Episode 12 - Spelling Bees & the Holy Spirit

Why was I too cool for the 8th grade spelling bee? This week we're talking about what we actually run to when life gets hard — and why Genesis 1 and Psalm 121 were written to answer that question directly. Plus the Holy Spirit, why technique is quietly crushing us, and what it looks like to be fully known and fully loved in a community where the gospel is actually true.

Transcript

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Hey, welcome to the Disappointingly Normal podcast. This podcast is a project of Hope Community Church Northlakes that meets in Shoreview, Minnesota. I'm your host, Paul Stiver, and we are Disappointingly Normal. What does that mean to be disappointingly normal? Well, ideally it's when you meet somebody and you're like, hey, they were pretty normal. If anything, I'm a little disappointed by how normal they were. I thought they'd be, you know, they're Christians. I thought they'd be weird. They weren't as weird as I thought they would be. That was kind of disappointing how normal they were. Uh, or maybe they're just not as impressive, or they didn't, you know what it was is they didn't seem like they were trying to be impressive. And that was kind of disappointingly normal of them to do either way. We're disappointingly normal. And this podcast is our opportunity to take discipleship beyond Sundays to the rest of the week and all of life, because Jesus is not a hands-off savior. He is invested in every area of our lives, and so we want to just do that and get a chance to dig into things like uh Sunday recap, do a little bit of theology, uh, think about culture, think about applying the gospel and what we come to understand from the scriptures to our lives, both personally and as a church. So really love getting to do that on this podcast every week. We're gonna take a little break, probably three or four-week break here in July from the podcast, and then we'll come back in August with new episodes. Um, I want to jump right in to uh seventh grade, a little bit of seventh grade. We do meet in a middle school, so it's helpful to bring that up. So I went to a Catholic uh school through eighth grade, and um, in seventh grade, we did the classroom spelling bees. We did the spelling bee. I want to say the spelling bees were for all middle school age, but I could be wrong. Maybe they were segmented by grade. Either way, I won the class spelling bee, I won the spelling bee at school. Then I remember going over to the city spelling bee. I want to say it was in it was in the middle school. I didn't spend a lot of time like in the classrooms at the middle school. I played sports, so I was over there a lot for athletics, but um, I would actually get driven over there by our principal. I gotta share this. So the principal was this really hard-nosed guy. Um, but he had like this cool van, like a full-size van decked out in badger gear. This guy was a big sports guy, but he's very hard-nosed. He had been the football coach at one point in Merrill. Um, but he's a hard-nosed guy, uh, but he has this full-size van, very plush, badger colors, Wisconsin badger colors, and uh probably GMC van. Well, anyway, he whatever he would drive me to events, because sometimes I'd have to get to the middle school early to get on the bus for track or whatever for football, whatever. He was so kind to me. He loved sports so much that it overcame his hard-noseness and maybe even his disdain for me uh because I was in his office a lot, getting in trouble. That he loved me during those drives. And that was kind of a fun little anecdote. But I would we're at this middle school in the library for the spelling bee, and I won there. I took that title. So then we went, I went to regionals. It was a school day, got out of school, and my mom drove me to Stevens Point uh for spelling bee regionals in Wisconsin, and I won there. And I remember only two things about it. I don't remember even what words or anything. I just remember my mom crying, uh, which I don't think I understood that you could cry tears of joy at that point. I'm in seventh grade, I'm just kind of a dense guy, and I didn't understand that. I also didn't understand um, yeah, that there would be what pro proud was, or like what someone being proud of you was. So if that makes sense, that's kind of a weird way of saying it. Makes it sound like my parents didn't tell me that. I did feel like that, but I just didn't understand those concepts. And uh well, anyway, I remember that, and I remember getting chocolate milk. Um, I don't know why the chocolate milk stands out, but I remember it. So that's my life. Well, then I went to state. We got a hotel. I remember having to sleep on the floor of the hotel because the beds were limited and uh didn't get a great night's sleep. Then we get to the place in, I want to say it was in Madison, and they didn't have my number. So it was like 50 representative students who had done spelling, but they didn't have my number. So they just hand drew number 51. I don't know if they just messed it up bad or like forgot our region or what, or like some kid that took second showed up from our region. I don't understand, but they just hand drew 51 and sharpie on a paper sign and stuck it on me, and then I busted out, I got out, and uh and then in eighth grade I I had the opportunity to repeat to go back to back state appearances, and I blew it on purpose because spelling wasn't cool, and I wanted to be cool, and I think about that every once in a while. I regret that. It's crazy as you age, you realize all the times you tried to be cool or wanted to fit in, or all those things, and you think how much of life you spent, or maybe that's just me, trying to be cool, and then as you age, you realize life isn't about being a quote unquote cool person. Life is about being a quality person, and uh it's far better to be a quality person than it is to be just like some cool guy. Um and uh I wish I would have spelled the way that I knew how, uh, instead of not. Um so yesterday, switching gears here to get into a little bit of Sunday recap and uh talking about we talked about this idea of polemic, P-O-L-E-M-I-C, and just the spelling theme, polemic. And uh it's basically what a polemic is is a strong argument made against a competing idea, belief, or worldview, often by directly uh confronting and dismantling its claims on their own terms. Now, when we talked about it with the Bible, we talked about God setting himself up, declaring that he is the creator. The Psalm said he is the maker of heaven and earth in Psalm 121. We saw Genesis 1, over and over, God is saying, I created this, I created the heavens, I created the earth, I created the things on the earth, I created the things in the sky. Whatever it is, God says, I created it, I am the creator. Psalm 121 said he's the maker of heaven and earth. These are things, Genesis 1, Psalm 121, they're telling us about God, but they're also pushing back against the false gods of the surrounding culture. There's another place we see this in the Bible, Exodus. Exodus and the plagues, and what God's doing there is he's saying, you think there's this God or the Nile's your source of life, or all these other gods in these different areas. He says, I have control over all of it. I am its creator. All these false gods are not real. I am the creator, I am the real true God. So a polemic is pushing back against the gods of the surrounding culture. Every nation around Israel worship the sun, the moon, the sea, the storm, the high places on the hills. Genesis 1 goes through the created order and takes away their divine status one by one. That the sun and the moon are lights God put together. The sea is things that he created in the sea. The deep is just water. In Exodus, God shows those that power over things that would have been attributed to the false gods of Egypt. Psalm 121 then does it also in a personal way. It says, Here's those hills. If you look up to the hills, you see false gods being worshipped all around you. The neighbors of the Israelites are burning sacrifices to the god Baal, who we see also in kings with Elijah. Uh, and it it says, Where does your help actually come from? Does it come from these false gods, or does it come from the creator God? Are you looking to the things around you, the created things around you to save you, or are you looking to the creator of everything to be your help? And that's the good news about God setting things up as a polemic, is then we get a clearer picture that the things around us cannot save us. God Himself alone can save us, and he actually does that by becoming one of the things around us. The John says, God tabernacled among us that when Jesus came, it's like as you I think Eugene Peterson says this in the message that God, it's like God moved into the neighborhood. So Jesus takes on flesh and actually becomes like us, becomes like a created thing, uh, who, but yet is also the Son of God. And so where does our help come from? It actually comes from God Himself coming to earth. And so then we understand and we can understand in a world crowded with competing gods, that God is the one true God, everything we think we should run to is false, and God is the one that we should run to, look to the Creator. And um, and we'll come back to that a little bit when we talk about cultural uh engagement, but I wanted to think about something related to this and related to then if we're if we're looking not to the things of this world for help, we're looking to God for help, what role does the Holy Spirit play? So the Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity, and and one of the things that we see in the storyline of the Bible is there's kind of this indwelling of the Holy Spirit that seems temporary in the Old Testament. If you think about when they put together the tabernacle, or David actually prays at one time when he sins greatly, take not your spirit from me. Uh we see the spirit on Saul and then leave Saul. There's kind of this temporary appearances of the Spirit in the Old Testament, hovering over the waters at the beginning of creation, all these places where we see the spirit, but in Acts chapter 2, now all of a sudden the spirit comes permanently. The age of the spirit is ushered in. One of the ways you can think about it is like if you ever play a video game and you get to a certain level where you unlock a character or you unlock an ability, well, when Jesus died and rose from the dead and ascended to heaven, it is as though he unlocked the Holy Spirit now to come permanently. This age, this new age, as the Bible calls it, a new creation, this new era has been ushered in, and that is the age of the Holy Spirit. And one of the things that changes then is the Holy Spirit now dwells permanently in believers. We see this language of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. So now this third person of the Trinity, this person of God, the Holy Spirit, who has always existed from all time with the Father and the Son, the Spirit of love between them, the Spirit of holiness now dwells within us. The Spirit who was hovering over the waters at creation now makes us new creations. The Spirit who inspired the scriptures now dwells within us and uses those scriptures to transform our lives. He makes us alive, he makes us new. A lot of times what the Bible will use for language like this is renewal or new creation or transformation. Transformation is different than self-help because it is someone else transforming you. It is God Himself transforming us, using God's word. This is one of the main ministries of the Holy Spirit, is to have inspired God's word and then now call it to mind for us and then use that word to make us look like Jesus. Romans 8 talks about this. 2 Corinthians 3.18 talks about this, that what God is trying to do is conform us to the image of Jesus. He wants to use his Holy Spirit to make a ton of people who walk around this earth looking like his son and telling people about his son. And that's really fat, that's really amazing. Isn't that just good news? And then because of that, there's a couple of practical implications and they apply here when we think about God as creator and looking to God for help and not ourselves. One, we don't fight sin in our own power. That's actually incredible news. When Jesus died and rose again and we put our faith in him, we are actually set free from the penalty of sin because he's paid for it. God cannot ever come back to us and say, You owe me again because Christ has taken and paid all of our debt on the cross, past, present, and future sins are all covered by Christ. So we're freed from the power or the penalty of sin, but we're also freed from the power of sin. The way that Romans talks about it is as though at one time when we were apart from God, when we were living in darkness, when we didn't know Jesus, we could not help but sin. We couldn't do anything but sin. That was all we could do. We loved to sin, we delighted in it, we chose it willingly. But then when the Holy Spirit moves into our lives, we're no longer under that authority of sin. We actually can say no to sin, but not in our own strength. We do it with the power of God dwelling within us. We fight off sin with the scriptures dwelling within us, with the Spirit of God Himself making us holy. We don't fight sin in our own power. We don't actually even pray in our own power. When we pray, we're actually calling upon God by the power of God, the Spirit of God working in us. We don't seek wisdom by relying on our own knowledge. We go to the scriptures and the Spirit makes those scriptures come alive for us. God is at work bringing about life and renewal in us because the Spirit dwells in us. That creates transformed people, it creates a transformed community. Now I want to take that in and switch gears a little bit to look at cultural engagement. When we think about a polemic, when we think about the spirit's power working in us, God is creator, the spirit's power working in us now to transform us, and the psalm which says, I look up to the hills, where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth, we can say that we're tempted to look around at the false gods of the day and not our creator and not the Holy Spirit who's dwelling in us now. So what are those false gods of today that we look to for help that aren't God our Creator, that aren't the Holy Spirit and His power? I think two of them, and I mentioned this in the sermon, are technology and the self. Technology and the self. We look to ourselves. There's a reason that the self-help market is the strongest market always for books, although I guess that actually, interestingly enough, AI is starting to impact the self-help book market because instead of going and buying books from self-help and motivational authors, people are going to AI for that same support or direction or guidance or ways to solve their problems. So it's actually hindering the self-help book market, but we look to the self to save us. We also look to technology to save us. How quickly, and I'm I'm at fault for this, do I, instead of turning to God in prayer, open up ChatGPT and ask it a question? At times that it actually is a spiritual thing going on, not just like, how do I make a brisket or something like that? It would be kind of fun to the pray to God about how to make a brisket, but it the Bible doesn't talk about how to make a brisket. And God, certainly He could give that divine revelation from prayer, but that we might be better off Googling. But those things in life where we need help, how quickly do I look to AI to technology instead of God? So two false gods that cause us not to look to God when we need help, technology and the self, and the way those intertwine, and I've shared this before at Hope North Lakes, is this idea of technique. Technique is the idea essentially that it is on your shoulders and it is on my shoulders to, when we encounter the problems of life, apply technology rightly, and by doing so, we can eliminate the problems of life. And so then the better, the more self-actualized I am, the better my life is, the more free I am, is related directly to how capable I am to leverage technology to keep me away from problems. But the reality of life in the book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible would remind us of this over and over again is that problems find us no matter where we run and hide. And so technique, then here a definition from Alan Noble, who's a professor and author. He says technique is the use of rational methods to maximize efficiency, and we see it everywhere. Time-saving technology, apps that maximize our workouts, medicines that drown out irrational thoughts, ubiquitous entertainment in our pockets, and scientifically proven methods for parenting, working, eating, shopping, budgeting, folding clothes, sleeping, sex, dating, and buying a car. He says all we're surrounded by technology, and we're told to apply that technology via technique. Use your rational methods to fix your life. He goes on. All you have to do is find one of those things and apply it rightly. He says, and this is exactly why techniques promise that life is easier than ever becomes just another source of dread. If life doesn't have to be this hard, if there are answers and methods and practices that can solve my problems, then it's really my fault I'm overwhelmed or a failure. He concludes this section by saying, if I'm not living up to my full potential, I am to blame. Friends, does that not feel oppressive? The idea of I've got to save myself by rightly applying technology, by researching and finding the right methods, finding the right technology, finding the right resources, and then being very, very disciplined as I live out and execute that. Doesn't that sound just like the a little L law? Doesn't that sound like rules that if I can't keep, I don't have true life? Doesn't that sound burdensome and oppressive? And what is at the heart of all of that? I'm looking to the things around me for help in places that only God can help. And one of the things about that, too, I want to go further here, is life has trouble. Life has suffering, life has pain that is beyond our control, that things happen to us or in our lives that we actually can't fix, that's just suffering, and we go through it and what a difference it is to go through it without God. And to go through it with God, who is and knows our wounds, who is the suffering servant, who knows everything we could ever go through, who knows what it's like to be rejected, scorned, to feel pain, to feel shame, to hurt, and to die. That's our God. He knows suffering, he's acquainted with grief. We get to look to him when we need help and not to ourselves or technology. Friends, that's refreshing news. That's good news. That's also something that the people around us are feeling. People around us who want to see their lives changed and transformed, but don't know Jesus Christ need to hear this good news. Which leads us into our Beyond Sunday's personal application. I want to think about this for us individually and personally. So I shared in the sermon that I had recently had this thought, which is it's like every once in a while you think of something, you're like, oh, is that actually smart? But I was talking with someone, I realized when I'm anxious, I make anxious decisions. And I said the phrase, anxiety makes anxious decisions. And then it dawned on me that kind of carries into a lot of things. And one of the things we looked at in the sermon is dependence, aka dependence upon God, recognizing a need for God, makes dependent decisions. When I'm anxious, I make anxious decisions to try to fix things. When I'm trusting God, I actually make decisions that look very trusting, that look like I'm trusting Him to show up. And one of the ways we talked about it, and we think about this with personal application and in sharing life with people, is putting down roots. Putting down roots to create a real community around you. And that's one of the things a church exists to do. Putting down roots, though, it's interesting. Doesn't that feel risky? Doesn't that feel risky to commit to people? Doesn't it feel risky to try things where you will be things will be asked of you and you'll ask things of others? Doesn't it feel risky to put down roots? You know, because like what if you get hurt? What if I get hurt? Now, here's the reality, and we all know this. When we start to form community, you will get hurt. I will get hurt, and I will do things that hurt others. You know, but interestingly, the one-anothers of the Bible. You know, in the New Testament, we have all these one-anothers, these ways to love one another, serve one another, be generous to one another, honor one another, these can't be fulfilled unless we put down roots, unless we are exposed to the risk of hurting others and being hurt by others, because that's what putting down roots does. So unless we take the risk to know others and be known by others, we actually can't live out those one-another of the gospel. But here's the thing now, if the gospel's true, which it is, and we are okay in Jesus, then we can take the chance to be known. We can take the risk of being known. Why? Because I actually am able, because I'm okay in Jesus, I'm able to be authentic and I'm able to be a part of creating an authentic, refreshing community. I don't have to always parade around like I have it all together, even though I don't. I actually can be honest about the broken and sinful aspects of my life because when it comes to standing before God, I'm accepted in Jesus Christ. And if I have that acceptance, then I don't need to fear the rejection and scorn of others. Now, the beauty of creating a gospel culture is I won't because I'm around other people who know they stand right before God and therefore don't need to distance themselves from me because of my brokenness, nor I need to distance myself from them because of their brokenness. We aren't parading around trying to impress each other. We're okay to be authentic because we're okay in Jesus. And if we're being honest, deep down, whether you're a Christian or not, that is exactly the kind of community you want. We all want to be in our heart of hearts, fully known and fully loved. Everyone wants that. Now, the thing is, only in the gospel and then the resulting gospel community can we actually be fully known and fully loved. So one of the things that we get to do as a church is reach out to people who are broken, hurting, wounded, and invite them into that kind of community by first inviting them into that community and then also inviting them to start that relationship with God who knows them and loved them so much that he was glad to die for them. Finally, then as a church, when we do that, we see the culture of the gospel shape our lives. We actually can come back to this phrase I've shared before that I love from one pastor. He says, What a church really does is create a place for the gospel plus safety plus time. The gospel plus safety plus time. How do people change? How does transformation happen? Gospel plus safety plus time. It looks like regular Sunday attendance, regular being in community, regularly hearing and being reminded of the gospel. This is one reason why we preach the gospel every Sunday, why we take things to the cross of Christ every Sunday. Because we need to be reminded of the gospel and we need to do it. Friends, in an environment where we aren't shamed or made to feel dumb, but things are clear. We need to do it in an environment where we aren't ostracized or belittled because of our sin. That looks like a safe, healthy church that over time brings about real transformation in our lives. Gospel plus safety plus time, creating a culture where everyone is okay in Jesus, where we can be fully known and fully loved, where we actually can confront sin and be honest about it, be honest about our brokenness. Only under the safety of the gospel and in a culture that creates gospel plus safety plus time can we do that. And friend, just one last thing. The gospel uses agricultural language so frequently for spiritual growth. How does transformation happen? It happens slowly. We don't need to panic. We don't need to get in people's faces all the time. We don't need to stress about our sin all the time. What we actually can do is continually look to Jesus and in the power of the Holy Spirit over time in the life of the local church, God is going to transform us. He's not pacing around heaven worried that where he's going to change our lives. He knows he's going to change us to look like Jesus. It's part of the reason why he's put his spirit in us. It's why he's given us the scriptures. It's why he's given us his church. And gosh, can we be so thankful that it's why he's given us the gospel, that in Jesus Christ we are okay, and we can now face up to our sin by facing up to our Savior and looking at him, looking at us and loving us. And we'd know he loves us because he hung on that cross for us and forgave our sins and delights in bringing us into relationship with him. So, friends, that is just good news. I'm so thankful for the gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm thankful for you. Thankful for a little bit of a break here in July, and then we'll be back with more episodes. But friends, as always, the news is good, the grace is free. Have a great week.