How Much More God has for Us

First published in the Sunday Bulletin of Church of the Holy Trinity, 6th Sun. after Pentecost, July 1, 2018. 

During the summer of 2018, a group of us from Holy Trinity attended a conference at Kanuga Conference Center, Hendersonville, NC.  The Conference speakers were the Reverends John Barr and Mike Lumpkin, long-time priests in the Diocese of South Carolina.  Their presentations were based on Luke 11:13, "If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

 Mike and John challenged us with this:  

• Today is a day we have not lived yet- how do we live it well?  
• How do we learn to live each day with un-frantic, joyful and peace-filled purposefulness?  
• How do we fill each day with what God has for us that day?  
• And a quote the Early Church Father, Irenaeus, “The Glory of God is a life fully alive.”

We explored Scripture with these thoughts in mind, looking particularly at the early chapters of the Gospel of Mark and Paul’s Letter to the Galatians.  What we discovered in these scriptures, and what we as Christians should already know, is that the key to living each day well is having God’s Holy Spirit infuse that day with God's power, purpose and plan.  Without this, we can easily live ordinary lives focused on the wrong things.  With the Holy Spirit and "the great freight train of God’s grace," to quote John, there is no such thing as an ordinary life.