Shifting Culture
Shifting Culture
Ep. 310 Margaret Feinberg - Discovering the Holy Spirit from Genesis to Today
What comes to mind when you hear “Holy Spirit”? For some of us, it’s confusion, baggage, or maybe just silence. We’ve either over-sensationalized it or under-taught it. But what if we’ve missed the depth and presence of the Spirit because we’ve skipped the beginning of the story? In this conversation, I talk with Margaret Feinberg about rediscovering the Holy Spirit - not just in Acts 2, but from the very beginning, hovering over the chaos in Genesis. Margaret invites us to see the Spirit not as some vague force that shows up only in ecstatic moments, but as a deeply personal, present, creative force that’s always been at work - in beauty, in community, in dreams, in discernment, in the ordinary and the extraordinary. We talk about how the Spirit empowers us for creativity, nudges us toward each other, and invites us to live attentive lives. We tell stories of the Spirit’s work across cultures and in everyday moments. So join us as we discover that the Holy Spirit is closer than air we breathe.
Margaret Feinberg, one of America’s most beloved Bible teachers, speaks at churches and conferences and hosts the popular podcast The Joycast. Her books and Bible studies, including Taste and See and More Power to You, have sold more than one million copies and received critical acclaim and national media coverage from the Associated Press, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and more. She was named by Christianity Today as one of fifty women most shaping culture and the church today. Margaret savors life with her husband, Leif, and their superpup, Zoom.
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I want to I want to obey to those quick promptings of the Spirit that say, Go, respond, apologize, give, make it right. That's where the fruit and the joy and the righteousness, the peace and the delight is you.
Joshua Johnson:Joshua, hello and welcome to the shifting culture podcast in which we have conversations about the culture we create and the impact we can make. We long to see the body of Christ look like Jesus. I'm your host. Joshua Johnson, what comes to mind when you hear Holy Spirit? Well, for some of us, it's confusion or baggage or maybe just silence. We've either over sensationalized it or under taught it. But what if we've missed the depth and presence of the Spirit because we've skipped the beginning of the story? In this conversation, I talked with Margaret Feinberg about rediscovering the Holy Spirit, not just in Acts two, but from the very beginning, hovering over the chaos in Genesis. Margaret invites us to see the Spirit not as some vague force that shows up only in ecstatic moments, but as a deeply personal, present, creative force that's always been at work in beauty, in community, in dreams and discernment in the ordinary and the extraordinary. We talk about how the Spirit empowers us for creativity, nudges us toward each other and invites us to live attentive lives. We tell stories of the Spirit's work across cultures and in everyday moments. So join us as we discover that the Holy Spirit is closer than the air we breathe. Here is my conversation with Margaret Feinberg. Margaret, welcome to shifting culture. Really excited to have you on thanks for joining me. What a delight to be with you today. I think we're going to have a great conversation around Holy Spirit. I think Holy Spirit is important, often misunderstood. Why this now? Why a book on the Holy Spirit? It's a
Margaret Feinberg:great question. I've been writing for a number of years, and it was actually agreed to write this back in 2019 when we all had good ideas,
Joshua Johnson:yes, and then God said, oh, let's shut it all down for a bit.
Margaret Feinberg:Let's just have a little things go a little sideways in every direction. And and so I've really struggled. I knew I wanted to write a book on Holy Spirit, but it's, it's like, I want to write a book on
Unknown:God, you're like, it's so big.
Margaret Feinberg:And so I'm actually about four and a half years late turning it in. Studied, read so much. And finally, I was drawn through a professor in Texas, Jack Levison, through his books and his writing. I just saw the insight to take a fresh angle and look at Holy Spirit in the Old Testament is growing up in a multiplicity of churches. I you know, an Episcopal Church. It was the stained glass and the Methodist Church. It was, you know, God's present with us, and Presbyterian Church. It was committees. I love you Presbyterians. That was a joke, you know, but, but, like, I went to all kinds of different, you know, in the Southern Baptist we attended, it was God's work, you know. And so everybody kind of had their own look at it. And I as even as a kid, was like, I, I'm I'm a little confused, and I don't understand. And and when I would ask about Holy Spirit, so often people would go, well, read Acts two, you know, read the book of Acts in and I would read it, and it's amazing and it's beautiful, and at the same time I'm like, my life doesn't look like that. And I think part of that, and what I discovered on the several year journey of just researching and studying and pursuing Holy Spirit is that Acts two and Pentecost, it doesn't make sense apart from the Old Testament. As so many Jesus followers do, they send people to the New Testament and in Acts two to understand the Holy Spirit. But that's like showing up on the wedding date and never even having the opportunity to like date, get to know court, understand. And so without the Old Testament, it does seem weird and strange, but once we start to look the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament, we arrive at Acts two, and we go, of course it would happen this way.
Joshua Johnson:I know a lot of people will say that really, Holy Spirit wasn't doing much at all in the Old Testament, that there was just God the Father, he was interacting with people. And then, you know, Jesus came along, and then Jesus gave that gift to the Holy Spirit to us, and he's going to come later. So let's unpack the Holy Spirit. The Old Testament. Say Holy Spirit has always been around. It's part of the Trinity, part of the Godhead, from the very beginning. And so at the very beginning, even in Genesis, the creation, where do we see the spirit? Where we see the Holy
Margaret Feinberg:Spirit? Yeah, if I can address something before we jump there, I think what you're you're getting to in this main idea is this idea that that so many of us, and myself included, like I miss the prominence of Holy Spirit in the Old Testament. And part of that is a matter of the Hebrew language. And you know, the word Ruach is for the word spirit. It can be translated breath, it can be translated air, it can be translated wind. And so throughout the Old Testament, translators had to make decisions at times which to translate it as. So if you actually look for the word Ruch in the Old Testament, you'll find it over 400 times, almost 500 times, including in the Aramaic text and others. But because of the translation, sometimes I feel like we miss it, or we miss the opportunity to recognize that the Spirit of the Living God was present and was there. And you are right. It leads us right from the very start in Genesis. I've got my old, beat up crackly Bible here, but you know, in the beginning, God created Barat in Hebrew the heavens and the earth, and the earth was formless and void. It was Tohu, wa vohu. It was that dark, abysmal deep that was representative of chaos, uncertainty and the unknown. And it says in the Spirit of God, the Ruch Elohim was hovering over the surface of the waters and man so rich, you think Holy Spirit could have shown up at any point. I mean, sure he would show up on the happy, clappy day. He would show up on the miraculous day, and he the the curtain of time is pulled back, and Holy Spirit steps on the center stage amid uncertainty and chaos and the unknown. Anybody feeling any of that right now? And so we are reminded from the opening, the Spirit of the Living God is there and present. We know the mentions of we in the creation story of Jesus. And so right from that beginning of Genesis and creation, we're getting that Trinitarian, that beautiful Father Son and Spirit, and that insight into how they interact and are constantly present, and while one may take the lead, the others are always there. Does
Joshua Johnson:Holy Spirit show up in times of chaos? Is Holy Spirit there, particularly in chaotic times, in times where there is void and darkness, or is this not entirely representative of a particular thing that Holy Spirit likes to do and show up in the world? I would
Margaret Feinberg:probably argue that it is one way. It is not the whole way, but definitely it is a way Holy Spirit has done it, and I've seen that, and I've also heard stories and personal lives. You know, we can have all the academic and the head knowledge of Holy Spirit, but there are just things that Holy Spirit shows up. And I'm not sure if Holy Spirit shows up more theologically, I don't know. I'd argue that, because the spirit is everywhere present, we can, we can go down that way, but, but that there is a, there's a shift in our posture that I believe makes us more attentive. So a friend of mine lost her husband after 42 years, faced her first Mother's Day alone, and it was brutal, and she's sitting in the empty house looking out the window, and she watches as a white dove comes and lands on her front window and perches there. She'd been in this house for 30 years and never seen a white dove, and that white dove stayed there all day. The woman's thinking, Am I really think seeing this? So she calls her neighbor and is like, do you see the white dove too? And the neighbor's like, yeah, yeah, it's really there. And that dove stays throughout the night until the next morning. And in the midst of the loss and the grief, she prays, and she says, Lord Jesus, why? Why would you send a white dove to me on on my first Mother's Day as a widow? And she sends the Holy Spirit just speak in her heart that the Lord was saying, you know, I have sent my very best, a white dove, Holy Spirit to remind you that I am always with you and I will never leave you. Now, that is an experiential reality. I know that is not in the biblical text, but I would argue that we see it in the biblical text, in Genesis and so often even in the dismay, in the confusion in Acts, one, you know, the disciples are gathered. Persecution is erupting, the the Savior has died and risen, and is confusing, and they're winning something. They're not quite sure what it is. And it is uncertainty, it is chaos, it is the unknown, and Holy Spirit shows up. So I think, I think there's a pattern there that we can lean into Yeah,
Joshua Johnson:and I think we could, we could see those experiences over and over, and we could look at it through the biblical text. We could see the Holy Spirit shows up in those times. I want to step back just a little with people's expectations of the Holy Spirit, and then to get into what, what does it actually say? What do we see in the Old Testament. So some expectations, if you are charismatic, that there are lots of incredibly fantastical gifts of all of these things, of healing, of, you know, tongues, lots, lots of things that it feels like the spirit is showing off. I grew up as. Family of God. We we see a lot of charismatic gifts, right? And then I went into a Baptist church in high school, and they said, well, the Holy Spirit doesn't do anything anymore like so they said they like the Holy Spirit will live inside of you and will give you some guidance. But we don't see any gifts of the Spirit anymore. And so there's all sorts of confusion around the Holy Spirit, what the Holy Spirit is doing and how the Holy Spirit is showing up, as we see from the beginning in the Old Testament all the way through, what are some of the common themes of what the Holy Spirit is doing and who the Holy Spirit is. So that we can say, Okay, right now, let's just clear away everything we think we know Holy Spirit, and then just let's look what is the Holy Spirit doing? Who is the Holy Spirit? Oh, I'm so
Margaret Feinberg:glad I grabbed my Bible. This is so fun. I love all this nerdy stuff. Okay? I think one that is often overlooked, but I just think is the coolest thing ever is in Exodus 31 verse one, and it says, I'm just going to read for a minute. Then the Lord said to Moses, See, I have chosen Bezalel, son of URI, the son of her, of the tribe of Judah, and I have filled him with the Spirit of God. So we have this charismatic like, you can't get filled with the Holy Spirit until I'm like, what about this guy? Like, like all of our theology, like all of our biblical constructs about Holy Spirit work really good, as long as you don't read the Bible too close. Just wanna throw that out there. Now I'm gonna be fired from the universe. But cool, cool. But he's filled him with the Spirit of God, with wisdom, with understanding, with knowledge, and with all kinds of skill to make artistic designs. And of course, there's the skills of gold and silver and bronze, to cut and set stones, to work and engage in all kinds of crafts. And it's worth knowing that it doesn't say I am going to fill Bezalel, or I just filled Bezalel with the Spirit of God. Rather, I have filled him, which implies the Spirit of the Living God had been working in Bezalel long before the command through Moses to build the tabernacle had ever come, which I think suggests, and I know it's not in the text, but that the spirit had been presenting him bezel Bezalel, whose name means in the Shadow of God. And I love God's play on words with opportunities to learn and grow and practice and even make mistakes long before he ever made his first creative work for the tabernacle. And I think this teaches us a couple of things. If you read on the story and the work of the Spirit, and then a holy AB comes alongside and their gifts, if you look in the text, which is super nerdy out, are actually different, like, like a holy AB loves bronze as stone and and and, or Bezalel does, but a holy AB loves the soft more, the fabrics and the fine arts and how these work together, and the Spirit uses those together as well as giving them the ability to teach an entire, you know, group of artisans. And so you're seeing this pouring out of the spirit, the provision of the Spirit in these incredible creative lives. And I think one of the things that that challenges and equips us to do is that recognizing that just as Holy Spirit, you know, filled and used them in that what they made would make a difference, that Holy Spirit can do the same to us and with us. There are times when I sit down to write and all I can describe is it's like I feel the Holy hum of God's presence. I guess it may be akin to what the character in ERIC Liddell said in the chariots of fire movie. You know, when I when I run, I feel God's pleasure in my hunch is for those who are listening, who are pastors, who are leaders, who are researchers, who work at nonprofits, who are there are moments that you're doing that thing, you are making something, whether it's a blueprint or a business plan or a sermon, and you feel that sense of the holy home of God's presence. I believe that is a recognition we have. You know, the opportunity to make that Holy Spirit is with us. He is, he is working through us, in us, and it is a privilege and a joy to participate in that work. So
Joshua Johnson:what does that interplay, then, with us and the Holy Spirit in the mode of creation? What does that look like? How does it like? How do we experience that? How do we know like to get some discernment through the spirit of what to do and how to create and and what is us? What is the spirits, and how does it merge?
Margaret Feinberg:Yeah, that's a great question. I definitely think part of it is a mystery. Let's just acknowledge that. But I also think there is this invitation for all of us to say in whatever we are making, whatever that creative or endeavor is, we can change the posture of our lives by. It by saying, Holy Spirit, I invite you into this space is the Holy Spirit. People get mad because you're like, we can't invite Holy Spirit where Holy Spirit already is. Okay, little Brainiac, I understand all the theological gymnastics there, but the bottom line is, you like to be invited, and I like to be invited, even if it even our family's throwing a party, we still want to be invited, even if it's right, it just, it's just, and so the invitation isn't denying that he's not already, it's, it's that sense of saying I want to be attuned to you. Would you come and do something in and through this that I cannot do on my own? Would you empower? Would you spark creativity? There's a wonderful Psalm that that can be used as a prayer that that you know that God would establish the work of our hands, in other words, give it a permanence and a meaning that it would not have if we simply did it on our own. And so I think creativity is an invitation to say, Holy Spirit, would you, would you? Would you establish the work of my hands, are hands together, that whatever is created here will have a lasting meaning beyond anything I could do on my own.
Joshua Johnson:Yeah, and I love the that work of the spirits in Exodus 31 as it fills for the tabernacle to create something beautiful, they're creating something beautiful for people in the desert, where they're in the midst of ugliness and dirt and difficulty and wandering, and they get beauty. It's pretty substantial, I think, and pretty amazing that the Holy Spirit would give us some some beauty when we desperately need it. And that was a a gift to us, that we get to see that beauty and
Margaret Feinberg:to create that sense of, you know, it's also, you know, that constant foreshadowing of the forgiveness of Christ that is to come through the atonement. And so it wasn't just for them, there. It was for us now. I mean, it's just this ongoing again, with that permanence and that meaning that it would not have on its own if we were like, I'm gonna build a box for God on my own, you know?
Joshua Johnson:So we have some creativity. Spirit is there in the midst of creativity and beauty and art, do we see in the Old Testament the spirits doing things like say, what happens in Acts when in Macedonia, Paul is like, Hey, I'm gonna go one way, the Spirit says, No, go this way. Is the Spirit speaking and showing up in maybe in dreams, and it's helping to unveil some discernment for people. Yeah, I
Margaret Feinberg:think one of the classic go to examples is Joseph, you know, and here is a man. And what's fascinating is, if you actually look at the text, it never says that God sent Joseph the dreams. Now it's clear to most of us who read, the gift of dream interpretation, and probably the dreams were divine dreams. They came from God. They were sourced by in and of all the people that you know, it's Pharaoh who recognizes, you know, in whom is the Spirit of God. You know. So, so we have someone who doesn't know God, confessing the reality of God because of these gifts of dream interpretation, I think dreams can get super squirrely. I think I just, you just gave me a big grin. I love it, and we all know it. I mean, I've been, I was at a dinner party last year, a gal came up to me. She's like, I keep having this dream that I'm going to meet this guy and he's gonna be amazing, and we're gonna get together, I'm gonna leave my husband and run off. And I just know it's God. And I was like, and I know that it's not, you know, in so, so a dream is not i is not a gifted to indulge in self indulgent, self destructive behavior, clearly. But I think, at least for for me, and seeing the use of dreams in the life of Joseph and throughout the book of Acts, there is this invitation to do a couple things. Number one, physiologically, let's recognize that dreams are a physiological component of God's makeup in our bodies. In that they clean out toxins, they help our minds make sense of order. They they help make sense of things that we just couldn't quite connect in our daylight hours and our brains. So it's doing a lot of good physiologically for us at the same time. I know I've definitely seen it, my husband's life, and at times in my own life, where there is a dream, and I'm like, God, is this from you? Is this? And I'm not sure, kind of like Joseph, how it doesn't ever say that the dream was from God. Like, I'm not sure we'll ever know with 100% certainty. But what we can do with 100% certainty is always take that dream to God as a prayer prompt. Say, God, I had this dream. And I don't know if it's from, you know, crazy noodles, MSG or strugglings and anxieties in my heart, but, but I want to bring this dream to you and say, Hey, what are you saying here? What? What is this? And I think when we. Recognize dreams as prayer prompts. It opens up a whole new conversation with with God, with Holy Spirit. My husband and I have been doing this for for years. A number of years ago, I was really ill. We were living in Alaska, and we went out to the Mendenhall Glacier one day, and it was gorgeous, and I loved it. I just love the wonder of creation. Just stirs my heart. God word. A few nights later, Leif woke up in the middle of the night, and he grabbed me, and he just looked at me, you're still here. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, I'm still here. I'm like, what was that? He said, I had the dream that we were walking out on the Mendenhall Glacier and and it crapped, and you'd fallen through a hole in the ice, and you were out of reach, and I couldn't rescue you. And I was like, Huh, interesting. Few nights later, he has the same dream again. I'm like, that's weird. He's really concerned about the glacier. And then he had it a third time, and at that point, I remember just praying and saying, Holy Spirit, Lord, if this from you, or whether or not it's not that's not the real question, what are you trying to reveal? What would you like to speak into this? And what life and I started to discern is in the extreme sickness that I was in, I started pulling back from community, from other people, really getting isolated, getting so depressed and dark in the midst of that season, and I had emotionally fallen through the ice, and I really needed to be intentional about reaching out to others, being part of community, asking for prayer. And that actually became a turning point in that journey that got me to emotional strength, because of other people, or were designed for each other. The physical healing and that kind of restoration took much, much longer, but those dreams alerted us to something we couldn't see on our own, and we have seen God do that time and time again, and so maybe this is too weird, but each morning, Leif and I wake up and we ask a couple of questions. We ask first question, How did you sleep? Number two, did you have any dreams? And then if he starts talking, I pull out a memo, and I thought, just write them down. Just track them. Just track them. A lot of times. They're, you know, racing through the woods and, you know, whatever, just nonsense dreams, but every so often, and if it happens a couple times, I'll just use this as a prayer prompt, Lord, is there something trying to lead us, guide us in this, or anxieties and fears of us that are coming to the surface that you want to speak into? And at times that happens, and so in that context, I feel dreams become less squirrely and weird and can actually become a grounding prayer prompt in our lives.
Joshua Johnson:You know, I lived in the Middle East, worked a lot with Arab Muslims, and I have a lot of friends now that have had dreams of Jesus, and Jesus says, Come follow me. And a variation of follow me, and it's always a variation of follow me. And many Muslims have come to Christ because of dreams and visions. And when I have taught and been in America, and I talk about dreams and teach about dreams, and what I have seen firsthand, and not just stories from others, but seen firsthand, people said, why And doesn't that happen here? Like, why don't we have dreams? Why? And I wonder what people I think it's because of our rationalistic, materialistic worldview, where we're not looking for them, or even I think they're happening. I just don't think that people are aware of them. Why do you think that there's this big phenomenon of dreams, of Jesus and Jesus coming to Muslims and dreams? Yeah, and in the West, dreams aren't happening as much, or we're not aware of them.
Margaret Feinberg:Yeah, I think dreams are happening. I think we have these weird leftover theological lines that we drew somewhere along the way. And I can, I could totally break those down for you, but, but they kind of say like, Well, God can work on this geographical line, but he can't do this on this geographical line. Okay? It's all his kiddos. It's all his like, Spirit of the Living God everywhere all the time, like there's no lines. So those aren't in us. Those aren't in reality. And so if we think dreams are scary or squirrely or seeing somebody like at that dinner party I was at, I'm like, I'm not. I'm so afraid of being that person, we do. We draw lines. And so there may be dreams, and we never bother to take them as prayer prompts to God. And so I think part of it is there God is speaking through dreams. Secondly, I think that we always use a Scripture, we always use wise counsel, we always use discernment, all of those things. We don't make rash decisions off of a dream. But I think, I think there's a lack of teaching. I think there's, there's a lack of, unfortunately, in a lot of places, communities where. People can safely practice and say, Hey, I had this dream. This is what I'm sensing. You know, in a biblically based, rich Christian community, say, What do you think? And have relationships where that's safe to explore and make mistakes and grow in that so. So I think they are happening and and I think if we as believers, you know, one of the things I suggest in the God you need to know book is, is we just pray. You know Holy Spirit like speak in the night, hours like you don't you don't go off the clock when I go to bed. So if you want to work those other I invite you to speak. Help me be attentive to you. So I think some of the shift has to happen in our hearts and around believers who make us feel safe and that this is normal and not weird.
Joshua Johnson:Yeah, that's really good, and that's helpful. So then what does discernment look like, and how does Holy Spirit help us in our our lives and discernment? How do we learn to listen? Yeah,
Margaret Feinberg:God created us. We know this now more than ever. It was such neurological diversity, right? You know, neurotypical, not neurotypical, all those different things. And so would not the God of the universe who knew us in the womb Psalm 139 know how to communicate with each of us individually in ways that would personally so connect. Would not the Spirit of the Living God know that? And so to think that there is a cookie cutter only one way that the Spirit of God is going to speak or communicate or connect with us. I think we got to wipe away that kind of thinking and recognize that that, you know, for somebody they may find that the spirit of loving God speaks to creation. You know, those mercies are new every morning, sunset, sunrises, the majesty of the ocean, the power of God, we may find somebody else. It's much more of a logical or it's it's dates and times and a specificity with numbers, because they are number oriented. And so I think first of all, when it comes to recognizing whether something is from Holy Spirit scripture, first and foremost, does it align with God's word, and does it align with the character of God? It's not you chuck it far out back. I think. Second is, does it leave me with a sense of peace? Christ is the Prince of Peace. The Holy Spirit, you know, is joy and peace and righteousness. And so, so that sense of peace is really clutch, and so for feeling or sensing something, and it's creating this dissonance in us, that's something to pray about not to act on. Third, does it align with the wise counsel in my life? Be in Christian community, listen to your brothers and sisters who will say hard things to you in love and help each other not to go off the tracks. I think another one is, I think prayer is really clutch and just keeping in and we don't have to act fast most of the time, especially for anything larger, small things. Go, apologize. Go, make it right. You go quick. But, you know, moving to Africa, take your time, kiddos. And I think that through that, we provide some guard routes so people don't fall off and make rapt decisions. But here's the thing, even when we make mistakes on discerning whether or not something's from God, God is big enough to cover, you know, just as a parent lovingly looks at their child and is teaching them to speak and says, Go to the kitchen and get a spoon, and they come back with nothing, or they come back they don't even go to the kitchen, you know. But as the child grows, eventually they do that, and it and Spirit and God are so compassionate and caring and merciful, and how much better to be the kiddo who attempts to respond in obedience than the one who never does. Or
Joshua Johnson:you could be like my seven year old the other night, who I told him to get some forks for dinner, and he brought a bunch of knives, and he started laughing. He thought it was funny, so he just wanted to joke around so so I love, I love that too. It's good to have a sense of humor in the midst of it. I just want to, I want a fork. When you were looking through the Old Testament and you were doing a lot of work and seeing what the Holy Spirit was doing. Was there anything that surprised you that you didn't recognize before as you were looking in the Old Testament go, Oh, that was interesting. I
Margaret Feinberg:think one for me that really stood out, and I'm flipping there now, is from the book of Daniel. I was really, you know, nobody like I grew up hearing all the stories about Daniel. You know, they were life lessons, leadership lessons. Nobody was like, Oh, but wait, let's look at the Spirit of God in the life of Daniel. That wasn't, that wasn't the go to lesson when I was growing up. And yet, here is this man with his friends. So I flipped it. I want to find that passage. Sorry. It's kind of like the story of Bezalel, that story of the Spirit doing the work long before the moment came. I mean, they were chosen the youth, Daniel, one chapter, chapter one, verse four, says, Use in whom was no defect were good looking, showing intelligence in every branch of wisdom, endowed with understanding and discerning knowledge, who had the ability for serving in the king's court? Spirit. And so here were, here was a group of guys who, in essence, the Holy Spirit, and I believe, the Spirit of God, had already been working in and through long before they were ever arrested and taken in to this placement in in that kingdom, we read in verse 20, as for the matter of wisdom and understanding about which the king consulted them. He found them 10 times better than all the magicians, the conjurers, who were in all the realm. And so there is a sense, and there's a word Jack levison's translates, I think it's Katara, but it's the word that the fullness of this wisdom and this knowledge and this discernment was to the nth later on, we'll see that same word describing the fire was turned up to the INF. Various images come to the nth. But this idea that here are these, you know, here are these men in whom, even Nebuchadnezzar says on multiple accounts he recognizes as a pagan god who is a mass murderer, mad person recognizes the Spirit of God is in them on multiple occasions, and you start to recognize, like, how come in these stories both kind of of Joseph with Pharaoh and Daniel with Nebuchadnezzar and his friends. Like, like, these other people are recognizing the spirit of the living God in them. Before I do we see, because I'm not sure I'm looking for the right things. And so yes, there's a place for dreams and visions and all of those things, but to also recognizing that, that giving to the int of the Spirit in wisdom and discernment and knowledge, and that is supernatural. And and, I don't think we always celebrate that or acknowledge that in the ways that the scripture starts to highlight. So
Joshua Johnson:what do you think that people that are are with the Spirit, filled with spirit, have Holy Spirit with them? Why do you think that they can see things like knowledge, wisdom, understanding, that people who aren't can't see. I'm
Margaret Feinberg:not sure it's that binary. I think in God's grace, we all get glimpses. But I think that there are times that the Spirit opens our eyes in ways that we go, Whoa. This was what God was up to. I also don't understand the i It's a mystery to me, the way that Holy Spirit and and God, they give gifts, and they are so diverse, and they are so different, and at times they make no sense. I tell a story in the God you need to know about my friend, Phil, and he's amazing person, and he went up to Albany, and one of his life goals had been to go to this particular summit cemetery where the several Supreme Court justices, and I think President Chester was buried. And so he shows up, and in the cemetery there are there are ambulances, there are police cruisers, like racing all over and he's starting to feel uncomfortable, like Did, did somebody escape what's going on? And finally, a police, police cruiser slows down, and an officer pops out and says, you know, what are you doing here? And he's like, I just came to see the Supreme Court justices, kind of graves here. And he's like, Well, we got a call from a grandmother that a young boy got is, is a tombstone fellow on him, and we can't, we can't find where they are. And he said, In my friend Phil said, Would you know the number, basically, of the what area it said, and he gave the number, and all the police cruisers were headed in one number. And my friend Phil said, Oh, you're not going to find the boy that way. You need to go down that road and in that direction you're going to find the boy. Now, Phil had never been to the cemetery before, and sure enough, the officer says, Okay, we're gonna give it a go. They go down, they find the boy and and later on, the officer comes up and says, How did you know? How do you know this, if you've never stepped foot in this cemetery? And he said, 40 years before, when he was an undergraduate, I think it was at the University of Alabama, he studied cemeteries, and he found it fascinating because it was an insight into cultures and religions through you can see through Dave stones. And so he'd studied it. He did his one of his big thesis on this particular cemetery, never visited his whole life, and shows up on that particular day when it was so needed. And he had the wisdom to help recognize the location of the boy. Now, is that coincidence? Some may argue, yes, I think there's more to it than that. I believe that the Spirit of the Living God was working long before that moment for that day. And I think that it's like that in so many of our lives, that you know he had all that knowledge for all that years, for what? And then one day he catches a glimpse of this Holy Spirit. Is why you interested me in this all those years ago. And I think when we start to talk among a community of believers, we see that, I bet you have those stories.
Joshua Johnson:Well, I have a whole bunch of stories I can tell you. They're They're incredible things, but what. What I want to know is why some people have them and some people don't. One of the, I mean, one of the things that I think is that I think some people pay attention and lots of people don't,
Margaret Feinberg:yeah, and I think part of that is they've never been taught how to pay attention. They've never. They've never, you know, part of the reason that, you know, I was open the possibility of my husband having repetitive dreams is because, you know, my mom had had dreams growing up, and so I've been exposed to it. And so I feel like sometimes, in the silo of Christianity, we go, that's weird. That's strange, just because we're not taught. And that's one of the reasons I wrote, you know, the God you need to know book and Bible study, it is 10 different ways to pay attention to start changing the posture of our life. So we're starting to see and notice. I shared the story of the dove showing up on that window sill. And I remember I shared that at a church service, and a woman came up afterwards and she said, You mean, you mean that was the Holy Spirit. And then she told her own story. She's like, You mean when my mom died, and my sisters were together, and we walked outside that church, and there were three butterflies who swarmed around us as we walked to the car and then landed on our car. You think that had to do something with God? And I was like, pretty
Unknown:sure the God of Creation picked out the number three to remind you weren't alone
Margaret Feinberg:in it. And she just says, tears, weeping. Nobody. This is a 67 year old woman. No one had told her. Yes, the Spirit of the Living God is alive and vibrant and engaging with us. Yeah,
Joshua Johnson:so good. I want to tell a quick story, and I want to, I want to think about the corporate and community aspect of the Holy Spirit, working to bring some knowledge. So we had a group of of people. It was a group that we were doing something for about a year and working with with Muslims and others, just to share Jesus stories and Jesus with them. We had a family that befriended they had a heart for Liberia in West Africa, and they befriended a woman who had a grocery store, a Liberian woman, and when we were meeting that night, a day or two before her grocery store burned down to the ground. And so they brought to our meeting a whole van load of groceries to bring to this woman, but they had no idea where she lived, had they didn't have a number. They only knew the grocery store. And so we came together and we said, Okay, we're just gonna ask Holy Spirit to show us where she lives. And so we prayed, and there was about eight of us, and we all got snippets of it. One said, Go west the setting sun. Others said something about St John. The other had like this black wrought iron fence and this apartment building so and so we just started to drive that way, and we went, and we passed something which we thought might have been our house, and we weren't, I wasn't sure I was driving, so I went around the block again, and all of a sudden somebody stopped me, just a person that never had it, said, What are you doing here? You're scaring us. You need to leave. You need to get out of here. And I was like, so we were we were afraid, but we kept going, and we went back to the same place where we thought it was. We stopped. And as soon as we stopped, this woman came out of the door, and we were able to give her all these groceries. She invited us in. And it turns out there was about 30 Liberians there in her apartment, and one of the women that they got to know when they so, our friends, the family, moved to Liberia and are still living there today as missionaries. But one of, one of the people that they met there, she still had a daughter in Liberia, and our friends were able to adopt her and give her a home in life when they got to Liberia, and it was just, but the, I think the I mean, God does awesome things, but what I think is He did it with all of us. It wasn't just one person that got something, but he was working together to say that you have to work with each other to actually go to this place, to do this together. We can't do it on your own. How does it work? Yeah, in community. Yeah.
Margaret Feinberg:I think I wish I had that blueprint and I could draw it out in a nice form. Unfortunately, we're dealing with the wind and blows wherever it wants. But I love acts. Chapter two, verse one, and when the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. I think growing up so often people talked about acts. They. Talked about the miracles and the signs and the wonders and the dreams and the visions and the, you know, the tongues of fire, all this and and one of the things that I missed until I did this deep study over the last couple of years was recognizing that time and time again throughout the book of Acts, what you see Holy Spirit doing is often putting two people in a room who could not be more different, and yet need each other. And you know whether Paul Cornelius, Gentiles, Jews, I mean, just constantly being draw to to the other, and then having things unfold in the midst. And I think that we forget that as another powerful work and aspect of Holy Spirit, that he is constantly fulfilling Jesus Prayer, that they would all be one, not just that we're all one and we look unified, and yes, it shows the world of love, but so that we can bring in the kingdom of God. I need so and so's visions. I need so and so's sensibilities. I need so and so's wisdom. I need so and so. You know, I need all we all need these from each other. And I think that is a powerful message in the world we're living that is so divided over so many things, and yet Jesus's cry in the beat of the spirit is still one, and it is to build bridges, not barriers. And we discover that, and we start to see the gifts in each other like it just makes it so much more fun. It makes it a lot. Um, I have an E newsletter, and I wrote my, my, lots of people. And I just said, Hey, I want to know, how does the Holy Spirit like speak to you? What does it look like? And I had people, you know, use everything from dreams to visions, scripture, worship songs, creation. And I had one lady who wrote it, and she goes, the Spirit gives me directions. And I was like, can you explain a little Yeah, you know, I'll be in a neighborhood and I won't know where to go. And I was asked, Holy Spirit, like, where do I go? And I'll just hear very quickly, and I'll end up in the right place. And at first I was like, okay, that's weird. And then I thought for a second, you know, I thought, I want her on my team. I want her on my team. And if we will stop assigning weird and different, and start to see and say, Wait a second. No, no, I want you on my team. I want you on my team. We're all bringing in the kingdom together. We need each other. I think that's just such a better posture
Joshua Johnson:of living. One of the postures some people take is that the spirit builds me up and I get to be powerful, like I get to find directions, or I get to do this because, and they make it about themselves. When we are with Holy Spirit, what posture should we take, and how should we be with and what is it? What is then, the fruit of the interaction with the spirit that doesn't just build ourselves up, but maybe builds others up? Yeah,
Margaret Feinberg:I think one is just, you know, one of the things I love to ask Holy Spirit is what is on your heart today, and sometimes it's a person or a group of people to, you know, invite a couple people over to dinner, to go and reach out to that person, to go and serve. I think Holy Spirit is always going to be at times. There is times Holy Spirit builds us up and ministers to us, but it is an out. It is an other oriented existence. And sometimes he gives us glimpses. I think there is that when we gather with other believers. And yes, going to church is amazing, but gathering believers not just looking at the back of their heads, okay, like in this kind of conversation where you're sharing the richness of Liberia in the Middle East and Jesus, there's this thing that happens that it gets me super excited. I think it stirs in you too, that hunger to see, okay, Holy Spirit, let's do it. Let's be a part of it. And so I think the more we talk about Holy Spirit, and do it in ways that aren't weird, but are normal and bibliocentric and Christ centered, like, yes, we start to get to live out the opportunities of this. Yesterday, I, you know, I did a little teaching on Instagram about Holy Spirit, and then got done, put it up, and literally drove the grocery store. I pull in a parking spot, and there in front of me is a woman in a car who's just weeping her eyes out. And I was like, whoo, Holy Spirit. Here we go. And so it's weird, right? Like, she's like, sobbing over her, her her steering wheel, and I'm just like, so I try to, like, tap on the front of the hood, and I didn't get I tapped a little harder and then a little harder. And finally she looks up and I go, Can I hug you? And she comes out, and I just just weeps, starts to explain that just the you know, two days before her husband had been picked up, arrested for something very tiny, and already ice was there and he was being deported, she just had held it together through Easter weekend for her kids to not let them know their Dad was going to be gone for and so I just said, Hey, can I get you a Starbucks in the grocery store? We sat down, we talked, you know, and then, you know, reached out to my Christian community and said, Hey, where are people who can be counselors in this legal provision? You know, do you have Christian people there? But how can we get the body to. To surround you, and it's a we. It's not a me, it's not us. It's just, you know, some of us, sometimes are ones who pull up in front of a car on a certain day, but it's all of us coming together to bring up the kingdom I want to like that life, that's
Joshua Johnson:the life I want to
Unknown:live as well live as follows. Are you tired
Margaret Feinberg:and bored like for most of us are, at least for me, I'll say, from my education has exceeded my obedience. I wanna, I wanna obey to those quick promptings of the Spirit that say, Go, respond, apologize, give, make it right. That's where the fruit and the joy and the righteousness, the peace and the delight is. Yes, amen.
Joshua Johnson:Amen. So if you could say to us people listening, if there's something that you would want them to know about Holy Spirit, what would what do you want them to know about Holy Spirit? Holy
Margaret Feinberg:Spirit in Hebrew, the word is and it could be translated breath and Holy Spirit is closer than your next breath. Doesn't matter how you feel. I go to churches all the time, and the worship leader stands up and says, Do you feel the Holy Spirit here? And my answer is, nope, nope. I don't. No like I'll just be honest, but I can acknowledge that Holy Spirit is here. Each and every one of us can do that, and we're invited to do that each and every day. And one just very practical way, from the gods, you need to know, just to share, just very practical way to become more attentive of this. And I learned it from my friend Drake, somebody else in the body of Christ, loving Jesus. And he said, one of the things he does is he keeps a journal, terrible journal, journal, but, but he changed the way I journal. He said, Every day I ask Holy Spirit one question, this one. And the question may be, who am I? What's my purpose? What are you calling me to? Who do you want me to love today? Just one question. And then I go through the day, and I just keep asking Holy Spirit that question over and over again, attentive posture changed to how Holy Spirit might be answering that and then that night, or the next day, I write it down, and the next day might write the same question, or I may write a different question. But rather than heading off in 10,000 different directions, to focus on just one thing and say, Holy Spirit, would you answer this? Do you know answer today? I'm going to ask you tomorrow and watch at how the Holy Spirit responds. Because my hunches, it won't be anything new. It will be like rabbit tracks in the snow. What Holy Spirit has been doing all along, but suddenly your awareness of it has increased.
Joshua Johnson:That's so good. Another thing is actually talking to the Holy Spirit and not ignoring Holy Spirit. Because I don't think there's a lot of people out there that never addressed Holy Spirit in their life. I think would say, I will pray to God in the name of Jesus, or I will talk to Jesus, but they just forget about the Holy Spirit. So if you want to cultivate a life of the Spirit, you should probably interact with the Spirit, yeah, like,
Margaret Feinberg:know, their wife, you know, like, exactly their family,
Joshua Johnson:exactly. That's good. So if you had one hope for your readers of the god, you need to know what is the hope that you have? Yeah, that
Margaret Feinberg:they will, you know, again, I think x2 and under. Understanding of Holy Spirit in the New Testament is so beautiful and so true and yet so incomplete without understanding this incredible love story and this beauty and this wisdom and this delight that is through the Old Testament. So that as they read this book and they move through and I center in on a particular moment in basically every major turn in Israel's history, that by the time you get to Acts two, you will go, of course, it will happen this way, and then Holy Spirit won't seem as odd or strange or weird. You'd be like, Oh, this is just a very normal part of following Jesus, and that's how it should be for all of
Joshua Johnson:us, Yes, amen. Couple quick questions, Margaret, one, if you go back to your 21 year old self, what advice would you give the call
Margaret Feinberg:to follow Jesus and be obedient will be harder than you ever imagined,
Joshua Johnson:but it is worth it. Really good. Anything you've been reading or watching lately, you could recommend, ooh,
Margaret Feinberg:that's a great question. What have I been reading? I've been reading this book by my friend Bob Lentz, hope for life, and just really, really enjoying it. 365 reflections to anchor your soul. And I've never seen love drip out of somebody quite like it drips out of Bob lens.
Joshua Johnson:That's great, excellent. How can people get out get the God you need to know. Where else would you like to point people to? Is there anywhere you'd like to point
Margaret Feinberg:the God you need to know? You can find it on Amazon, all of your favorite online retailers, as well as the Bible study, the God you need to know. Uh, succession streaming that just takes people through about a dozen different practices to awaken to a relationship with Holy Spirit. So yeah, enjoy those. I'm on Instagram, Margaret Feinberg, all those kind of things, Facebook, all the things. But yeah, enjoy the book. May, May you read it, and may Holy Spirit just as close as your next.
Joshua Johnson:Amen, well. Margaret, thank you for this conversation. Thank you for illuminating the Holy Spirit for us and actually inspiring us to interact with the spirit and have good conversations to bring some wisdom and discernment and some some healing figure out dreams and where the Holy Spirit is speaking, that in the midst of chaos and destruction, that the Holy Spirit will be hovering and be with us, that there's going to be some peace and joy and righteousness and beautiful things with the Spirit, that we could do this in community, that we could be with one another in Christ and so thank you. It was a fantastic conversation. I really enjoyed talking to you. I appreciate you. You.
