January 8, 2021

The Gift My Father Promised

January 8, 2021

DAILY READING

Acts 1:1-5

[Psalm 40:1-11]

FIELD NOTES

“When we attribute the Christian life from beginning to end to the Holy Spirit, we are indexing our lives to a divine personal agent who is capable of speaking, confronting, comforting, inspiring, encouraging, empowering, purifying, and the like. Moreover, in referring to the Holy Spirit, we speak of a divine agent who has a personal name that we can use to invite God to be present in worship, to ask God to guide us and to give us strength, and so on. Finally, there is the Holy Spirit’s ability to give extraordinary gifts and skills such as prophecy or tongues. By comparison with all of this, the tendency to speak generically about grace rather than robustly about the Holy Spirit amounts to a regrettable domestication of our theological vocabulary, not to mention of our lives.

– “Charles Wesley’s Doctrine of the Holy Spirit”; Asbury Journal, Jason Vickers

QUESTIONS FOR THE FIELD

  • In what ways am I inviting the Holy Spirit to work in my life?
  • What gifts from the Spirit do I see present in my life?

FAMILY FIELD TALK

  • What are the fruit of the Spirit, and which ones do you have?

PRAYER GUIDE

Holy Spirit, help us to see you working in our lives, and help us seek your help in loving more deeply and following the teachings of Christ more closely.  Amen.