Lent Day 22: Thankful for the Living God

"I keep looking for your aha moment," said my dissertation adviser. "What is it that you learned?"

I defend the dissertation next week. It's been written, rewritten, and revised over and over. I've learned a bit of this and a lot of that. But I started asking the question during prayer, "What is the aha moment? For what have I spent all this time?"

So ... this morning, it hits me like a thunderbolt. What IS significant from all my studies? From reading the endless historical material and wading through Evangelicalism, which interests me less than a fig? What stands out from a few years of studying early Pentecostals in all their chaos and earnest efforts?

This is it: the story I have to tell is a simple understanding and an affirmation of similar experiences that transformed my own life during my childhood and teens =

Ordinary women encountered the power of the Living God. Regardless of what they faced thereafter––legalism, gender bias, or suffering––they could point back to a time and place where they spoke in tongues as proof of empowerment. God was personally invested in them and was greater than anyone or anything they would meet or endure.

Today, that power of Spirit baptism is available to you and to me. Appropriate it for yourself: it's God's free gift for all those he has rescued from darkness into the light of his presence.

Read more:

*Those of low estate are but a breath, those of high estate are a delusion; in the balances they go up; they are together lighter than a breath. Psalm 62:9

*Christ says, "Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it." Mark 10:15 

*And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. Romans 8:28 NKJV

Prayer: Thank you, Jesus, for loving even us. In childlike faith, we come to you and ask for your power, to live for you and do your work. Take away our pride while reminding us that you find even us worthy of your loving favor. Thank you, Jesus. Amen.

Holy Roller

You'll enjoy this read - a nice break this summer, sent to the first person who writes to tell me what surprised them the first time they went to a Pentecostal service. RK

Here's the publisher's description:
Julie Lyons was working as a crime reporter when she followed a hunch into the South Dallas ghetto. She wasn’t hunting drug dealers, but drug addicts who had been supernaturally healed of their addictions. Was there a church in the most violent part of the city that prayed for addicts and got results?

At The Body of Christ Assembly, a rundown church on an out-of-the-way street, Lyons found the story she was looking for. The minister welcomed criminals, prostitutes, and street people–anyone who needed God. He prayed for the sick, the addicted, and the demon-possessed, and people were supernaturally healed.

Lyons’s story landed on the front page of the Dallas Times Herald. But she got much more than just a great story, she found an unlikely spiritual home. Though the parishioners at The Body of Christ Assembly are black and Pentecostal, and Lyons is white and from a traditional church background, she embraced their spirituality–that of “the Holy Ghost and fire.”

It’s all here in Holy Roller–the stories of people desperate for God’s help. And the actions of a God who doesn’t forget the people who need His power.

Cover art:

Author Bio:

Julie Lyons is an award-winning writer, editor and investigative reporter who for more than 11 years served as editor-in-chief of the Dallas Observer, an alternative weekly newspaper owned by Village Voice Media. She holds a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University and a B.A. in English from Seattle Pacific University. She and her husband, Larry Lyons Jr., live in Dallas with their son.