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Draw near: Fragrance

Lynne Baab • Tuesday November 1 2022

Way back in my 20s, when I was joining the staff of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, an older staff person prayed for my commissioning. She opened her prayer with 2 Corinthians 2:14: “But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads in every place the fragrance that comes from knowing him.” Then she asked that God would help me spread the fragrance of Christ. At the time, I had little idea what she meant or what that looked like, and I frankly thought her prayer was slightly weird.

I mostly forgot about that prayer...

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Draw near: Praying to the gracious, tender, truthful Spirit

Lynne Baab • Tuesday October 25 2022

Imagine that you feel called to be a minister. You train for it and take a position in a church. You struggle with ill health for a lot of your life, serving a church for a while and then withdrawing to cope with illness. What might you ask for from the Holy Spirit?

Rev. Thomas Lynch (1818-1871), a minister in England whose health impeded his ministry, wrote two dozen hymns that were published in various hymnbooks in the 1800s. I am not familiar with any of them except one specifically addressed to the Holy Spirit. I have loved this hymn for several...

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Draw near: Praying to the Holy Spirit

Lynne Baab • Tuesday October 18 2022

I wonder how many of you remember this praise song:

Spirit of the Living God, Fall fresh on me, Break me, melt me, mold me, fill me.

In the 1980s we sang it often at church, so I assumed it came from that era. I just learned that it was written in 1926 after the author, Daniel Iverson, heard a sermon on the Holy Spirit at a revival meeting. Rev. Iverson was a Presbyterian minister who served congregations North and South Carolina and Georgia, then planted seven congregations in Miami. (You can listen to a contemporary version of his song here, with a fascinating change...

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Draw near: Praying to Jesus, our priceless treasure

Lynne Baab • Tuesday October 11 2022

Recently I’ve been looking through old songbooks. I am very fond of a 1980 praise song by John Wimber, with the opening line referring to Jesus: “Isn’t he beautiful? Beautiful, isn’t he?” I had an AHA moment recently while playing that song on the piano. The world has so much ugliness in it. What a relief to turn to Jesus who is so beautiful. We might meet him in the Bible, in song, in our prayers, in nature, or in the faces and personalities of people we love and those he loves. Jesus’ beauty is soothing and restoring. Jesus’ beauty reminds...

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