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The Holy Spirit – Imparted as a Whole

Dan Sullivan · March 2, 2017 ·

I just started reading “The Holy Spirit in Action” by Sheed and some of it is already blowing my mind. Some of it is just pondering the implications of God having and being a spirit. I’ll post the quote from the book, which is kind of heady and out there, then my interpretation which might be clearer or might be even more out there.

In a spirit – God, our soul – there is no division of parts as in matter. Therefore there is no dispersion of powers, but total concentration of being and of powers in one single act of being. the body has parts, each with its own function, which only it can perform. But all the things the should does are done by the whole soul, for there is no element in the soul which is not the whole of it. It knows, loves, hates, wants, chooses, refuses to choose, decides, animates a body. And one single soul does each of these things with the whole of itself.

Two things emerge from spirit’s absence of parts – it does not occupy space; it is everlasting.

Space is emptiness. A being which has parts can spread them in it! Even the minutest material thing has parts – the top is not the bottom, one end is not the other. But this is not so of the soul, not so of God: They have no parts to spread. They are not in space.

What of permanence? A being with parts can be taken apart; therefore it can always become something else by union with parts taken from some other source. But a spirit having no parts can not be taken apart; it has no parts to be taken from it. It is the whole of itself.

 What he is saying here is that a spirit isn’t something that has distinct parts like a person. I have an arm and a nose, they are distinguishable parts that do different things. They also take up different spaces. If I reach for a hammer with my nose, it can’t do what my arm can do. If I dip my arm into a barrel of dandelions, it won’t sneeze. That part isn’t affected by pollen in the same way as my nose is.

That means that wherever the Holy Spirit is, there isn’t a part of it there that is different than another part. ALL OF GOD’S SPIRIT is there. God doesn’t put a little bit customized for Dan Sullivan into Dan Sullivan. All of God’s glorious self, is put, by the power of the Holy Spirit, into Dan Sullivan. The other wild part about this is that since the Holy Spirit can’t be cut up into parts, it can’t be combined with things and changed. Everything that exists in mass can be altered somehow like Lego blocks being switched out. The Holy Spirit isn’t and can’t. Therefore, the full and holy and complete spirit of God doesn’t get changed when He enters into someone. The person is what does the changing.

One more bit then we’ll give it a rest for the day. God’s unchanging, fully full and complete spirit is in all who believe in Him (Ephesians 1:13-14). Think about the implications of that. There is no training or urging or laboring as far as getting God to do something more because He has already filled you, Christian, with all the fullness of Himself. You have a lot more access to God than you realize, so pray today that we’d realize that!

Bible Study, Bookstore baptism, christian life, discipleship, Ephesians, faith, Holy Spirit

Jim Collins – WCAGLS 2015 Second Talk

Dan Sullivan · August 6, 2015 ·

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Bookstore, Featured, Handwritten Blog business, Jim Collins, notes, WCAGLS

Screwtape in Danger

Dan Sullivan · May 5, 2015 ·

I’m reading the Screwtape Letters, which has to be, by far, my favorite book of all. Screwtape is writing to his nephew, a junior demon that has just begun the job of tempting a human and leading him (hopefully for Wormwood) to Hell.

Screwtape is talking in this section about how ‘The Enemy’ (which of course is the Lord) will allow suffering into a person’s life so that they will follow the Lord more deeply and truly.

“Do not be decieved, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger, than when a human, no longer desiring, but intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys. “

“Our cause is never more in danger” he says. He is, of course, talking about Jesus dying on the cross, which was the ultimate show of obedience to God.

Bookstore, Short Quotes books, cross, Jesus, Joel Osteen, obedience, Screwtape

Christ's Deposit and Suffering

Dan Sullivan · March 27, 2014 ·

“Somewhere deep down within you, everything that Christ has ever gone through is already deposited in you. Some of that which is His experience He desires that you also experience. He has a yoke to place around your neck. It is an easy yoke; that is a guarantee, for He has already gained the strength to bear that yoke.”

Gene Edwards, The Inward Journey, p. 68

This book goes deep fast, and it taking me on a pretty good path. It is out of print, so I’m including a link to Amazon.

Bookstore, Short Quotes cross, growth, Jesus, maturity, pain, suffering

Adventure and Safety in the Church

Dan Sullivan · February 15, 2014 ·

I’m still taking a long, slow read through The Forgotten Ways by Alan Hirsch. It is really good. This week I’ve had several conversations about community, Christian community, koinonia, and church. This quote sounded really good for today as we go out to the YMCA Pancake Days, then play with neighborhood kids at boys group with the People of Praise (the Christian community we are a part of)

“Risk is the price we pay for genuine adventure, and it was Alfred North Whitehead who once remarked that without adventure, civilization is in full decay. The same is equally true for the church. And once again, it is largely because we have structured community in isolation from any real engagement with the world. ” – p.231

Bookstore, Short Quotes church, community, evangelism, Matthew 28, mission, outreach, peace

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