{"id":8875,"date":"2020-12-10T23:03:44","date_gmt":"2020-12-11T03:03:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/?p=8875"},"modified":"2020-12-10T23:03:44","modified_gmt":"2020-12-11T03:03:44","slug":"soul-stuff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/?p=8875","title":{"rendered":"Soul Stuff"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/Pavlovitz-22.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/Pavlovitz-22.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"267\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-8876\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/Pavlovitz-22.jpg 800w, https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/Pavlovitz-22-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/Pavlovitz-22-768x512.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Real love is contagious.  It is infectious.  When something is purely of God, it can&#8217;t be contained within the walls we fashion for it.  This kind of love always yields a fruit that can&#8217;t be managed or manufactured or scheduled.  Jesus said this was the expectation-defying, unpredictable activity of the Spirit that would characterize his people (John 3:8).  This was the movement of the early Church, a movement that grew exponentially in a way that modern churches all want to replicate but rarely can because we&#8217;re all trying to engineer man-made miracles.  We craft baptism events, we schedule worship nights, we plan revivals.  We so love to talk about following the Spirit&#8217;s leading, but in practice we really want to run the show and get God to work for us.  One of the most freeing lessons I ever learned as a pastor is that I cannot do spiritual things; I can only do physical things.  I can only respond in flesh and blood to what I believe God is saying, and then rest in the results.  God is the only One who can do soul stuff.  My most pressing job as a pastor is often to get out of the way &#8212; and it ain&#8217;t easy.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212; John Pavlovitz, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sonderbooks.com\/Nonfiction\/bigger_table.html\">A Bigger Table<\/a><\/em>, p. 153<\/p>\n<p>Photo:  Gundersweiler, Germany, December 1999<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Real love is contagious. It is infectious. When something is purely of God, it can&#8217;t be contained within the walls we fashion for it. This kind of love always yields a fruit that can&#8217;t be managed or manufactured or scheduled. Jesus said this was the expectation-defying, unpredictable activity of the Spirit that would characterize his [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,13,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community","category-god","category-love"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8875"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8875\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8877,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8875\/revisions\/8877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}