Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Acts of the Holy Spirit


I'm reading the book of Acts, and thought I'd post some observations, question and wonderings here for anyone that wants to read along and discuss 'stuff'...

During an earlier study on this book, I saw how the true Central Character of the story is the Holy Spirit. In my own mind, the full title of this book is The Acts of the Holy Spirit.

Starting in Acts, chapter 1 - It doesn't take long until we encounter him*:

Acts 1:2 (NLT)
until the day he was taken up to heaven after giving his chosen apostles further instructions through the Holy Spirit.

--- This is the first time the Holy Spirit is mentioned, yet the day of Pentecost has not yet occurred in the story sequence. I guess this is an anachronism fitted in by the narrator?

-- As I recall the original term for Holy Spirit is Ruach Hakodesh... Meaning holy wind or breath -- review time:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Spirit

http://jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=865&letter=H&search=Holy%20Spirit

*As the articles linked make clear, God The Holy Spirit is not male or female. This is merely a limitation in the English language which lacks gender-neutral personal pronouns.

**Here's a good : Online Bible

3 comments:

DeAnn said...

ew ew pick me! I have an idea here! lol

When I started thinking about this for myself I could easily grasp the idea of a man named Jesus, and came to accept that he chose to "make a way" back in to relationship with God for me. It was really nice of him to come as a real guy. God ... big, wonderful, invisible yet apparent ... I believed there was a God and it really helped when Jesus said "If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.**slt" Then, that left me with the Holy Spirit to sort of work out some idea on. Yes, I know the Bible has a lot to say about the Holy Spirit, but HS is widely misrepresented (not in the Bible, but sometimes by people) it seems to me. I am delighted and amazed that God "built" us to be indwelt by the HS ... that is what it says right? This Holy breath of God comes as a seal to a relationship I can choose and as a comforter as I sojourn towards whatever "place" Jesus went to prepare.

Well, I am going to re-read the Acts with the tag "of the Holy Spirit" in mind. When I read that here I thought, "Of course, That's right ... without the Holy Spirit the early church would just be a bunch of people arguing over "the Jesus Brand" ... churches really only function well when the Holy Wind is present. Oh, I am so glad you mentioned Ruach Hakodesh and explained the meaning ... love the holy wind along with the question ...from whence cometh the wind ... or who might know the ways of the wind ...

Well, lovely to think about this as I re-read. Thanks for setting this up.
~DeAnn

gmc said...

Hi DeAnn,

Thanks for that comment. Along the lines of your words about the Holy Spirit indwelling... I recently read a great image of this using music as the metaphor.

Here's the link, yuo'll need to copy and paste this into your browser address line -I,m slow with the HTML formatting...
http://stevebell.com/2011/01/jazz-and-the-burning-bush/

- grant

DeAnn said...

thanks ... I am unable to copy and paste with a macbook ... hahaha ... I'll peek back at this w/ my phone later! As far as that HTML goes ... some of my home laptops will and others won't ... and I think it has to do with cookies. To try, it is that little green icon on the new post page and it opens up the proper window ... and then some magic happens or not! Again thanks!