Why is the church so divided over the Holy Spirit? Why is it some freak out? This is a strange phenomena among us that to mention the Holy Spirit in our lives is worse than believing Satan works in our lives. He can get direct billing anytime without raised eyebrows. Yet, mention the Spirit of God and suddenly one better be looking for a new congregation.
I understand the threat. I once believed the opposite of what I do today. What I don't understand is who started this panic. When the church shut down the Holy Spirit it shut out God working among us. That (spirit) form is the only way God can work and we say (said) we don't believe it.
What happened to change my mind? What made me begin to believe the Spirit works today? The Bible did. I was reading Ephesians 3:14-21 where it says the Spirit gives strength to the inner man and I said aloud, That's not right. I caught myself speaking back to the Word correcting it and it stopped me from continuing the false belief that the Spirit no longer works directly in a Christian's life. He does; the Bible says so.
One of the things that happened to me as I began to search this new possibility was listening to our older men pray (who didn't believe the Spirit worked either). They would pray things like, God guide, guard, and direct us. Really? Direct us.....like indirectly maybe? Or, God, give Terry a ready recollection of the things he's about to say. But, I bet they didn't mean directly...did they?
We have tossed the Spirit out and He is so gentle He has willingly left. When this happens we are left to do church on our own. His fruit of love and joy, etc., cannot possibly hold up for it is His fruit. The spirit of hatefulness, and division, and gossip will prevail when He is absent....and we've proven that in too many places.
The Holy Spirit isn't spooky. He is God in Spirit form which happens to be Holy. If the Spirit is booted out the only thing left is our conglomerate business minds doing our best to pull off average. Average worship, average commitment, average life, average experience; no relationship with God and no anticipation of His working for we accepted the false notion He doesn't anyway.
The Holy Spirit is controversial. How we tried to toss Him on His ear out the back door while trying to keep the Father coming in the front door is most amazing. The church of Christ is in desperate need of the mighty power of the Spirit functioning with us today.
4 comments:
Preach it, my brother!
I'm with you. If the Spirit isn't working what chance of fruit do we have?
Darin
Do you think the fear can come from a lack of the ability to control the Spirit and how He can manifest in people's lives? I think that is a central issue, in the overall 'fear' of the Spirit.
I'm reminded of Paul Harvey's comment about nuclear energy--we'd be more willing to encourage it if our first awarenes of nuclear had not been bombs in Japan. In a similar way, many of us first "heard" of the Holy Spirit via visions about 700 foot Christs, televeangelists, etc. I also believe LACK of embracing and teaching are the VERY things that leave a gap to be filledby charlatans. In view of Acts 19 and "rebaptism", I find it interesting that we don't generaly "rebaptize" folks, who were baptized with no knwoedlge of the Holy Spirit.
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