Paul invites all followers of Jesus to pursue the stuff of the Spirit. As we seek Him and move from spectators to participants, we receive what we need for the building up of each other.

This is the Holy Spirit season. We must be ready to embrace the reality of the second coming of Jesus and to be used by Him until He comes again.

When we recognize that we're invited into the Trinitarian community of love, following Jesus becomes the natural outflow of our lives.

Dancing requires partners submitting to one another. The Trinitarian community of love is a dance where the persons of God submit to one another. As apprentices of Jesus, we've been called to reflect this dance in our love for one another.

The doctrine of the Trinity can be incredibly confusing and can quickly seem irrelevant to our lives as apprentices of Jesus. However, the last extended teaching of Jesus with His disciples was rich with Trinitarian language. Through Jesus we have somehow been invited into the glory of the Trinitarian God, and the fact that we can't exactly understand that shouldn't eliminate the joy and wonder it brings.

We tend to look for ultimate joy in sources that cannot provide it. True joy is only found in the embrace of our Heavenly Father.

"Prince" is the only of Isaiah's titles that implies ruling, but it's not an iron fist kind of rule. Rather, Jesus is the "Prince of Peace" - He is the One in whom there is real and abiding peace; and it's only under His rule that peace can be found. Jesus came to usher in the Kingdom of God.

Jesus as the "Everlasting Father" shows us that His ability as planner and His might as deity is paired with a deep Fatherly love for His creation. Our heavenly Father deeply and perfectly loves each of us, and Jesus became the full and complete embodiment of that love.

A plan is only ever as good as its ability to be carried out. Jesus is not just "Wonderful Counselor", but He's also the "Mighty God", able to do all that He sets out to do. Isaiah's prophecy reflects the might and power of Jesus to do what He says He will do.

Isaiah called Jesus the “Wonderful Counselor” as a sign that He would both orchestrate and undertake the greatest plan in history. From the very story of Creation, Jesus was God’s plan “A” to redeem a broken people and to give purpose and meaning to our lives.