Blow, Spirit, Blow…!

This is a great word from one of my Facebook friends that everyone in spiritual leadership would benefit from reading! Let’s “set our sails,” embrace the sovereignty of the Spirit underscored by our Lord Jesus in His words to Nicodemus in John 3:8, and enjoy the journey into unknown future crafted by an all-knowing God!!

Getting ready to return home today, from an unanticipated ministry trip that required an unanticipated flight booking, resulting in an unanticipated harvest that we could not have foreseen or planned. The wind blows where it wills. Holy Spirit directed and dependent ministry is the only “new normal” that matters. God spoke a stretching word to Lenora and I in February, before all this chaos exploded globally: “be ready to shift into a ministry pattern that looks much more like that modeled by Corrie ten Boom; long range planning for “big” events will not be the priority of the coming season. Go, wherever the Wind may blow”Who knew then it would come so suddenly and so soon. For all my friends in ministry, we were called and created to be Spirit led and Spirit driven; utterly reliant on His voice; yoked to His sudden command. But this is not easy for our highly controlled and efficiently managed Western paradigms. We all need grace for the paradigm shift that is upon us. “The wind blows where it wills; you cannot tell where it comes from and where it is going; So it is with everyone born of the Spirit”You have not been grounded. The wind is blowing. Catch His currents, and experience the harvest and the miracles He is now releasing, neither of which can be contained by the wineskins of our suddenly irrelevant comfort zones. Breath of God…breathe on us. Breath of God…breathe on me

R. K. Brake at https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1972572066207136&id=100003630858208

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Spiritual Encounter As A Path to Truth

Going through some of my past papers, I came across this paragraph from one of the essays I wrote during my Master’s degree at the University of Birmingham, U.K. I believe this now more than ever concerning those of us who are Holy Spirit-friendly Christians:

Pentecostal theology is inherently pragmatic, focused above all else upon fostering, understanding, and commending a personal, transformative encounter between the individual and Almighty God through the agency and power of the Holy Spirit that results in a life of fruitful activity. In contrast to the Westminster Catechism which answers the vital question, “What is the chief end of man?” by replying, “To glorify God and enjoy Him forever,” a full-throated Pentecostal response to the same query might be, “To encounter God and serve Him forever.” While human beings in some instances are of course prompted to seek the Lord or to dedicate their lives to furthering His purposes on the earth as a result of learning some particular truth or truths about Him, Pentecostals believe the human journey towards understanding and serving God ideally begins in a personal, supernatural encounter with Jesus by means of Holy Spirit baptism. In other words, while many non-Pentecostals tend to believe right gnosis is the surest path to right praxis, most Pentecostals intuitively sense that authentic spiritual experience provides the best fuel to power any quest for spiritual truth.[1]

[1] Brand, Mark. “Spirit Baptism – Historical Distinctive or Essential Doctrine?”, University of Birmingham, 2018.

Define Church (Act 1-2) – The Fullness of the Spirit

In this livestream recording from Antioch Church in the heart of downtown Dallas, Texas, I talk about the infilling of the Holy Spirit in a series of messages dealing with the Book of Acts. Click here to listen online or subscribe via Spotify or iTunes.

Defining Church – The Book of Acts

I began a new sermon series yesterday dealing with the New Testament Book of Acts. In this introduction, I highlighted the single, most common mistake people make when reading and/or interpreting this part of the New Testament. This is a clip from our livestream from our Antioch Church campus in the heart of downtown Dallas, Texas. If you would like to watch the service in its entirety, including our worship and prayer, click on the following link instead: https://youtu.be/34NUM9n6cIo.

The Gracious Gift of God’s Spirit

Came across this while preparing to preach from John 14:

“Jesus’ first disciples were not superdisciples deserving the gift of the Spirit because of their extraordinary faith and obedience. They didn’t understand things; their thoughts were often the thoughts of mere humans, not the thoughts of God. At the time of Jesus’ greatest need, they forsook him and fled, and Peter even denied that he knew Jesus at all. But in contrast to those of the world, who did not love and obey Jesus, they did love him and in their own imperfect way they did obey him. It was to disciples like these Jesus promised the Counsellor.”

Colin G. Kruse, John: An Introduction and Commentary, vol. 4, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 300–301.