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A WORD FROM THE EDITOR

About This Bible Study Serie s

Have you ever wondered what the Bible is all about? What's in it? Why is it so important for Christians? Is it relevant for people in the 21st century? Should I care about what's in the Bible? Why? What difference will it make in my life? The study series What's in the Bible, and Why Should I Care? offers opportunities for you to explore these questions and others by opening the Bible, reading it, prayerfully reflecting on what the Bible readings say, and making connections between the readings and your daily life. The series title points to the two essential features of meaningful Bible study: reading the Bible and applying it to your life. This unique and exciting Bible study series is designed to help you accomplish this two-fold purpose.

The books in What's in the Bible, and Why Should I Care? are designed to help you find relevance, hope, and meaning for your life even if you have little or no experience with the Bible. You will discover ways the Bible can help you with major questions you may have about the nature of God, how God relates to us, and how we can relate to God. Such questions continue to be relevant whether you are new to church life, a longtime member of church, or a seeker who is curious and wants to know more.

Whether you read a study book from this series on your own or with others in a Bible study group, you will experience benefits. You will gain confidence in reading the Bible as you learn how to use and study it. You will find meaning and hope in the people and teachings of the Bible. More importantly, you will discover more about who God is and how God relates to you personally through the Bible.

What's in the Bible?

Obviously, we answer the question "What's in the Bible?" by reading it. As Christians, we understand that the stories of our faith come to us through this holy book. We view the Bible as the central document for all we believe and profess about God. It contains stories about those who came before us in the Christian faith, but it is more than a book of stories about them. The Bible tells us about God. It tells how a particular group of people in a particular part of the world over an extended period of time, inspired by God, understood and wrote about who God is and how God acted among them. The Bible also tells what God expected from them. Its value and meaning reach to all people across all time—past, present, and future.

Why Should I Care?

Meaningful Bible study inspires people to live their lives according to God's will and way. As you read through the stories collected in the Bible, you will see again and again a just and merciful God who creates, loves, saves, and heals. You will see that God expects people, who are created in the image of God (Genesis 1), to live their lives as just and merciful people of God. You will discover that God empowers people to live according to God's way. You will learn that in spite of our sin, of our tendency to turn away from God and God's ways, God continues to love and save us. This theme emerges from and unifies all the books that have been brought together in the Holy Bible.

Christians believe that God's work of love and salvation finds confirmation and completion through the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We accept God's free gift of love and salvation through Jesus Christ; and out of gratitude, we commit our lives to following him and living as he taught us to live. Empowered by God's Holy Spirit, we grow in faith, service, and love toward God and neighbor. I pray that this Bible study series will help you experience God's love and power in your daily life. I pray that it will help you grow in your faith and commitment to Jesus Christ.

Pamela Dilmore

They were tumultuous times. An empire many thought would never fall had retreated from the scene, leaving behind a world of uncertain alliances and economic turmoil. However, as the Romans left the British Isles in 405, a flicker of a new age remained. On the margins of Ireland, a group of Celtic monks was listening for God's voice and miraculous things were happening. The faith the Romans had brought was being reborn.

These Celtic Christians had incorporated the story of Jesus into their culture with unique images. One of them was the use of the wild goose as a symbol for the Holy Spirit, in contrast to the traditional symbol of the dove. With its awkward bearing and obnoxious honk, a goose seems a strange sign of the Spirit, God's continuing presence in the world. However, as Ron Ferguson noted in his study of the Iona Community, a contemporary Celtic Christian network, the wild goose is "a turbulent sign which is more appropriate to living the faith in our day than is the gentle dove. We live on a rollercoaster. "¹

One of the biblical phrases associated with the Holy Spirit, the third of the primary names by which Christians talk about God, is the Comforter. However, while Christians take comfort in knowing that the presence and power of Jesus are still with us through the Spirit, there is not much comforting about the way the Spirit works. The Spirit hovers, creates, blows, and explodes upon people throughout the Bible. Images associated with the Holy Spirit are not only the dove but also fire, cloud, and wind. A visit from the Holy Spirit in Scriptures usually means that a character's life is about to change dramatically.

Why is this good news? For people living in similarly tumultuous times, the idea that God is not going to leave us alone is encouraging. If the Bible is right about who God is and how God operates, then the world is infused with the power of transformation and we experience that power through the work of the Holy Spirit. God came into the world in Jesus in order to save it, and the witness to what God was doing then and what God wants to do now is the Holy Spirit.

In this book we will explore several ways that the Bible talks about the role of God's Spirit. Though it may seem to be the most insubstantial aspect of God, there is no escaping the Spirit as a major character moving the story of salvation through every part of the Bible. In Chapter 1, we will look at how the Spirit creates and renews from the early days of Creation into our present lives. Chapter 2 lifts up dreams, visions, and the role of trusted mentors in the work of the Spirit to inspire God's people with a new word for a new day. Chapter 3 explores the empowering work of God's Spirit as it plays out in some of the Bible's most colorful figures and in Jesus' ministry. Finally, in Chapter 4, we look at how people have sensed God's continuing presence through the Holy Spirit.

The watchword for this series of studies has been the question, "Why should I care?" How is the story of a spirit, even a holy spirit that moves like wind through human history, supposed to be compelling in a world that considers such thinking magical? For people who have given themselves over to Jesus, however, this talk is not craziness. It is a way of expressing something real about God. They know, as members of those early Celtic Christian communities knew, that there is nothing static about God. God is always on the move, upsetting apple carts and sending ordinary people on to do extraordinary things. The Holy Spirit language helps make sense of how God does this surprising work. Why should you care? Because the Holy Spirit just might be waiting to do the same with you!

As always in these writing enterprises, I am indebted to those who keep me faithful to a calling that is far beyond me. More so than usual in this book I am grateful for my teachers who have helped me understand the work of the Holy Spirit. Eugene Rogers in particular was instrumental in helping me love the study of the Trinity and helping me know why I care about the Holy Spirit.

The people of Franktown United Methodist Church, who know so much about wind and water and the ways the Spirit has moved on our edge of the world, have also provided me with spiritual sustenance and creative challenge that led to this book. The far-flung network of former students I worked with in campus ministry continue to inspire me with their following of the Spirit––journeys I now enjoy sharing through occasional visits and numerous Facebook postings. My family, as always, has encouraged my stories and enriched my days. My children have taught me that parenthood is a grand and glorious adventure. For writing partners and poets who never knew they touched me, I am also thankful.

So here you are on the verge of beginning an exploration into a book on the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is waiting as well to give birth once more to what God will say and do in you. Let's begin!

Alex Joyner

¹From Chasing the Wild Goose: The Iona Community, by Ron Ferguson (Collins, 1988); page 17.