Show Notes
In this episode of Peaceable and Kind, Derek Vreeland continues exploring the Nicene Creed in honor of its 1700th anniversary—this time diving deep into one of the most overlooked and misunderstood persons of the Trinity: God the Holy Spirit.
Derek shares how his view of the Holy Spirit has grown over the years—from powerful experiences as a teenager in Pentecostal circles to a deeper understanding of the Spirit’s role, shaped by the rich traditions of the Christian faith. Drawing from Scripture, church history, and his own spiritual journey, he unpacks why the Holy Spirit is not merely a force or feeling—but a personal, co-eternal presence alongside the Father and the Son. Along the way, he illustrates how the Spirit has moved in fresh and powerful ways throughout history—not just in biblical times.
Whether you’re curious about spiritual gifts, wrestling with charismatic culture, or simply hungry for a deeper encounter with God, this episode will renew your understanding of the Holy Spirit’s role in your life today.
Key Takeaways
The Holy Spirit is fully God—personal, divine, and worthy of worship.
The Spirit transforms hearts from the inside out, not just behaviors.
Jesus empowers believers through the Spirit to live out the commands of love.
Spiritual renewal reveals the ongoing work of the Spirit.
Charismatic experience and historic liturgy can coexist within a Spirit-led life.
Praying “Come, Holy Spirit” remains vital for daily spiritual strength and guidance.
🎧 Listen now and rediscover the beauty, mystery, and power of God the Holy Spirit.
Scriptures mentioned in this episode:
John 20:22
Acts 1:8
Acts 2: 1-4
Genesis 2:7
Jeremiah 31:31-33
Galatians 5:22-23
Preorder Derek’s new book, Incarnation: 8 Lessons on How God Meets Us here: https://amzn.to/42jSZAs
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Leave a review
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Get to know the host: https://derekvreeland.com
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Transcript
Welcome back.
Back to another episode of Peaceable and Kind.
I am your host, Derek Vreeland, and I’m glad you are along for the ride as we continue here at Peaceable and Kind to explore the beauty.
and the mystery and the power of the Nicene Creed.
We are celebrating the 1700th
Anniversary of the Nicene Creed.
This creed was established by the church 1,700 years ago.
And so we’re going to continue our conversation and talking about why this ancient creed, written so long ago, is still important today.
And on this episode, we’re going to talk about the often forgotten and maybe even more misunderstood member of the Trinity, God the Holy Spirit.
But before we jump into this conversation today, make sure you leave a rating, leave a review, subscribe wherever you’re listening to this episode.
That helps a lot
And on this episode, I’m going to be talking about the Holy Spirit, but I would love to turn this monologue into a dialogue.
I love having conversations about topics like this.
So feel free to reach out to me on social media.
I am at Derek Vreeland in all the places.
You can go to the show notes and you can find me.
I’m online.
Find me.
Let’s turn this.
monologue into a dialogue.
I would love to hear your thoughts because today I want to talk about the Holy Spirit and do some theology stuff.
And also, I’m gonna tell stories today.
I want to kind of open up a little bit, pull back the curtain, share some personal stories
Particularly as my understanding of God the Holy Spirit has evolved and changed and matured over the years.
But do reach out to me if you want to have a conversation about God the Holy Spirit or the Holy Ghost as we sing in the words of the doxology
I was asked once by a new Christian at our church.
She had said, I feel a little embarrassed to ask this question, but is the Holy Spirit and the Holy Ghost
Is this the same person?
Is this the s one and the same member of the Trinity?
To which I said yes, in older translations of the Bible, the King James in particular
from the seventeenth century, refers to God the Holy Spirit as the Holy Ghost.
And there are some Pentecostal churches that talk about it.
In our congregation, we sing the doxology, I believe, every Sunday,
And so it ends with Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
And while I typically will refer to the Holy Spirit as the Holy Spirit,
There’s times in which speaking of the Holy Spirit as the Holy Ghost is actually a good thing because it reminds us that the Spirit of God is a person.
a mysterious person.
So sometimes I like that ghost language, but I’ll refer to the Holy Spirit as spirit
as we talk about what the Holy Spirit is doing among us and who the Holy Spirit is on this episode.
But we are walking through the Creed, so let’s look at what the Nicene Creed says.
In referring to the Holy Spirit, the Creed says.
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son
With the Father and the Son, he is worshipped and glorified, he has spoken through the prophets.
As I shared before, what we now call the Nicene Creed is both the original Creed that was ratified in 325 A.
D.
Which is why we say this year in twenty twenty-five, we’re celebrating the seventeenth hundredth.
How how do you even say it?
Seventeen hundredth?
That no one even speaks like that because we don’t even celebrate things that happened 1,700 years ago.
But for Christians, this is so important, so valuable, so formative that we do want to make a big deal of it.
So in 325 A.
D.
, the original version of the Nicene Creed was established, ratified.
by an ecumenical council.
By ecumenical, we mean it was it was Christian leaders from across the board
in the fourth century world.
They ratified this creed, but then they expanded it
In 381 at the second ecumenical council that was held in Constantinople
And so in 381 they expanded the original version.
And that expansion is what we call the Nicene Creed today, even though it came to us from two different councils.
1 in 325, 1 in 381.
So the current version of the Nicene Creed is really the Nicene Constantinople Creed, but that’s hard to say.
So let’s just call it the Nicene Creed.
And with the original version, part of the motivation of that council was to establish
the full divinity of Jesus and to codify what Christians mean when we say Jesus is the Son of God.
What sort of God is Jesus?
And so we’ve talked about that in previous episodes.
In 381 at the Council of Constantinople,
There was this expansion of who God the Holy Spirit is.
Because in the original version, it just says, we believe in the Holy Spirit.
But there were questions in the church.
Well, if Jesus, the Son of God, is of the same substance.
Same being Greek word homoeousius as the Father, then what about the Spirit?
Is the Spirit the same sort of God as the Father and the Son?
And it was broadly accepted by the church that, yes, that the God that we worship is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, three persons.
That have been revealed to us as the one God.
And so they added this line that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, and that with the Father and the Son,
The Holy Spirit is to be worshipped and glorified.
So you can pray prayers to the Holy Spirit
Now, normally when we pray, we pray to God the Father in the name of Jesus, because Jesus taught us to pray that way.
But very early on in the church’s tradition, prayers began to be offered to Jesus, because Jesus is God, and prayers to the Holy Spirit.
Because the Holy Spirit is also God.
One of the ancient prayers that comes to us from the medieval church
Is uh a hymn, a prayer to the Holy Spirit.
In Latin, it’s called Vene Sancte Spiritus, Come, Holy Spirit.
And it’s a beautiful prayer.
In English, it’s translated like this Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful, and kindle in them the fire of your love.
Send forth your spirit, and they shall be created, and you shall renew the face of the earth.
Amen.
And I love that prayer.
What a beautiful prayer.
This prayer is directed to the Holy Spirit because the creed tells us that the Holy Spirit, along with the Father and the Son,
are to be worshipped and glorified.
And for me, I am offering prayers to the Holy Spirit nearly every day because I recognize my need for God the Holy Spirit.
I want the Holy Spirit to fill my heart and my mind and my imagination every day
But in worshiping and glorifying the Holy Spirit, in recognizing that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, it’s important to recognize that the Holy Spirit
is not an energy or a power or a force that emanates from God.
The Spirit is God, co-equal, co-eternal, of the same divine substance as the Father and the Son
Now, you will never meet a bigger Star Wars nerd than me.
Well, it might be possible that you meet some bigger nerds than me.
Like I don’t wear the costumes.
I don’t go to the
Cosmicon things in some stormtrooper costume.
So I’m not that nerdy.
But in terms of watching the films, watching all the Disney series and t taking a deep dive into the Star Wars universe,
I’m there.
I’m top on the list.
And sometimes Christians who also love Star Wars might think, well, oh yeah, the father and the son.
We understand father and son.
Luke, I am your father.
Right?
We understand father and son relationships and they go, oh, well, the spirit must be like the force.
Because Obi-Wan Kenobi, Master Yoda, reveals that the force is this energy that permeates us, that surrounds us, that binds the universe together.
And there are some parallels, but I always want to caution Christians to say, well, the force in the Star Wars universe is maybe a hint.
towards the work of the Holy Spirit, but the Holy Spirit is not the force.
The Holy Spirit’s not a power, not energy.
The Holy Spirit is as personal as the Father and the Son.
But I understand it’s hard to imagine who the Holy Spirit is.
Father and Son are very earthly metaphors that we get, very personal.
Spirit does seem a little ethereal.
And so it’s hard to conceive, but we have to remember that the Holy Spirit is as personal as the Father and the Son
In John 20, Jesus after his resurrection is meeting with his disciples.
And in John 20, verse 22,
It says that Jesus breathed on them and said, Receive the Holy Spirit.
This may be John’s interpretation of the day of Pentecost recorded in the book of Acts.
Acts, as you know, was written by Luke, who also wrote his gospel.
So even though in the order of our New Testament, it goes Matthew, Mark, Luke.
John Acts, in my mind, I like to connect Acts to Luke.
It’s almost as if Acts is part two of Luke’s gospel
So in the Gospel of Luke, Luke’s talking about Jesus and what Jesus began to do and teach.
That’s language from the very beginning of Acts.
But then the Acts of the Apostles, the book of Acts, then is the story of the ministry of Jesus
by the Holy Spirit through his disciples.
So I like to connect Luke and Acts together.
They’re telling one big story in part one, part two.
John’s gospel is really different.
John has a different theological motivation and goal.
He orients things and orders things in the Ministry of Jesus a little bit differently.
And so this recorded experience of Jesus breathing the Holy Spirit upon his disciples, saying, Receive the Holy Spirit, this could be John’s way of understanding and communicating to us.
what happened on the day of Pentecost.
Now in Luke Acts, Luke records Jesus telling his disciples to wait in Jerusalem.
until they are endued with power from on high.
Jesus has given them a mission, a mandate, he’s told them
Go take this gospel message to the ends of the earth, make disciples, teach, baptize, all these things.
But before they are to launch into their work, they are to wait
to wait for the promised Holy Spirit.
And so then in the book of Acts, we pick up the story
where Jesus is still meeting with his disciples in Acts chapter one and then Acts chapter two.
The disciples are gathered.
They’re all together of one heart, one mind, and one accord.
waiting.
And then on the day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit comes rushing in, and the Spirit fills them and gives them the ability to speak in languages they did not know.
And then they spill out into the street, and people there in Jerusalem from different parts of the Mediterranean world are there and they hear the disciples.
speaking forth praise and and recounting the wonderful works of God in distinct and different languages.
So that’s the telling of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in Luke Acts.
In John’s Gospel, it happens this very first time Jesus is meeting with his disciples.
Right after the resurrection, he appears in a locked room.
Thomas is not there.
The whole story of Thomas touching the side of Jesus and examining his hands, that comes later.
And John in chapter 20 is drawing upon imagery from Genesis, the first book of the Bible
John does this in numerous places.
Most famously John opens his gospel, In the beginning was the Word, a direct reference to how Genesis one one starts.
In the beginning was God.
In John 20, 22, Jesus breathed on them.
And this is a direct parallel to Genesis 2, verse 7.
which records how the Lord God created humanity.
Genesis 2.
7 says, Then the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground
He breathed the breath of life into the man’s nostrils, and the man became a living person.
I love the beautiful artistry of that.
This is why I say that we are hybrid creatures.
We are both physicality, but we’re also spirituality.
We are a synthesis of the dust of the earth and the breath of heaven.
And John, in John 20, verse 22, is drawing upon this image.
Jesus is creating a new humanity by breathing the breath of life upon the church, just as God in the beginning breathed the breath of life upon a pile of dirt.
to create the original humanity.
And so people often ask questions because they they notice the parallel
between John 20, verse 22 and Genesis 2, 7.
And so they’ll say, is this the the same spirit?
I mean the.
The spirit that God breathed into Adam, is this the same Holy Spirit that Jesus breathed on his disciples
And the answer is very complex and nuanced.
The answer is, well, yes and no.
I have to pause this episode for just a moment to tell you that I have written a new book.
Incarnation: 8 Lessons on How God Meets Us.
This eight-week Bible study uses the uniqueness of the message translation to explore.
Explore God’s presence with us.
Link to pre-order is in the show notes.
It is the same action of the Holy Spirit.
Yes, the Spirit is the breath of life.
Remember what the Creed teaches us, that the Holy Spirit is the Lord and the Giver of Life.
So these two accounts in Scripture are showing us similar actions and activity of the Holy Spirit.
But in Genesis, God is creating the human spirit, which is distinct from the divine spirit
From the beginning, Christians have believed that there is a line of demarcation between Creator and Created.
We, humanity, we were created in the image of God, but the substance of our humanity is distinct from the substance of divine life.
And so, just as the Son and the Spirit are of the same substance of the Father, this is a divine substance
Our substance as humanity, even our human spirit, reflects the image of God, but it’s not the same kind of spirit
So when God the Holy Spirit comes upon us, this is God’s life-giving spirit that comes into union with our spirit
that those two kinds of spirits are different.
Hopefully that makes sense.
I know this is somewhat of a of a deep philosophical theological dive.
Maybe we should back up and ask ourselves, what’s important here?
Why is it important to know these things about the Holy Spirit?
I would say that there are two primary things that we need to know about the Holy Spirit that informs us and shapes us today.
There are two things about the work of the Holy Spirit that are absolutely essential.
And the first is the transforming work of the Spirit.
And the second is the empowering work of the Spirit.
The primary thing that I believe God the Holy Spirit, the Lord and the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son,
This Spirit, the Holy Spirit, is first and foremost transforming us on the inside.
Jesus on the Sermon on the Mount makes it clear that our problems are not just rooted in our behaviors.
Things like murder and adultery and breaking of oats.
The problem with humanity is not just what we do, the problem with humanity is there’s
A subtle kind of corruption in our hearts.
And so what we need is not just different ways of acting and living in the world.
We need different hearts
And this was written in the Old Testament.
There are prophecies.
Jeremiah 31-31.
Jeremiah said, There’s coming a time when God will start a new covenant.
with God’s people, and God will write his laws upon our hearts.
This is a metaphor that God is going to do an internal work in us
And so it is God the Holy Spirit who is at work transforming our interior life to look more like Jesus.
And for me, this is the beauty of spiritual formation.
There are some forms of the Christian faith that just focus on external rules.
Do these things, don’t do those things, and you’ll be alright
The problem with that is it’s only focusing on external behavior.
And what we need is to change from the inside out.
So, yes, of course, particularly for young people and of course raising kids, there are rules, and you need to tell people that this is what we do and don’t do.
But if the emphasis is only on externals,
then what we do with the corruption in our heart, the darkness in our heart, is we hide it and we suppress it.
But what Jesus is doing in this new thing, this new life, this new covenant,
Is Jesus is working in us through and by the Holy Spirit.
So it’s the Holy Spirit who is causing us to be people.
who are loving, people who are joyful, people who are peaceful.
You can look at the list of the the fruit, the produce of the Holy Spirit.
The fruit of the Spirit is love and joy and peace and patience, kindness and goodness and gentleness, self-control, faithfulness, things like this.
are the produce, they are the production of the Holy Spirit in our hearts.
So, if we want to be the kind of people producing peace and kindness in our world, we need God the Holy Spirit at work transforming us, causing us to be peaceful people.
So the primary work of the Spirit within us is transformation.
And then very close to that is this empowering work of the Holy Spirit.
One of the things that makes Jesus distinct from all other religious leaders is that Jesus not only gives us a list of commands.
Because all religions do that, all philosophies, all ways of life, they have their principles, they have their laws, they have their rules, they have their steps to a happy life.
Jesus does give us commands, summed up in love God and love neighbor, which includes loving our enemies
But what makes Jesus distinct is that not only does he give us these commands, but he gives us the promised Holy Spirit
who will empower us to live out those commands.
We were never designed to do the Christian life on our own by will, power alone.
The Christian life is not a matter of willpower.
It is a willingness to open up to the Spirit’s power.
Yes, we have to put intentionality, we have to create habits that allow us to work with the Holy Spirit, but you don’t have to do it all on your own.
This is why I pray every day, Lord, fill me with your spirit.
This is why on a regular basis I’m saying, come, Holy Spirit, and fill this servant of yours.
Because I know willpower only gets me so far.
You put a plate of cookies in front of me and you tell me, do not eat these.
I am gonna turn into a six-year-old, and as soon as you leave the room, I’m eating those cookies.
Willpower has never gotten me very far.
I know in the spiritual life I can’t do it on my own.
So not only is the spirit changing me, but the spirit is giving me the power, the energy.
To do what God has called me to do.
And so we need the Holy Spirit, even though we forget a bit about the Spirit
And over the last 120 years, there have been renewals of the Holy Spirit that have been needed and are helpful.
though in some corners of Christianity they’re considered controversial.
But the Azusa Street Revival
nineteen oh six through nineteen oh nine in Los Angeles, California, was a distinct work of God the Holy Spirit.
The Spirit was being outpoured upon the church.
This became
The groundswell for some of the Pentecostal denominations we know now, like the Assemblies of God, the Church of God, the Church of God in Christ.
Pentecostalism, which really found its impetus and its launching in the early part of the twentieth century, is now around the world.
There are now over seven hundred million
Pentecostal charismatic Christians, and they find their their roots in this revival led by a one-eyed black preacher, William Seymour.
And so look into the Azusa Street Revival.
Beautiful things happened there, and it was short-lived.
And then in the 1960s, so fast forward about 50 years.
In the 1960s and 70s, 1980s, and it’s still around today, there was a charismatic renewal that touched nearly every denomination.
Some denominations were more open to it than others, but there was this mysterious work of the Holy Spirit
Where in traditional churches, Presbyterian churches, Lutheran churches, Roman Catholic churches, Methodist churches,
People were opening to the Spirit in a new way.
There were expressions of the spiritual gifts happening in a new way.
And I believe it was a genuine work of the Holy Spirit.
And so let me take some time to share with you my own personal experience with the spirit
When I was 16 years old, I felt a very distinct call to be a pastor.
This came out of the blue.
I had been at a Monday night Bible study at a barbecue joint.
They had a side room and we didn’t eat the barbecue.
We just get a big plate of fries and a Coke.
And our youth pastor would lead us in a Bible study.
In this one particular Bible study, he was talking about love, particularly the Greek word, translated love most often in the New Testament.
is the word agape.
And agape means love that is unconditional, love that is eternal.
When we say God is love
We’re saying God is agape.
It’s a complete kind of love.
That night, after the Bible study, I’d returned home and I was
In my bedroom, getting ready for bed, I had just lied down, turned off the lights.
I was listening to some Christian music lightly in the background as I was falling asleep.
And I was wrestling with this thing I was learning about love
And so I wanted to pray.
I wanted to reach out to God.
And so with the lights off and the music low, I pulled back
the blanket and swung my legs around where my feet hit the floor, and sitting on the edge of my bed I began to pray.
And I said, God, uh you’ve done such wonderful things in my life, but I’ve never told you I love you more than anything.
And while I was praying that, it felt like I lost all the strength in my body, and I sort of fell off my bed on to my knees.
in that little area between my bed and the wall.
I mean it was probably like a little two foot area.
And it felt like someone was dumping just
buckets and buckets of water over me.
I felt a little dizzy.
And in that moment, which I now recognize as the power and presence of the Holy Spirit
I sense God calling me into ministry.
And I said, Lord, if you’re asking me to be
In full-time ministry, vocational ministry, I say, I say yes.
And as soon as I said yes, I began to feel lighter, as if strength was coming back to my body.
And then I sat on the edge of my bed and I flipped on the lamp and I grabbed my Bible that was on my nightstand.
And I said, Lord, if this experience is from you, I need some direction in Scripture.
Will you guide me?
And I found myself in the book of Acts, Acts one eight, and I read this verse And you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you shall be my witnesses.
And I paused and I thought, well, I experienced the power of the Spirit.
God called me to be a minister.
I guess this is from the Lord.
And that was in August of 1990, 35 years ago.
I can’t believe I’m coming up on the 35th anniversary.
of that experience.
So that was very early on and very formative in my Christian experience.
And so into my late teen years, I kept exploring the Holy Spirit.
And I was in Sunday school and before church on a particular Sunday morning, and I was asking questions of my Sunday school teacher because I wanted to learn more about the Holy Spirit.
And I was asking questions particularly about things I was reading about in the book of Acts, particularly the gifts of the Spirit, gifts of healing and prophecy and miracles, and of course speaking in tongues.
And I remember my Sunday school teacher told me, said, well, we don’t believe those things happen anymore.
Which left me puzzled
Because this was the same Sunday school teacher who, with all the other teachers and preachers that I had heard in that Baptist church,
They’d all told me, well, we read the Bible.
We’re Bible people.
We read the Bible.
We do the Bible.
We believe the Bible.
And then I thought, well, now you’re telling me parts of it doesn’t apply anymore?
So that sent me on a journey, months and months and months, reading books, talking to other Christians, and most importantly, studying the scripture, trying to understand the Holy Spirit.
Then when I graduated um high school, I went on the proverbial mission trip to Mexico.
And I didn’t even know that the group I was going with, they were charismatic Christians.
I didn’t know this.
And one night in Mexico, we had an evening off.
And at dinner, I was talking to one of the youth pastors leading the trip, and we started talking about the Holy Spirit.
And I said, I had questions.
And he said, Well, let’s finish our meal and then let’s get our Bibles and let’s talk.
After we ate, we spent the next four hours.
Late into the night.
He answered all of my questions, and every time I asked a question,
About who the Holy Spirit is, he led me to a different verse and showed me in the scripture how the charismatic dimensions
of our Christian faith are normal, that God the Holy Spirit is still present doing miracles
and pouring out upon people the love of God and the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
And so for me, this was my entry point into the charismatic renewal
I would go on to do seminary at Oral Roberts University.
I’ve shared in previous episodes how formative
My time was there.
Oral Roberts University, if you’re not familiar with the university, is Pentecostal Charismatic and its orientation.
I had classes in Pentecostal history, charismatic theology
But I also had classes in church history where our professor required us to read primary sources from the church fathers.
that opened up my whole love for theology and church history.
And so I was there at
O R U, and I wanted to go there because I labeled myself a charismatic Christian and it was a Pentecostal Charismatic University.
But while at ORU, my eyes were opened to the ecumenical church, that God was at work in different kind of churches.
Liturgical churches, again, traditional churches that had experienced the renewal of the Holy Spirit, God had not forsaken those churches.
And it also gave me a love for the historic church.
And as I look back, it’s interesting that what I learned at ORU and the tools I gathered there.
is what would lead me then out of the popular charismatic renewal.
After I graduated from seminary, I went to Southwest Georgia where I was a youth pastor for five years.
and then became the lead pastor of that church.
It was a non denominational church that was birthed out of the Charismatic Renewal, but I always considered that we were charismatics with seat belts on
We weren’t those wild, you know, holy ghost, holy rollers, you know, rolling down the aisle.
It w it wasn’t, it was charismatic light.
We were charismatics with seat belts on
And then as I began to lead that church, this was 2004-2005, I began to grow weary with the charismatic movement because for me it felt very disconnected.
From the great tradition and history of the church.
It was very in anti-intellectual.
There was very little emphasis on any kind of deep dive theologically.
it just began to feel very shallow and thin.
It was like the charismatic movement was a mile wide but only an inch deep.
And I was longing for something more, something deeper, something richer in the Christian faith.
I’d also seen how the charismatic movement was very sectarian.
They had a sense of elitism.
We’ve received the Holy Spirit, and for some charismatics, we speak in tongues, therefore we’re at a higher level than other Christians.
And for me, I just didn’t believe that.
I didn’t think one spiritual gift created an elite class of Christians
And then of course there was the prosperity gospel, which finds its roots in Oral Roberts, sadly I have to say.
But the prosperity gospel had taken hold of the church in the 90s and the 2000s, and unfortunately it’s still around today, which is a perversion of the gospel
And so because of these concerns, I ended up leaving.
Jenny and I, my wife, we were at a charismatic pastor’s conference.
And during one of the main sessions, I was just looking around and I thought, I just don’t fit here anymore.
These aren’t my people.
At the same time, I was beginning my doctoral work at Asbury Theological Seminary, which is Wesleyan in its orientation, so a lot of United Methodist, Wesleyan pastors there, even though it’s
It’s not affiliated with any denomination.
It has sort of a Methodist or Wesleyan orientation.
There I rediscovered the Trinity.
That God is not just spirit, but God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
I encountered liturgical forms of worship.
And I begin to see John Wesley, who was always a hero of mine, but I begin to see John Wesley as a model and guide towards a richer, fuller expression of the faith
that was both intellectual and experiential.
I think Wesley modeled for us the blending together of
ancient historical practices and modern contemporary practices.
Remember it was Charles Wesley
who was taking bar tunes and creating hymns out of them, what we know as modern contemporary uh worship music, that got started with the Wesleys.
So I loved in John Wesley this perfect blend.
And that then began to put me on a trajectory where I was no longer at home in the charismatic movement.
even though I wanted to hold on to at least the experiential aspect of the Holy Spirit.
And so while today I don’t call myself a charismatic, or if I am, I’m a charismatic with a seatbelt on, I’m open to the surprising works of the Holy Spirit.
But I have little interest in what would be called the popular charismatic movement.
I’m much more interested in following Jesus, making disciples of Jesus.
Recognizing the gifts of the ancient church and still open to how the Spirit might lead us to create innovations to reach people for Jesus.
At the end of the day, I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life, and I need the power and presence of the Holy Spirit every day
So let me encourage you to continue to pursue God the Holy Spirit and allow the Spirit to transform and empower your life.
So, thank you for joining me for this episode.
I hope you found it encouraging.
Go in peace and be kind.
This transcript was generated with AI and may contain errors.