Israel & Rachel Campbell "SOUP" Podcast

"Does the Holy Spirit make you weird?" Campbell Soup Season 2 Episode 28

Israel & Rachel Campbell | Flourishing Church

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As this Campbell Soup Podcast season comes to a close, we've decided it's time to tackle a topic that's sparked curiosity and even controversy in many: the influence of the Holy Spirit. With candid anecdotes from our spiritual journey, we unpack the myths and truths around the Holy Spirit. Our experiences, from Bible college to personal encounters, serve as a backdrop to our exploration of the authentic fruits of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, and more—and how they contrast with the weirdness often inaccurately ascribed to the Spirit’s presence.

Moving beyond the surface, we delve into the importance of nurturing a relationship with the Holy Spirit that transcends fleeting emotions. Our discussion traverses the landscape of spiritual 'goosebumps', diving into how a daily walk with the Spirit shapes patience, discipline, and our interactions within the church community. The quieter, yet transformative work of the Holy Spirit in our lives emerges as a theme, highlighting the Spirit's role as a counselor and guide through the milestones and the mundane.

We wrap up with an invitation to embrace the unpredictable yet powerful move of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Addressing concerns about misrepresentation, we share our heartfelt desire for both the presence and power of the Spirit—alongside the growth of its fruits within us. As we send off our listeners with a prayer for divine transformation in personal, familial, and communal spheres, we promise a rejuvenated return after the summer, carrying the torch of a life led by the Spirit into the next season.

Speaker 1:

Hey guys, welcome back to Campbell's Soup podcast. I am looking at our clothing today and we are telling a lot of stories with our gear. And so I'm just going to start off today by explaining first of all how cool is this blue church. Merch Flourishing Church, Los Angeles.

Speaker 2:

Love it.

Speaker 1:

You got your Brixton supply because that's saying I'm older, but I want to be young and cool like the cool kids at the beach. And then also your shirt says something.

Speaker 2:

Los Angeles Mar marathon finisher I know, but we're wearing so many things. There's so much messaging I just want to make sure to talk about, and then I've got my spider hat on, which is my favorite hat to walk hermosa beach.

Speaker 1:

That's what's going on with our clothing today. It's a lot. Of everything has wording everything.

Speaker 2:

We are definitely representing a lot today, but more than anything, we are representing the Campbell Soup podcast where we are a combination of a bunch of different ingredients, right, is that how that ties in? I'm trying to do a segue and I'm trying to keep us on the right path.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so today is going to actually be our very last season, this season's last podcast, and we're going to take a break for summer and you're not going to hear from us, and so we're no pressure. But this has got to be a good one. You got to pull out all the stops.

Speaker 2:

This is our last episode of season two and then, of course, season three will be opening up, probably September time, when it is the launch of a new school year. So we love this time together with you and I think that you know this would be a good time to let us know, give us some feedback on what are some subjects that you want us to talk about. We're definitely excited about how many people have downloaded. I was looking at around the world so that's kind of cool All of our friends in Australia and Germany and Indonesia, and then we love you all the people in the world East Coast.

Speaker 2:

And and then, of course, our LA peeps, who are our favorite favorites, because we love pastoring you and helping disciple you. So this is great, hey, so this is the topic of this week and, like you said, it's our last episode of this season and here is the topic. Are you ready? Talk to us?

Speaker 1:

Rachel, does the Holy Spirit make you weird?

Speaker 2:

make you weird. Well, that was a weird way of saying the title, so I guess not. I guess it doesn't make you weird, so let's talk about that. I think this is a great subject to talk about because we are right near Pentecost, which is 50 days after the ascension of Jesus. It's the birth of Christ. In fact, I got fact-checked on Sunday when I said that it was 2,024 years. I did not subtract the 33 years of Jesus's birth, plus the two years that we still argue with the Gregorian calendar whether his birth was on this date or whatever. So I'm just going to say it's close to 2,000 years. How's that?

Speaker 1:

I think that's good. Don't be so precise, then nobody can get mad at you I didn't correct you too hard on Sunday though.

Speaker 2:

You weren't the fact checker, but that's okay I never fact check Israel on a Sunday morning.

Speaker 1:

I definitely wait till Monday.

Speaker 2:

Oh, is that the trick? You can fact check whatever. Okay, so let's talk about this. Does the Holy Spirit make you weird? We're talking about the Holy Spirit and Pentecost, and I guess we would preface this by saying we love the Holy Spirit, we want the Holy Spirit, we need the Holy Spirit, and the Bible's pretty clear where Paul says man, I thank God, I speak in tongues more than you all. So talking about the manifestation of the Holy Spirit also says not to grieve the Holy Spirit. And so we, anything that we say today, we definitely are careful and we are hopefully calculated, and we actually we don't say that we're the experts on it and dogmatic about it, but I do think that this is an important topic to really talk about.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, absolutely. And our whole question is does the Holy Spirit make you weird? And our answer would be no, the Holy Spirit is not weird, but sometimes people are weird and I think that sometimes because of that, we can misrepresent or mishandle the beauty of the Holy Spirit. And Israel and I were both raised in, you know, the Pentecostal charismatic movement and I would never, ever, change how I was raised. I think about the times when I was a young girl, in our church services or even in our home, with my mom introducing the Holy Spirit to us, and I was marked by the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit. And, you know, I look back at the course of my life and I know Israel. You look back at the course of your life and we really were at young ages marked by the Holy Spirit and it ruined us for anything else. But when you experience the true Holy Spirit, the authentic power of the Holy Spirit, when you come into contact with that, you want nothing less and you don't want anything that's fake.

Speaker 1:

That's what I found, and we just want to start with maybe reading what the fruit of the Holy Spirit is to get us started in this conversation Because I think that Jesus said to us to be fruit inspectors, to be people that look at the fruit of the tree, look at the fruit of the person, look at the fruit of the life, and there's also look at the fruit of the Holy Spirit. And so in Galatians 5.22-23, it just says but the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such things there is no law.

Speaker 2:

I love that and I loved what you were talking about with me before. That is just even about that the law versus the Holy Spirit. And it is such a truth that if we don't have the Holy Spirit, we will be dogmatic. And you know, law abiding versus the fruit of the Spirit, which changes everything in our lives.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I love how Paul puts those two together right there, where he doesn't just talk about the fruit of the Spirit, but then at the end he says and against these things, there is no such law, and it's because we cannot combine the law with the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, and when Christians do, it makes the Holy Spirit more than you, and so and it's almost this judgment that I'm the one who is holy, because I know the Holy Spirit and I speak into you, know all of these things. That's bringing the Holy Spirit with the law and it's really dangerous and it puts a bad taste in people's mouths. And so I think we should talk about that when we should. When the Holy Spirit touches our lives, we would, we should begin to have the fruit of the Holy Spirit, which is love, joy. It's going the extra mile for someone else, it's the empowerment of God.

Speaker 2:

Oh, I love that. I am so true with that. It's I mean like even when you were saying it. It's so funny because it's like I have more of the Holy Spirit than you, which is like that's not a fruit of the Spirit, like so weird.

Speaker 1:

That doesn't feel loving.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that is such a weird comment, or even mentality, and you know, if you're really having a lot of the Holy Spirit. I love that old quote from Margaret Thatcher that said something to the effect of like, if you have to tell everybody you're a lady, then maybe you're not, and it's kind of like, if you have to tell everybody you're a lady, then maybe you're not. And it's kind of like if you have to tell everybody how Holy Spirit led you are, maybe you're not actually producing the fruit of the Spirit or Spirit-filled life, because the Holy Spirit wouldn't be making you say that. You know what I mean. It would be the opposite there would be love, there would be patience, there would be, you know, peace, there would be all of those different fruits in that. And that's what we want.

Speaker 2:

And I think that as you wrestle with this or we think about that, I think it's good for us to know, when you said something so powerful as the Holy Spirit isn't weird, but people are, and I think that that can. That's a t-shirt or it should be. I think that that can help you and I, because so many times we can become so hurt or, you know, jagged or whatever from what somebody does. But if we can realize, well, you know what, that's just the person, or that's just them overcompensating, or that's just them really in the flesh, that helps me. I don't know if that helps you, rachel, but I can almost put it in a box of oh, they're weird. Not the Holy Spirit, does that help you at all?

Speaker 1:

I think it does and it helps you have grace, because we all are human and it's so hard. Like Wieserle and I right now don't want to be judgmental of people that act weird with the Holy Spirit, because it's so hard, because that would not be the fruit of the Spirit if you and I acted that way.

Speaker 2:

Then we're doing the same exact thing.

Speaker 1:

But I think, you know, sometimes growing up there were some movements that we were, you know, part of. I remember in Bible college this is just one little story, but I just remember that we had this evangelist that was known for this new outpouring of the Holy Spirit and people would start clucking like chickens and one lady was crawling on the platform with her dress over her booty, so you could, it was totally exposed and she was just laughing and they were saying that it was the Holy Spirit.

Speaker 1:

And I'm a 19 year old girl that loves Jesus and loves the Holy Spirit and as a, I had a in that day. I had a very strong personal saying that that was the Holy Spirit.

Speaker 2:

And.

Speaker 1:

I really had some, you know, strong reservations, like that's not how the whole, that's not why the Holy Spirit comes, that's not how the Holy Spirit comes, and it just felt so wrong to be almost forced to say that these weirdo people that were like you know experiencing the presence of God in this powerful way.

Speaker 1:

But we're responding really fleshly and I think sometimes that we can do that. And you know it's hard because here we are, these human people, frail humanity, and we're whole where God gives us something to hold that's so supernatural and powerful that sometimes it's held wrong or it's held weird. But that's not the Holy Spirit being weird, that's a person actually being weird, and so I think we just have to be able to be able to divide that and not mock the Holy Spirit. But also it's okay to say that's out of order. That's not right, that's not a good representation. That doesn't show me any of the fruit of who the Holy Spirit is in the Bible.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I love that. And for me, because I am a little bit more analytical and you're a little bit more feeling, I think it helps me to just look at the day of Pentecost. And they actually did say this and so it's so important for me to go. They wondered if they were drunk, so there was a movement.

Speaker 2:

But if you look at the bookends of the day of Pentecost, the first one bookend that I would say is Jesus said to wait for it, and it says the disciples went back into that upper room. It says that there was 120 of them and they prayed. Not only did they pray, but they even did some church business. Hey, Judas, you know, has sent. We're going to have to replace Judas. You know, they did some of this stuff that they had to do. The Holy Spirit comes. People are like are they drunk?

Speaker 2:

Then Peter begins to preach the word of God, begins to speak God's word. What it says in the book of Joel, the book of Joel, and then it says bookend after this incredible thing is that they met in homes and they studied the doctrine and they took part of the sacraments and the Lord's supper, and that was the bookends of the Holy Spirit. And so I think for me that helps is hey, I don't have a problem with something that I can't explain. I don't have a problem with you know, a real powerful move of God. I want that. But I look for the bookends. What is their commitment to God's house before? What is their commitment to God's house after? What is the commitment to God's word before? What is their commitment to God's house after? What is the commitment to God's word before? What is their commitment to God's house after? And if so, there's no word and there's no commitment to God's house. But you just want to be drunk all the time? That is where I go. Oh, okay, Holy spirit isn't weird, You're just weird.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and when you say book ends, when you say that I'm trying to figure out because I don't want people to misinterpret what you're saying where you're not saying that the Holy Spirit ended.

Speaker 2:

No, absolutely not. I'm just saying frame the outpouring Holy Spirit. There's also these things that are kind of containing it, I guess not containing it, putting an end. But there's a front and a back to this incredible move. And the other thing that I would say and we can jump back on that if that doesn't make sense, but the other thing is, what I see often is the day of Pentecost happens, which is incredible, this outpouring of the Holy Spirit. No-transcript, be drunk. But what we do in the flesh is the moves that the Holy Spirit does and, like you said earlier, oh, my goodness, they've changed our lives. But he wants to do something new. He wants to put a new shelf, he wants to do something another, powerful. We don't just keep on trying to manufacture what he's already done. That's where I think you get weird, because you can't do the work of the Holy Spirit. It is special and when you try to make it, then I think we get weird. But that's what I think.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and at this at the same, in the same breath, and I know what you're saying. I think the thing that we want to also stress to every listener is that the Holy Spirit is not done moving and so by bookend, that's not what Israel is saying, is that it ended or that we can't have the Holy Spirit's here. When Jesus went to heaven, he ascended to heaven and he said that the Father is sending someone to help us. That's even better for us for this season, right, and so that was the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is the one who comes alongside us, and so it's not this thing where it ended at the day of Pentecost, but the Holy Spirit is a daily, it's a relational.

Speaker 1:

My relationship with the Holy Spirit is the most important thing that I have. It's my relationship with God, and so I welcome Holy Spirit. I welcome you to come alongside me and counsel me and give me wisdom and give me the, give me the fruit of your Holy Spirit. Where I'm able to close my mouth when it's not time to speak about a situation, I'm able to have supernatural, divine wisdom. I'm able to have the strength and the power and and supernatural love when I don't, when you know, my love is wearing thin and and that is who the Holy Spirit is.

Speaker 1:

And the Holy Spirit wants to be active and involved in every day of our life. And I just see sometimes where churches want the Holy Spirit goosebumps, but not willing to surrender to the Holy Spirit and say I want the Holy Spirit's leadership as a Lord over my life. Holy Spirit, will you come alongside me, will you give me the grace and the strength and the power to be able to do what, god, you've called me to do? And sometimes we make it so mystical right, we make it this thing that only certain people can have the Holy Spirit or only the leaders really know the move of the Holy Spirit, when really God gave us the Holy Spirit to empower us in this life, right, every single day.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I just bring some clarification to that If I say bookend, I'm talking about an encounter with the Holy Spirit, and we should have one every day, every moment. We should have these encounters, but the encounters should have some things that are holding that together. That it's just not an emotion. It's not just, like you were saying, just kind of a free for all. No, the church had this incredible encounter, but there was this front of man, just a really powerful fellowship and discipleship for 50 days. You know what I mean? That's, that's uh, you're going to rub me the wrong way, but I'm still committed. You're going to do something I the wrong way, but I'm still committed. You're going to do something I don't like, but I'm still committed. And then followed with the exact same thing, but now the power of the Holy Spirit. And then they start developing the fruit of the Holy Spirit.

Speaker 2:

And you know, and when Paul starts talking about speaking in tongues more than you all, he's, also starts talking about one of the fruit, but what the thing that he wants to focus on is the fruit of the spirit. And so we want that and we want both. There's not a um, uh, you know, one over the. We want both. We want Holy spirit encounters that we can never, it would be hard to articulate and describe, because it's so fresh, it's so new, it is so dense the glory, the cloud of the Holy Spirit, the power of God shows up that it is just it's hard to even articulate what happened. But then we also, just as much as that, we want the fruit of the Spirit and oftentimes I have met some people that are, you know, really like you were saying, super Holy Spirit Christians.

Speaker 2:

Yep, there's not a lot of fruit in that and I would not that, I would pick one or the two, but I would just say, man, you're missing out if you're not developing the fruit, because the fruit of the spirit would have you bite your lip a few times. The fruit of the spirit would say, okay, this is going to be a process, I'm not going to go from church to church because I'm I'm the one that's looking for the Holy Spirit in this. Well, the fruit of the Holy Spirit would be to have some patience and be in your church and and help develop that, not just, you know, go around and then you know those are the things that I think, yeah, where it's just an emotional response to what the Holy Spirit is doing instead of a life change.

Speaker 2:

Right and maybe that is good too to say is that don't underestimate God developing the fruit of the Spirit in you because you didn't have a goose bump. Yeah, do you know what I mean? And that doesn't mean we don't want the emotions, we want that. But, man, the real work is the fruit of the spirit. That's the real meat, and potatoes, the goose bumps is the dessert, and we don't live on dessert. We need all of that. So that's my analytical thoughts. So you're a little bit more of a feeler. Anything that you would say on that?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I mean, I love that and I think that it's both are so important and so good is like I don't ever want to be cynical about the Holy Spirit and I know your heart is the exact same as I never want to be cynical where I put the Holy Spirit, like in this definition, where you, holy Spirit, I want you to come. But these are my stipulations.

Speaker 1:

I want to be open. I want to. I want to experience the fullness of what God has for me. But I have found that the Holy Spirit is one of the descriptions of the Holy Spirit is counselor, and that's not. Sometimes. When I've experienced the Holy Spirit as a counselor, it hasn't felt really awesome and good. Usually it's. This is what I need, you, rachel, this is what I'm instructing you to do.

Speaker 1:

I want you to get more in the word. I want you to trust me with one of the kids, or I want you to trust me with something in your marriage. And it's not this lightning from heaven, but that's the power of the Holy Spirit. And when I think back on my life personally, the Holy Spirit has given me the power to rise up in scary moments. I know that I've experienced that. But also the Holy Spirit has caused me to sit down and wait on the Lord and just have faith and trust when I don't see what he's doing. That's the power of the Holy Spirit too, and so I feel like if we only are good at the lightning strike moments of the Holy Spirit, the wind, then we're missing a really beautiful and big and daily part of who the Holy Spirit is right.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I kind of I mean the way my mind thinks is I'm kind of like that Valentine's thing, like I want to get you a Valentine's. You deserve it on Valentine's. But Valentine's isn't the only time you and I date and Valentine's is not the only time you and I give gifts to each other. So you know, I may not get the world's largest chocolates or the largest flowers.

Speaker 1:

But you're the world's greatest husband all year.

Speaker 2:

But do you know what I mean and it's almost like the Holy Spirit, a little bit of that is we don't do it daily, and so then there's this pressure to have this. Valentine's Day is such a pressure, we've got to have everything perfect for the perfect Valentine's, when I feel like and maybe this is bad husbandry is, the pressure on Valentine's isn't as big on me as maybe for some people because we are constantly doing it, and I think that that's a real good takeaway, or key how do you keep from being weird is don't let the Holy Spirit be a Sunday only encounter or a after worship song encounter, or you know what I mean. It's like no, no, no, no, no. Make the Holy Spirit a part of your everyday life and I think it will change, transform you. Then you're not on this. You know having to try to capture this, this, whoa, it was really crazy what the Holy Spirit did, and I'm again like you said, man, we don't want to discount that man.

Speaker 1:

We don't want to become critical. I would rather the stock of the Holy Spirit growing and increasing in my life be, you know, incrementally, more than these. You know all of those kind of manic Holy Spirit moments instead of consistent Amen. I'm totally with you and I think, I think, a way that I picture that is if the Holy Spirit's available to all of us to have a great relationship and to know the ways of the Holy Spirit, to know the nature of God. But we have to initiate it. We really initiate.

Speaker 1:

And if you want a good Holy Spirit relationship, a personal relationship with the Holy Spirit, then you have to nurture it. You have to wake up in the morning and say Holy Spirit, I just acknowledge that you are here with me and I welcome you to come, be my teacher, give me strength, give me the grace for today and begin to have a conversation in your prayer life to the Holy Spirit and asking the Holy Spirit to reveal himself to you. And, holy Spirit, will you just guide me and lead me today? And he is, he will. God is so faithful and this is an attribute of God that is ever present and always available.

Speaker 1:

And I think again, I would say that sometimes we mystify it, and that's, I think, when it gets weird, or that's when it gets mean, that's when it gets misrepresented, is when we almost try to catch the Holy Spirit in a bottle, shake it up and then wait for the perfect moment to release it. When, really, we're just called to be carriers of the Holy Spirit of God and when you have a nurtured relationship with the Holy Spirit, there's this well that keeps going deeper and deeper and deeper, and then, when you come to a moment where you really need to call on the power of the Holy Spirit, it's there and it doesn't feel weird. It's something that wells up like a spring inside of you, and it doesn't have to be so mystical.

Speaker 2:

I love that and there's scripture to that I'm thinking of. When Peter is at Cornelius's and the Bible says that as he began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell, and so there wasn't the B3 organ playing, there wasn't the flag dancers and none of these things I'm attacking. I'm just saying we can think that we've got to have this solo and we've got to sing this song for this amount of time and we've got to. You know all those things Peter just was talking in. The Holy Spirit fell because Peter consistently this is, like you know, third or fourth recorded outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the disciples. So this is, this is normal. The Holy Spirit falling and doing is just normal. It's not weird anymore because it's like what you said. We've made it such a part of our life. It is so much old Testament.

Speaker 2:

They would um have a seat for Elijah, which was the actually the um, you know the, the type and shadow of the Holy spirit. So they would have an. They would set an empty seat for Elijah in their. So they would just kind of like make it like it was always there. And I think that we need to do the same thing. It's like no, the Holy Spirit isn't in this one moment of a service. No, the Holy Spirit wants to be in the business meeting. The Holy Spirit wants to be in the car.

Speaker 1:

The Holy Spirit wants to be at your dinner table. The Holy.

Speaker 2:

Spirit wants to be in the car. The Holy Spirit wants to be at your dinner table. The Holy Spirit wants to do that, and I think we get less and less weird when it's consistent versus we got to really make this one count because we may not have another moment like this until we go to this conference. We're really going to get it now. No, no, no. I feel like if we're consistent with that and then we get the fruit of it.

Speaker 1:

So I love that. I'm saying too much, no, I love it. And the more room we make for the Holy Spirit, the more the Holy Spirit fills. And I'll never forget when I was in Eugene, Oregon, I just came back to the Lord and I was just so overwhelmed with the good things God had done that I was a janitor in the church because I never wanted to leave the house of God. I just was so thankful and I was in this hallway all by myself and I was cleaning, just doing my job, and we had a guest prophet named Ernest Gentile and he was this older man and he was at the end of the hallway and I just felt the glory of God.

Speaker 1:

He wasn't doing anything fancy, he was just being a man of God who had a deep well of relationship with the Holy Spirit and I could feel it on him when he was in the same hallway as me and I remember being like God. That's what I want. I want to be such a carrier of the Holy Spirit that people can sense it when I'm around, and that's not with lights, camera action when you get on a stage. That's a lifestyle. It's making space for the Holy Spirit and when we make the space, the Holy Spirit fills.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I just love that. And again, not to be critical, not to try to critique or anything. We don't know what the Holy Spirit's going to do. And again, not to be critical, not to try to critique or anything. We don't know what the Holy Spirit's going to do and he could do something.

Speaker 2:

He could do whatever he wants to do he could and he could make you weird and we'll cheer it on. We just want more of the Holy Spirit and we, what we want to hopefully from this just little podcast is just don't put that pressure on yourself, don't get offended by somebody else, because the last thing we want to do is I think you were mentioning in the production meeting is just like you know where people are exiting maybe charismatic Pentecostal churches and going to more liturgical because somebody misrepresented the Holy Spirit, so we don't want to be that represented the Holy Spirit, so we don't want to be that. We want the power of the Holy Spirit to move every day, but we're also very aware of wanting the fruit to be developed just as much. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Amen. Amen Well this is the Holy Spirit's attractive.

Speaker 2:

Come on Well and let's just pray. It's real simple. Come on, make this prayer with me. Holy Spirit, we honor you, we need you. Thank you, jesus, that you died, rose again and told us to wait for the Holy Spirit, because you knew God could empower us with the Holy Spirit. So we thank you for that trinity. We thank you for that power of the Holy Spirit that can begin to produce the transformation in the fruit of the Spirit. So we pray for every listener. Whether they're driving in the car, they're on the treadmill, they're on a walk, holy Spirit, fill them so much that it will be like it was not man, it wasn't mustard up on their own, it was just a fresh outpouring of you, and we pray that you continue to do that in our individual lives, our families and our churches. In Jesus' mighty name, we pray, amen.

Speaker 1:

We'll see you after summer.

Speaker 2:

Is that it?

Speaker 1:

That's what we're saying we love you guys.

Speaker 2:

Love you, guys, you.

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