Jack Levison - 40 Days with the Holy Spirit

Praise for 40 Days with the Holy Spirit

A splendid addition to the literature of Christian devotion, biblical study and, yes, mission, for effective mission. Spend 40 days with the author, being open to the Spirit, and you will be challenged and rewarded, better equipped for Christian discipleship and mission. Levison invites us to be honest with ourselves as we allow the Holy Spirit to engage them in everyday life, work, and witness.

T HOMAS K EMPER,

General Secretary, General Board of Global Ministries, The United Methodist Church

Because I get too many requests for blurbs, I have had to say no to most of them in the last months. For this book I am making an exception! Jack Levison will help us retrieve the tragically lost centrality of the Holy Spirit in the mainline Christian world.

Here comes the return of the fire and the wind!

R ICHARD R OHR, OFM,

Center for Action and Contemplation, Albuquerque, New Mexico

This new book contains a beautiful selection of scripture passages, personal stories that help unpack those passages, suggested prayers, and most importantly, the invitation to grapple with how we understand the Holy Spirit and how it operates in our lives. The title promises 40 days with the Holy Spirit; Im confident the book will prompt many more days of reflection than that, and I will be recommending it to those to whom I provide spiritual direction.

S USAN J. S TABILE,

Professor of Law and Faculty Fellow for Spiritual Life, University of St. Thomas, and author of Growing in Love and Wisdom:

Tibetan Buddhist Sources for Christian Meditation

Jack Levison is one of the most inspiring, engaging voices in contemporary Christianity. He combines a scholars intimate knowledge of scripture with a writers style, empathy, and humor. Every page brims with reverence for God and common-sense wisdom. Here he continues the journey he started in Fresh Air by entering into our daily spiritual quest with lessons gleaned from the Bible and prayers wrung from lifes joy, pain, and chaos. I read 40 Days with admiration for Jacks humility and awe at his sense of justice toughened by devotion.

D AVID L ASKIN,

award-winning author of The Childrens Blizzard

Jack Levisons lively new book invites the Christian community to be reacquainted with the person and ministry of the Holy Spirit. I read it as a Pentecostal pastor/theologian and it provoked me to consider anew how the Spirit is actively at work in my life and in the world. Though there are differences in pneumatology within the body of Christ, all who read this book will have to affirm that the Spirit is moving and Jack has caught its zeal!

J OHNATHAN E. A LVARADO,
Senior Pastor, Grace Church International,

Atlanta, Georgia; Professor of Theology, Beulah Heights University

Jack Levisons new devotional will guide you into the theme of the Holy Spirit in Scripture, aiming for spiritual formation, not just spiritual information. My favorite part: the simple prayers at the end of each reading. A beautiful, accessible, and soul-nourishing resource!

B RIAN D. M C L AREN,

author of We Make the Road by Walking

40 Days with the Holy Spirit reminded me of Mertons Thoughts in Solitude and Brother Lawrences Practicing the Presence of God. I believe its destined to be a classic for people who long for deeper spirituality.

M IKE R AKES, Lead Pastor,
Winston-Salem First Church

2015 First Printing

40 Days with the Holy Spirit: Fresh Air for Every Day

Copyright 2015 by John R. Levison

ISBN 978-1-61261-638-4

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture references are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Bible (NRSV), copyright 1989 by the Division of Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., and are used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture references marked (THE MESSAGE) are taken from The Message. Copyright 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.

Scriptures references marked (NIV) are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version , NIV Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture references marked (KJV) are taken from the Authorized King James Version of the Holy Bible.

Scripture references marked ( J RL) are the authors own translation.

Scripture taken from the Common English Bible , CEB Copyright 2010, 2011 by Common English Bible.TM

The Paraclete Press name and logo (dove on cross) is a trademark of Paraclete Press, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Levison, John R., author.

40 days with the Holy Spirit : fresh air for every day / Jack Levison, author of Fresh air.

pages cm

ISBN 978-1-61261-638-4 (paperback)

1. Holy Spirit--Prayers and devotions. 2. Holy Spirit--Biblical teaching. 3. Spiritual exercises. I. Title. II. Title: Forty days with the Holy Spirit. III. Title: Fresh air for every day.

BT121.3.L477 2015

231'.3dc23 2014042294

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in an electronic retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any otherexcept for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Published by Paraclete Press
Brewster, Massachusetts
www.paracletepress.com
Printed in the United States of America

To my mother
Norma Jeane Levison

FOREWORD

J ack Levison studies, meditates, prays, and writes of the place of the Holy Spirit in our lives with more skill and understanding than anyone I know. His latest book, 40 Days with the Holy Spirit, is conspicuous for its lively, down-to-earth conversation in this much neglected and misunderstood aspect of the Christian faith. He insists that this is not a specialist interest, not something for advanced Christians to take. He is determined to open the doors of hospitality widely to every last one of us. And he does it.

Under Dr. Levisons guidance it doesnt take us long to realize how pervasive the presence of Gods Spirit is throughout our scriptures. In the original languages in which the Bible was written, Hebrew and Greek, a single word (in Hebrew ruach; in Greek, pneuma) is translated as air, breath, breeze, gale, angel, demon, or for a disposition (like a spirit of) lust or jealousy, depending on the context. This is obscured further by the many uses the word spirit or Holy Spirit is put to in giving an account of the life of creation and salvation.

Most famously, perhaps, pneuma was used by Jesus in conversation with Nicodemus, who was puzzled by Jesus talking about being born from above: The wind [pneuma] blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit [pneuma] (John 3:8). The same word is used in a single sentence, first to designate the wind that blows, and then, a few words later, for the spirit that is Gods life-giving breath. Which is to say that you cannot see God but you can see/experience what God does.

This wind/Spirit occurs at the beginning of the Bible in the second verse of Genesis and at the very end at Revelation 22:17 as the wind/Spirit gives the final invitation, Come. Throughout the Bible, Levison is relentless in bringing into focus the instances of Wind/Air/Breath/Spirit that should keep us aware and responsive to the ways God works in and among us. He discovers Spirit language in Moses and Bezalel, Job and Daniel, Ezekiel and Isaiah, Joel and Zechariah, Elizabeth and Mary, John and Jesus, Peter and Paul, and numerous others as our scriptures tell the story of God entering the lives of men and women in a participating way, the very breath of God breathed into us.