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Holy Spirit disruptions: We are God’s beloved

Lynne Baab • Tuesday June 22 2021

If you read your Bible, pray, fast, keep a Sabbath, or engage in other ways of drawing near to God, then God will love you more. Right?

Have you ever believed that? Does a part of you still believe it?

For six years in a row, March through May, I have taught a masters level course for Hope International University, a Christian university. The topic of the class is leading groups into communal spiritual practices. After a week of definitions of spiritual practices and categories, I spend the whole second week, one week of eight, on the motive for spiritual practices, and one...

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Providing Christian care: The importance of spiritual practices

Lynne Baab • Friday August 24 2018

I am having a conversation at coffee hour with a woman who is struggling in her job. As she talks about her discouragement, I say, “Can I say a quick prayer for you?”

She says yes, and right there amid the people chatting over coffee, I put my hand on her shoulder and pray for God’s guidance, strength and mercy for her.

Pastoral care that is uniquely Christian must have a component of prayer. Sometimes we can pray aloud for the person we are caring for as I did at coffee hour that day. Other times, the prayer is silent within us, because...

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Contrasts: Engaging in spiritual practices because of grace or guilt

Lynne Baab • Thursday June 14 2018

I’ve been speaking and writing about the Sabbath for more than a decade, but I recently had an aha experience about Sabbath keeping in my life and its connection to other spiritual practices.

Much of my speaking and writing about spiritual practices flows out of my own Sabbath observance. The Sabbath taught me how spiritual practices work: we know God loves us, so we set up structures in our lives to draw near to this God of abundant blessings.

When we were young adults, my husband and I lived in Israel for 18 months. Our apartment was in a Jewish neighborhood in Tel Aviv, so...

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On Pentecost, let's ponder the Holy Spirit

Lynne Baab • Saturday May 19 2018

We celebrate Pentecost this Sunday, the day when we remember the coming of the Holy Spirit to the people gathered in Jerusalem for the Pentecost festival. You can read about it in Acts 2 (which you can access here.) Almost two millennia after Pentecost, we benefit every day from the presence of the Holy Spirit with us.

One of my seminary professor called the Holy Spirit the “shy” member of the Trinity. This professor was referring to the fact that the Holy Spirit’s role is to bring glory to the Father and the Son. Thus the Holy Spirit is the least visible...

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