That’s journey; that’s the way. By the Spirit, let’s walk in it.

Re:Verse passage – Romans 8:1-4 (day six)

The law turned us into rebels, or rather the power of sin did, taking advantage of the law. The law made it personal. No longer were we committing moral wrongs arbitrarily, we were willfully sinning against a personal and holy God. So overrun by the power of sin, we were as good as dead; walking corpses.

And the law could do nothing about it. Left to the law, shackled by the power of sin, we are nothing but dead rebels.

So, God did what the law could not do, He sent His own Son.

“I am the resurrection and the life,” he said.

“Come out of that grave,” he said.

And the dead rebels breathed and rejoiced.

Re:Verse passage – Acts 1:8 (day six)  

We are superhuman. More than we were, decrypted, left-for-dead; Jesus came just at the right time, rescuing us from our god-loathing, self-righteous, self-indulgent ways. His holy-Father loving, righteous living became our own when he crushed sin’s hold, and gave us His life instead. So that we might become the righteousness of God.

It wasn’t enough for us to look the part, so He made us superhuman; He put the Holy Spirit in us. The very same that hovered over the deep in creation. Or gave Samson his strength. Or Isaiah his words to speak. And through and through the Spirit empowers us to live and love like the Son. So, when He commands us to “Go, fill the earth with my glory; be my witnesses,” it is as good as done.

Superhuman.