God desires to be in relationship with you. So much so that he paved the way to relationship through great personal sacrifice in Jesus. Even more so, he chooses to make his dwelling inside of us through the Holy Spirit. Where is God? Inside you, if you’ll welcome him. God, the community of love between the Father, Son, and Spirit, makes a choice of where to reside. The God who was active together before creation began and is the lifeforce of all creation, and of all new creation, chooses to take up residence in you. Are you open to that? Are you worthy? No! But God has made you worthy. So, the Holy Spirit is poured out on ALL people. We do not get to choose who God pours his Spirit out on.
The Holy Spirit, if you will listen, speaks into your life to bring you into transformation into the image of God for the world. I’ve often wondered why I’ve struggled to make time to sit in the presence of God to listen. Why am I comfortable studying the Bible, digging into the hard questions of Bible knowledge, but I struggle to sit with Scripture with my ears open, ready to hear a word from God that I need to hear? If I am honest with myself, and I hope you’re wrestling with this question as well, I don’t want to change. A relationship with God requires change. This change in you is not your own work, as if you can obtain salvation. This change is one of submission. The Holy Spirit’s work in your life brings about noticeable change in how you live, act towards others, your ability to be at peace, have joy, and show love. Most of us like being angry and having disdain for “those people,” whoever they are. The Holy Spirit calls you into deeper acts of love and reveals where the love of God needs to increase in your life.
Throughout this series, I’m really pushing us to wrestle with two major questions: Are you open to the Spirit? Will you develop disciplines (habits, rhythms) in your life to listen to the Spirit?
I am on vacation this week. We are finally making a trip out to Texas with our daughter after a few cancelled attempts this last year. Alex Franklin will preach while I am gone. Pray for him as he listens to what God needs him to share and as he prepares. He is focusing on the balance between listening to the Holy Spirit in our lives and the Bible guiding our lives. Here are a few questions to wrestle with as you prepare to hear a word this Sunday:
One fear we have in listening to the Spirit is that we might be just hearing our own voice and calling it the Spirit. This is a caution we all need to keep in mind. At the same time, when we read Scripture without an ear open to the Spirit’s guidance, how do we know that we aren’t simply reading our own bias into Scripture?
The first followers of Jesus didn’t have the New Testament as we have it today. They had the Old Testament, the teachings of Jesus, and the Apostle’s teachings. The early church saw that it was essential that the Gentile followers of Jesus knew the Old Testament. Old Testament references and imagery is found all over the New Testament letters. What role did the Holy Spirit play in the lives of the early followers of Jesus? (BTW, the New Testament, as we have it, wasn’t agreed upon till 300 years after Jesus).
If you couldn’t have access to Scripture and the only teaching of Jesus you could remember was, “Love God. Love others.” Could you sit in God’s presence daily and allow the Spirit to guide you into who God needs you to be with just that?