Waiting For the Spirit

After my last post where I took a peek at the dynamics of the early New Testament life of the believers, my mind and heart have been attracted to continue to contemplate more implications and connections with what I am discovering here in Romans 15. I am starting to see more and more links from here to the glimpse we have of what happened in the lives of those first converts.

There has certainly been no shortage of attempts to duplicate the experience of the early church all down through the ages. But very seldom is anything seen or experienced that comes close to the real encounter that those people had with the transformational power of God in their hearts. Nearly all of the incidents purported to be fresh outpourings of the Holy Spirit turn out to be based on some other premise or foundation and end in bitter disappointment or worse, turn into some tragic comedy.

I believe that this is the case because we fail to pay close attention to the issues of the heart that are an important part of that story. And even more so we fail to appreciate the intense feelings God has about the necessity of complete freedom of choice which is required for the heart to properly respond and thrive and mature as He designed. Because of the many lies that we still endorse about God at the heart level we are still incapable of being exposed to the real presence of the Holy Spirit in its fullness. That kind of encounter would prove to produce the very opposite results of that experienced by the early believers. What would very likely happen to most of us if we were to be exposed to the pure presence of fire like that seen in the upper room back then would be closer to what Ananias and Sapphira experienced when they attempted to pull off their little plan.

It is because God loves us and by His grace protects us from His presence of pure passion that we are not granted our demands for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. And while we certainly need that Spirit to prepare us for such an encounter, and God is faithful to send it to convict us and offer us opportunities to grow and be transformed in preparation for such an encounter, it is in His mercy that He does not yet bestow that gift in its full power. Otherwise, the results would not end up bringing glory to God's reputation but would further confuse people about the real truth about Him.

I believe that the outpouring of the Holy Spirit is very much like something called an “after-burner” that is installed on certain aircraft. I am no expert on such things, but I understand that when the after-burner is kicked on by the pilot that he knows he is in for the ride of his life. Whatever direction his plane is pointed in will be the direction he will move toward but at an extremely higher rate of speed than he was formerly traveling. After the after-burner is turned on is no time to change one's mind about what direction they want to go. When this switch is flipped you had better already be aimed in the direction you want to go, for wherever you are directed you are now going to get there much faster.

Just so, I believe, is the outpouring of the Holy Ghost in our lives. If God were to grant us our demands for Him to turn on the “after-burner” of the Spirit in our lives before our hearts were properly aligned with His ways and His will, we might certainly have a great display of power and commotion. But the end result would likely always result in tragedy of monumental proportions and would bring dishonor to God. It is the work of the Holy Spirit to provide guidance and convictions and gentle promptings to prepare us for the next stage in our experience, and He can do that without using the full power of His presence. But we must be willing to cooperate and have a spirit of obedience, humility and be teachable.

We do have a part to play in our preparation for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in our lives just as did the early believers. And we would do well to carefully study just what it was that they did to prepare their hearts for that wonderful experience. But at least part of what they did in preparation I believe is laid out right here in these chapters of Romans that I have been immersing myself in over the past few weeks.

This preparation involves changing my attitudes and relationships toward those with whom I differ who are part of the body of Christ. It even involves transforming the way I feel toward those whom I may not think are part of that body. For the transformation needed as preparation for the reception of the Holy Spirit is the synchronizing of my heart and disposition to reflect that of God Himself. I need to learn to view others through heaven's eyes and with heaven's spirit by properly being aligned by the still, small voice of the Spirit from heaven that speaks in the quietness of my soul.

Much of the alignment that takes place in my heart is the outcome of my own choices to cooperate with His promptings. Praise and gratitude are things that God cannot do for me, they must be things that I choose to do and to participate in willingly and often. This extends to other areas of my life as well, like how I manage my finances, my attitude about my “stuff”, whether I am generous or stingy, how I treat those I interact with daily. The alignment of my soul is also affected far more than I may realize by the things I fill my mind with from the media, the music I listen to, the movies I watch, the news that forms biases in my thinking.

I must learn to be open to having my direction changed if I am to come into proper alignment for the Holy Spirit to empower with boldness. I must be willing to be transparently honest with my own heart about my motives, my fears, my desires, my emotions and my gut-level beliefs. All of these things are factors in the direction in which my soul is aimed, that determine the target that is the end result of the direction I am really facing. What are my real goals – not just the politically or religiously correct things I should say, but what is deep in the recesses of my heart? What direction would I move in radically if every desire of my heart were to suddenly be powerfully enabled?

James speaks about the dangers of a double-minded person and that they should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. When my left brain professes noble aspirations but my right brain still holds secret desires for revenge or is allowed to dwell on lust for any number of objects, then I am a double-minded man and not ready to an after-burner to blast me into oblivion. A double-minded person is like having the two front wheels of your car seriously out of alignment. If one wheel is headed in one direction and the other is directed in another direction it becomes dangerous to try to drive the car at all, much less at extremely high rates of speed.

It is God's mercy that waits for me to allow Him to bring the two sides of my brain into harmony with each other and to be synchronized with His direction for my life before imparting the power of the Holy Ghost into my experience. But it is also true that I do not have eternity to play around and remain double-minded. I have only a limited time to choose to cooperate with God in His offer to restore me to wholeness and to align me to seek His face and His heart.

So, what is the goal, the target toward which I need to aim both my left intellectual mind and my right brain where my emotions and spirit and heart are largely resident? I believe that it is the heart of God that is so filled with the passion of pure, selfless love that needs to be the object of all my desires and ambitions. When I become filled with an all-consuming desire to know God and the power of His love, then it will be safe for Him to release the tremendous potential of the power of the Holy Spirit into my experience, for the result of that encounter will result in propelling me straight to the object of my focus and my affections – dwelling in the presence of the One in whom is all satisfaction and fulfillment and being ravished by a love I cannot not imagine.

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Unity

Now may the God who gives perseverance and encouragement grant you to be of the same mind with one another according to Christ Jesus, so that with one accord you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, accept one another, just as Christ also accepted us to the glory of God. (Romans 15:5-7)

What is the true purpose for which anyone should become a Christian? And how do we even come up with that answer? Is it because it has been drilled into us by someone else or some organization? How difficult is it for us to even get to the bottom of our own real motives?

I think it is very important for each person to strive to become more honest with their own heart about their true motives for everything they do. Of course, one of the greatest obstacles to doing so is the fear and shame that might get stirred up in the process. We live around people who have many expectations about how we should act and what we should believe, so we attempt to at least somewhat comply with their opinions to keep their respect. We also live with the insistent voices from our own past by many who still maintain a strong influence over our reactions and beliefs even though many of them may no longer even be alive. We can still hear their warnings, threats or intonations whenever we find ourselves in certain situations and we have to deal with those voices both from the past and the present in some way. Even if we live in violent rejection of those voices our attitudes and behaviors are still largely being shaped by them.

So what does this all have to do with being a Christian? I believe it has a great deal to do with it. For it seems to me that the vast majority of people claiming to be Christians have very little real transformation evident in their lives that resonate with what is described in the New Testament. Most Christianity is based much more on traditions handed down to us by the people around us than by any other influence. Oh, some of us are very vocal about beliefs that we claim makes us qualified to profess the name “little Christs” which is what the word Christian really means. But how many people professing to be His followers really emanate the spirit of humility, compassion, acceptance, forgiveness, kindness and selfless love that marked the life of Jesus, the original Christ?

The teachings of Paul and all the rest of the apostles in the New Testament are all focused on trying to train people and mentor them into what it really means to be a true follower of the Messiah and Savior of the world. What I see in these verses here in Romans 15 reminds me very strongly of a similar description that I read in Acts about the very first group of believers that were filled with the genuine animation of being sincere and devoted followers of their Lord and Friend, Jesus Christ. Take a look at the similarities between these two passages.

They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone kept feeling a sense of awe; and many wonders and signs were taking place through the apostles. And all those who had believed were together and had all things in common; and they began selling their property and possessions and were sharing them with all, as anyone might have need. Day by day continuing with one mind in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they were taking their meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved. (Acts 2:42-47)

People back in those days were just as confused and disappointed with religion as most people are today. They had tried all sorts of formulas and rituals to achieve a meaningful connection with God in one way or another, but none of them had brought real satisfaction to the heart or joy into the life. Even the disciples who had literally spent over three years walking and interacting with God in the flesh still did not get it. They simply were too confused about reality to understand or relate to either Jesus or each other in the ways that God desired for them to do. It was not until some time after Jesus left this earth and all the believers spent considerable time together in self-examination to get in touch with the reality of their own condition that they were ready to be filled with the true revelation of the presence of God. It was not until they had experienced what Paul is describing here in Romans and had chosen to lay aside their differences, their fears, their pain that blocked their ability to truly accept each other and allowed God to heal them from the inside that they could experience the outpouring of the Holy Ghost that Jesus had promised to send.

Paul knew that this was not supposed to be just a one time event at the beginning of the Christian church. This was supposed to be the dynamic experience of every Christian believer who should ever join the community of faith which is the body of Christ on earth. The signs and wonders that took place in the book of Acts was not supposed to be unique only to fade away into just exciting stories repeated by future generations. These experiences were to be ongoing as powerful testimonies throughout all time as a witness to the kind of life genuine Christianity could produce in the life of a true believer.

So what has happened? Why is it that we see so little of the power of God in our world today? Why is it that nearly all supernatural demonstrations end up being a means of leading people into counterfeit belief systems that purport to be the real thing but are infiltrated with deceptive notions about God that distort the real truth about His character? And why do most attempts today at achieving unity in the body of Christ revolve around means other than that described in the New Testament? Why do we believe we can induce God to send His Spirit by compromising with false teachers or whipping up emotions in an attempt to feel unnatural excitement or any number of other methods we dream up?

We are living in an intense time of famine as predicted in the Old Testament. We are living in a parched land where the Word of God has been nearly lost and no longer is desired or sought after to receive life. We think it is good enough to let others do our studying for us. We have transferred our attentions to anything and everything that is offered to try to find life and answers and satisfaction. But when we finally slow down enough, we hear the pain of our own hearts and we know that it just isn't working out for us. Our entertainment, our addictions to all sorts of placebo's that we hope will give us the spark of life that we crave, our attempts at relationships to make us feel better – all will fail us. Even our religion has become so superficial and intellectual or maybe emotional that we cannot sense our heart thriving as it so much needs to do.

Only God can give us perseverance and encouragement. Without these things we find ourselves withering away at the heart level even while our outward experience may appear to be doing very well. Many of us can't even hardly feel our hearts anymore because we have keep it so suppressed and hidden for so many years. We cannot even remember the joy of freedom that our spirit once relished when we were little children. But that is exactly why Jesus said we must become as a little child or we can never enter the kingdom of heaven. It is too often only the little children who still know how to be really honest and live from their hearts.

Verse four here in Romans tells us that the Scriptures are the source from which we can receive the needed perseverance and encouragement that verse five tells us comes from God. I believe that if anyone is serious and hungry enough and tired enough of looking for life and love in all the other places, that they will find real hope and life by coming back to receiving these things from God in an earnest and honest exposure to the Word of God. If a person wants to find the true motivation for living and is willing to challenge all their assumptions about reality, God will meet them in a fresh and dynamic way when they choose to immerse themselves in a sincere study of the Bible carried out by listening to their heart at least as much as their head.

I know that when I began to ask the tough questions of the heart and began to challenge my own beliefs and assumptions that my lifelong habit of daily study was transformed from acquiring a lot of religious information to a dynamic dialog between my soul and my God. I have been repeatedly forced to give up deep-seated opinions and beliefs and even doctrines that I had embraced all of my life as God met me and challenged me to reconsider what I thought was really true. And I am overjoyed to testify that the more I have perceived the real truth about God and about reality that the big picture just keeps getting better and clearer and my heart thrills sometimes through encounters with a love I could never before imagine even existed.

But here in this passage I am challenged again by perceiving my own attitudes and experience and my relationship with other believers in contrast with those described in this passage. I am not in harmony with what I am reading here and I am praying earnestly for God to transform my life and experience and especially my spirit to reflect what is being taught to me here. I want to be a part of another encounter with the Holy Ghost in unity with fellow seekers just as the early believers did. But I must be willing to be prepared at the heart level just as they were or it will never happen for me.

God, continue Your work in my heart. Draw me deeper into Your will and fill me with Your disposition. Teach me Your ways of thinking and feeling and perceiving. Show me Your character and Your face much more clearly so that my life and spirit will more accurately reflect Your glory and attract others to You just as the early believers experienced. Make me a channel of Your love and beauty and grace for Your reputation's sake.

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Force and Passion

I have been thinking and writing about the subject of passion for several days now and this morning an additional insight came to me along these lines. Possibly one of the most dangerous ingredients to mingle with passion, one of the most corrupting elements that destroys the purity of holy passion as it proceeds from the heart of God and desires to flow through our lives, is the subtle, pernicious desire for force.

Force is one of the most addictive ideas that exists and it is impossible for us to become free from this addiction in our own efforts. Force infiltrates nearly everything we do or think about but at the same time contaminates everything it infects. The desire for force and control over others transposes the meaning of the words that God uses to convey the truths of reality to our hearts and minds. Belief in force creates false images in our hearts about how God feels about us and blinds us to the real truth about God's character.

Force is one of the worst elements that has distorted every religion on earth as well as those who think they are not religious. Force is so pervasive that it is taken for granted and we assume that it is simply part of God's order for life. But it is important to become aware that from heaven's perspective, force in relationships is anathema to freedom and true freedom is the only atmosphere in which love can exist. God is love and as such, God and force are polar opposites when it comes to heart relationships.

The reason that many view the idea of God's passion with suspicion at best or even worse believe that it is wrath is because of the deceptive influence that force has had on our lives and experience. Because nearly all of the encounters we have had with passion have involved some level of force that has distorted and perverted it, we have believed that passion itself is possibly inherently evil and so we come up with all sorts of opinions about passion that are not true because of our false assumptions.

But when one begins to perceive the pure and holy passion that pervades and motivates all of heaven and that God desires His children on earth to experience, when one begins to taste of the beauty and transformational power that true passion can have on the soul, when we begin to experience the spontaneous love that pure passion can awaken in the heart, the rapid increase of faith and the atmosphere of hope that is produced in the mind whenever holy passion is present – then it becomes more clear how corrupting this element of force really is and how badly it has distorted our concepts and ideas of reality.

As I thought about this I wondered how this principle might apply to the passages I am currently studying as I listen for God's thoughts in the book of Romans. When I opened to chapter 15 and glanced around it became immediately clear that it has a lot to add to my understanding of this passage. In fact, it seems to explain a lot of things and give clarity that I had not noticed before.

Now we who are strong ought to bear the weaknesses of those without strength and not just please ourselves. (Romans 15:1) In this world it is always the strong who exploit the weak through the abuse of force. This is linked back to 14:1 where collectively Paul is telling us that in God's kingdom the strong have strength for the purpose of embracing, empowering and lifting the burdens from those who have less strength instead of attempting to force them to conform to our ideas.

The example of Jesus is used in this passage and Jesus is the most startling example of the absence of force. While many like to suppose that Jesus employed force to get His way in the cleansing of the temple and other situations, those notions come more from our preconceived assumptions far more than from a careful examination of the record. Jesus exercised a great deal of power in the arena of the spirit realm, but natural power from true God-likeness and force against the will are not synonymous. Remember one of the most important texts in the Old Testament, 'Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,' says the LORD of hosts. (Zechariah 4:6)

In Romans 15 Paul makes it very clear that the power that Jesus had was in His willingness to relate to others from the attitude of a servant. If He had indulged in the use of force it would have been impossible for the events that led up to His death to have ever transpired.

Force never accomplishes the kind of unity of heart and mind that God intends for His people who make up the body of Christ on this earth. What I see described here in this chapter are clear indications of attitudes and relationships that are free of the corrupting influence of force. And the results of choosing to love instead of force is the unity that produces praise and gratitude to God with one voice together. This is the glory of God in reality and is the glory that Jesus came to reveal to us from the Father.

This passage goes on to explain how Jesus related to different groups of people from different cultures and backgrounds. It shows how Jesus related to legalistic, pious religious Jews in such as way as to attract them through every means possible relevant to their beliefs about their religion and their ancestery. On the other hand He also related to Gentiles who had a completely different perspective on reality but likewise He treated them with a servant attitude to reveal to them the great mercy that fills the heart of God.

The purpose of everything that Jesus did with both Jews and Gentiles was to reveal the real truth about God in order to attract both “insiders” and “outsiders” of organized religion to unite their hearts in free expressions of adoration and love for the God who created them all. The unity created by the presence of the Spirit of Jesus is free of all coercion and force but is still largely foreign to our way of thinking. God does not compel obedience, for to do so would be to destroy the very love which is essential for the heart to thrive. God's ways are always based on attraction, not on compulsion.

I am keenly aware that there are many instances in the Bible that can be easily construed to contradict this truth. But it then goes back to examining the motive of the one evaluating these events. What is it that I want to find in the passage or story? Am I trying to justify a preconceived opinion or am I willing to question my assumptions about how God operates? The spirit with which I come to look for truth has a great deal to do with the conclusions that I arrive at. And I believe that God is far more concerned about the attitude of my heart in my pursuit of truth than He gets uptight about whether my facts are all in perfect order or not.

Again, even in our search to find truth we can become conscious of the pernicious influence and contaminating effect of force in our reasoning. Whenever I sense in my own spirit a craving to impose my ideas on another person and somehow force them to believe as I do, I realize that I am being compromised by this evil virus. I find very often that I have to guard my words and pray earnestly inside for God to change my attitude and spirit whenever I become aware of this internal sensation of force infecting my words and spirit. I realize that if I indulge in the temptation of force that I cannot reflect the servant spirit that was the hallmark of the life of Jesus.

It may seem like the kingdom of heaven will hopelessly flounder if we do not at least occasionally use a little force to overcome the darkness of sin. But force is never God's method and will only obscure the true character and plans of God. Force confuses the heart about the true nature of God. The true characteristic of which force is the counterfeit is the effective power that comes from the presence of selfless, passionate love. This is the true power of God according to Jesus Christ. This is the real power of the Holy Spirit that will bring final resolution to the controversy between Christ and Satan.

From a human standpoint this makes little or no sense. But it is a fact that the wisdom of God usually looks like foolishness to men and the wisdom of men is definitely foolishness from heaven's viewpoint. But if we take the teachings of Jesus seriously we will begin to see that God's ways are definitely not man's ways and all of our thinking and assumptions have to be transformed and rewired if we are ever going to be safe to live in the presence of the fiery passion of God's love. Force creates an element of resistance that causes deadly, consuming inner fire whenever it encounters the selfless passion of heaven. I want to become free from this terrible influence and to be filled with the true passion of selfless love that marked the life of my Savior.

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