By the Spirit

Ever try to explain the Holy Spirit to somebody?  How did you do it?  The flames on Pentecost?  The dove at Jesus' baptism?  Those descriptions can sound pretty lame, not even close to what we want to express in the third Person of the Godhead.

By experience and through God's Word, we know that the Holy Spirit is more. Teacher, Promise, Comforter, Enlightener.
But even these fall short.

The Holy Spirit is not just some inclination, some whisper that teaches me, guides me, and helps me to understand.  He is all those things, but more.
The Holy Spirit is God's VERY POWER.

He embodies all of God's strength.
He provides the motive power by which God shapes the world from a creative idea. That's why He seems like wind--He supplies the motion for the work of God.

That's how He completes the Trinity.
Father, Son, Holy Spirit.
Concept, Flesh, Work.
All Holy.

The Spirit gives life.--John 6:63
We know that we live in Him and He in us, because He has given us His Spirit.--1John 4:13
He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit, who lives in you.--Romans 8:11

The Holy Spirit is the face of God inhabiting the world today.  Moses saw the Father.  Peter and Paul saw Jesus.  We see the Holy Spirit.  His voice speaks and His hand reaches out.  He brings more than a feeling.  Jesus sent Him with intention to fill us and walk with us along the way as Christ once walked with His disciples.  


Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord.--Zechariah 4:6

Defining God

Who is God?  What is He?

We talk to Him, we pray to Him, we witness regarding Him, we experience Him, but can we explain Him in a few words?

This is my definition of God:
He who has the power to give life to what has none, 
to call out that which is not as though it were,
to promise with unfailing power and confidence,
to fulfill every promise made in perfect will.

I am the Lord, the God of all mankind.--Jeremiah 32:27
Ah, Sovereign Lord, You have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and outstretched arm.  Nothing is too hard for You.--Jeremiah 32:17
Not one word has failed of all the good promises He gave to His servant Moses.--1Kings 8:56

God lives in an infinite creation of His own making.
He surrounds Himself with Himself, perfectly sufficient and powerful.

I, as a human being, share my existence with a man, a cat, or a tree, but do not, cannot, share all my essence with them.  I am part of God's world as they are part of mine.

We know that God, by His very nature, surrounds us, and yet we still say we need to find Him.  We reach for God, but grab His creation instead.  Knowing God means that I expend less effort in finding harmony with the world, but yearn instead to find harmony in God, allowing the world to fall in line next to me as we all worship Him.


I honor God's power and marvel at His miracles, all the while looking for His face all around them.  God is Himself.  There is no other.

Annoyed and Overwhelmed

Emotional words bear layers of meaning.  Take 'annoyed' for example.  When I am annoyed, I experience irritation--a rough, edgy state because I must deal with a trivial situation or unreasonable person.  That is the first layer.  The second layer, however, is realizing that my annoyance always begins with a feeling of selfish superiority, a state in which I believe myself too wise or too important to deal with that person or circumstance.  Once I know that, also know that I am not only annoyed, I am in sin.
Therefore:
      Annoyed = Selfish Pride

So, too, are the layers of declaring that I am overwhelmed.  What is overwhelmed, anyway?  Strictly speaking, being overwhelmed means being swept away, like the damage wreaked by a tornado or tsunami.  But when we say we are overwhelmed, we are rarely truly defeated, and never dead. Why, then, do we say we are overwhelmed?

Maybe the answer lies in the second layer of feeling here, too.  Jesus illustrated this second layer when he met a man feeling overwhelmed by his son's epileptic-type seizures.

"How long has he been like this?" Jesus asked.
"From childhood...If you can do anything, have pity on us and help us!"
"If you can?  Everything is possible to him who believes."
"I do believe.  Help me with my unbelief!"--Mark 9:21-24

We believe, but like that father, our belief is incomplete.
Jesus said the man felt overwhelmed because he lacked belief. He would say the same to us.
Therefore:
     Overwhelmed = Unbelief


Belief is God's gift to us...His gift and His promise, and the key to heaven.
You are my witness and my servant whom I have chosen so that you know and believe me and understand that I am He.--Isaiah 43:10

That is the grace of it.  We flail around in sin, like when we feel annoyed or overwhelmed, but God is always so close, so close.  If I concentrate, I can usually feel His sweet breath--and feel Him push aside my own pride, my own agenda and desire.  It is then I reach out to Him, where there is no reason to be annoyed and no room for being overwhelmed.

Jumping Out

We talk about slipping into sin, about backsliding.  Get real.  I don't know about you, but I got into that black pit not because I fell.  I leaped in with both feet, and with full, despicable knowledge.

But, by God's grace, I didn't stay there. I didn't know it then, but when He gave me a way out, we made a deal.  He calls it a covenant, but in plain language, it's a contract to which both parties bring binding agreement.  The God of the universe made a promise to me and I to Him.  This is it:  I will believe in Him, worship Him only.  I will wear proudly the gift of faith.  In return, He will defend me and give me peace.

You see, the world hasn't improved any since my days of deep sin.  In fact, it's gotten worse and will continue to do so.  I am in more danger from sinful surroundings and tendencies now than I ever was.  But I to not have to fear this disintegrating world. 

I am the Lord your God who teaches you what  is best for you, who directs you in the way you should go.  If you had paid attention to my commands, your peace would have flowed like a river, your righteousness like the waves of the sea.--Isaiah 48:17-18


Though the mountains be shaken and the earth be removed, my unfailing love for you will not be shaken, nor my covenant of peace be removed, says the Lord who has compassion on you.--Isaiah 54:10

And the mountains will undoubtedly be shaken.  Some days, it feels like their rumblings already threaten.  But, as the earth tends more to violence and degradation, God's peace increases correspondingly--always faithful, always plenty. 

I do not need fear.  I am out. We have a deal.

If God is with us, who can be against us?--Romans 8:31
Remain in me and I will remain in you.--John 15:4
Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts...since you were called to peace.  And be thankful.--Colossians 3:15

Shut Up, For Christ's Sake!

From almost my first breaths as a baby Christian believer, I have been taught to witness.  My job, once I came to understand the gospel, was to get it out there.  Christ's last instructions to the disciples, after all, were to testify to all the world, weren't they?

Yes, they were.  But He gave the instruction to testify as His last direction, not His first.

And what is witnessing, anyway? God tells us:
 You are my witnesses, declares the Lord, and my servants from whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am He.--Isaiah 43:10

Hmm.  Nothing about saying anything to anyone.  
Witnessing, in God's estimation, begins with knowing and believing and understanding.  Evidently that, at least initially, is enough.  Even the outspoken apostle Paul began with years of silent study and communion with other believers and the Lord Himself before he ever went anywhere or said anything to anybody.

Witnessing has a pre-requisite.  In other words, we have to be qualified before we intentionally speak about God.  Unless He is putting words in our mouths similar to the way He put them in Balaam's donkey's, then we are well advised to spend the time getting to know our subject matter, that is, Him, before opening our mouths. 

There is a reason for this, and I am learning it every day.  God is so darned BIG!  There is so much to know about Him, so much He has to show me, to teach me, to change in me.  Yes, there are times to speak out, but as His joy within me grows, I understand more and more that God is not what He does, which we learn first about, but who He is.  To know Him just flat takes time.  

And He knows this about me, too.  He knows it and is fine with it.  Listen:

I, even I, am the Lord, and apart from me there is no savior.  I have revealed, and saved, and proclaimed.  I, not some foreign god among you.  You are my witnesses that I AM GOD.--Isaiah 43:11-12

His witnesses that He is God.  Yes.  There is a time to speak, and boldly, but my witness must start and end with the nature and person of God Himself.  And once I fully know that, I will be a witness whether I speak or not.

Lying Eyes

Richness unfolds with every day. Beauty in color and song crowd each moment, enough to make me gasp. A dove shares its tender moan, apples hang in abundant clusters like forgotten cherries, babies giggle in delighted ripples.

But I can't depend on this beauty.  My senses betray me. My eyes lie. My eyes lie and my ears steal.

 What I see and touch and hear cannot frame my life. They will disappear in an instant. When I revel in comfort or beauty, I forget they will eventually desiccate or fly away. I want to delight in their embrace so badly, but can't, at least not for long.

Only Your arms hold beauty, O God.  Only You last forever.  I reach for you, but then I remember...

You love me, I know You do, but I also know what You are--holy, perfect, terrible in power. Because You are holy and I am sinful, I cannot approach You, much less rest in Your embrace. Not on my own, at least.  But there is a way...

You show the way, the only way, to find the solace and peace I most seek:
A  broken spirit and a contrite heart.  These, O God, you will not despise.--Psalm 51:17
"Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God a a little child will by no means enter it." And He took them up in His arms, laid His hands on them, and blessed them.--Mark 10:15-16

If I stand to face You, I will stand alone. If I approach on my knees, remembering my unworthiness, You take me in your loving arms.

The delight earthly beauty brings does not bring comfort or peace for more than the single, sweet moment for which it lasts.

Facing who I am before You, however, allows You to lay aside Your flint and to take me up in tender arms where You provide Your own harmony of color and a song that never ends.

Boom!

I admit it.  God terrifies me. Yes, He loves us, but we can never forget His holiness--it is dreadful.  The ancient Israelites knew that, if they looked upon God in His glory, they would die.  They were right, and it is still true.

"Woe to me," I cried. "I am ruined!  For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty."--Isaiah 6:5

The Bible sometimes expresses the wrath with which God shows Himself to human beings as His anger, but God doesn't have emotions the same way we do.  He is constant, unchanging.   But most importantly, He is God, and He responds to sin, when He encounters it, in just one way--destruction.

Jesus, of course, made it possible for us to be cleaned from sin, and therefore come into God's presence, but God made no such cleansing provision for His world.  The earth cannot meet God, not any more.  It, too, now bears sin and God has only one option:

The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire; and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare.--2Peter 3:10

The Lord is holy, completely and perfectly, and His holiness strikes down anything or anyone imperfect who falls within His gaze. He does this purposefully, the same way He formed His creation, instant and complete.  

Biblical destruction is the only possible fate for a sinful creation encountering a holy God.  Creation has no option but to quake and fall apart.  It can do nothing else.

Only Jesus, sweet Jesus, stands between a holy God and a sinful creature. His love, and our faith in it, cast out all fear.  The world will fall, but we will not--not if we cling to Jesus.