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Advent devotions 2008

JAN. 8 - IT WAS THE HOLY SPIRIT
By Doug Schirch, associate professor of chemistry

SCRIPTURE: Acts 19:1-7 (NRSV)
Scroll down for complete Scripture.

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DEVOTIONAL:
As a professor at another college, when I told my advisee (a new transfer student from a community college) that he had to take three required courses in philosophy as part of his new general education requirements, he moaned. When I added that the Christian college's general education core also requires three courses in theology, his response was curt. "You got to be kidding!"

Life circumstances had forced him to transfer to a new school against his will, and meeting a new set of graduation requirements was going to require him to "do extra time" in philosophy and theology classes. He used that phrase the way a prisoner would. Although he had been baptized into a Christian church, it wasn’t something he took seriously. He resented the courses as impositions by do-gooders trying to make him into something he wasn't.

So you can imagine my surprise a couple years later when I heard that he was active on the campus ministries team, helping plan spiritual retreats for other students and volunteering with other students to do acts of charity for the poor.

I congratulated a colleague from the Department of Philosophy and Theology that they must give amazing lectures to have so turned around this antagonistic, skeptical student. "Oh no," said the instructor, "it was the Holy Spirit. We can't do work like that." They mentioned personal sharing and conversations they had with the student, but stressed that all those did was open a door.

If transforming our surroundings seems like too much of a challenge, even for professors who are used to being all powerful, the apostle Paul reminds us in these verses to remember more than the message of repentance that came out of Nazareth.

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SCRIPTURE: Acts 19:1-7 (NRSV)
While Apollos was in Corinth, Paul passed through the inland regions and came to Ephesus, where he found some disciples. He said to them, 'Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers?' They replied, 'No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.' Then he said, 'Into what then were you baptized?' They answered, 'Into John's baptism.' Paul said, 'John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is, in Jesus.' On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. When Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied -- altogether there were about twelve of them.

Posted at 15:12 #