Spiritized

Jesus said, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”  How much life do you want?  How much of that life?  Answer by answering another question: how much God do you want?  Jesus announced, “I am the life” (John 14:6) and prayed, “This is eternal life, that they may know You the only true God and Jesus Christ whom You have sent” (John 17:3).  You have life in proportion to having God.  How much do you want?

Wilbur Rees expressed a possible, maybe common answer: “I would like to buy $3 worth of God, please, not enough to explode my soul or disturb my sleep, but just enough to equal a cup of warm milk or a snooze in the sunshine.  I don’t want enough of him to make me love a black man or pick beets with a migrant.  I want ecstasy, not transformation; I want the warmth of the womb, not a new birth.  I want a pound of the Eternal in a paper sack.  I would like to buy $3 worth of God, please.”

Why so little when there is so much?

In his letter to the Ephesians, describing the fullness of life in Christ, Paul explained something that was radically different from life the Old Testament  way, which he and all Jews were used to.  The Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, lives in the followers of Christ.  This life Jesus offers comes to us by the work of the Spirit.  We can have the Spirit filling us.  I call it being Spiritized – saturated, inundated, engulfed by the Holy Spirit.  All of the Spirit’s presence and power and gifts that we can take.  The Holy Spirit is the personal manifestation of God’s greatness in the lives of Jesus followers.  He is the awesome life-giving God in us.  We can be Spiritized.

Paul wrote (Ephesians 1:13-14):  In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation—having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God’s own possession, to the praise of His glory.

“Believed” means making your personal commitment to Jesus.    “Sealed” means getting the stamp of ownership.   You belong to Jesus and receive the Holy Spirit.  The Spirit of God comes into your life.

This Spirit is the “pledge of our inheritance.”  The down payment of all the life God gives us.  The start of new life and the guarantee that God will come through with all he has for us.

He is the “Spirit of promise.”  God had been planning, arranging, and looking forward to giving his Spirit to his people.

            God gave his word:  “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.  And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws” (Ezekiel 36:26-27).

            Jesus promised then John explained what he meant: “Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.”  By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive” (John 7:38-39).  Then it happened: “Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd: “These men are not drunk, as you suppose. It’s only nine in the morning!  No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel: ‘In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams.  Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy'” (Acts 2:14-18).

In the Old Testament, the Lord told the Israelites, “Now you’re my people.  Here’s the law.”  In Christ he says, “Now you’re my people.  Here’s my Spirit.”  The old covenant with Israel was the shadow of what would come and the preparation for Christ to come and redeem.  Through that old covenant the Lord declared to Israel, “You belong to me; now here are sacrifices to make, here’s what you eat, here’s what you wear, here are rituals to make you clean – on and on with law after law, including, all you guys have to be circumcised!”  In Christ he declares to all who believe, “You belong to me; now my own Spirit is in your heart to produce abundant life in you.”

Pentecost is observed in Judaism as the feast of the giving of the Law.  Fifty days after Passover and leaving the slavery of Egypt, the Israelites came to Mount Sinai.  The Lord descended to the top of the mountain with thunder and lightning and thick smoke and a loud trumpet blast.  The people trembled in fear.  Moses went up the mountain, and God sent him back down with the Law, the tablets of the covenant, the instructions for how to live in obedience to the Lord. God was choosing them to be for him a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.  That is the shadow cast backward from the day of Pentecost in Acts 2.  Fifty days before that Pentecost, Jesus died as the true Passover Lamb then he was resurrected, making the way for humanity’s release from slavery to sin and death.  Like Moses climbing Sinai, he ascended to the throne with his Father, and the Holy Spirit was sent down with the power to put the new covenant into action.  This new covenant is not operated by words written on tablets of stone.  It’s operated by the Spirit living in the hearts of God’s people.

Forty days after his resurrection, Jesus ascended.  He went away.  His words and power – gone.  His leadership and protection – gone.  His blessing and laughter – gone.  The disciples weren’t sure what to do next.  They weren’t sure what God was going to do next.  So they just waited like Jesus told them.  Ten more days passed – a total of fifty since the resurrection.  The Spirit came.

The gale roared in.  They rode the wind of God’s Spirit like an eagle spreading its wings and soaring over canyons and forests and rivers.  Freed from the staleness of law and tradition, they soared on the fresh breezes of the liberating Spirit.

The flame blazed.  They powered up, like a nuclear reactor splitting uranium atoms and releasing massive amounts of energy.  No longer stuck in the weakness of their corrupt sinfulness, they operated by the dynamic energy of the mighty Spirit.

The river surged forth.  They came alive, like drought-stricken fields being irrigated with an endless supply of fresh water.  Their parched, dead souls came alive with grace and purpose by the loving Spirit.

Pentecost was more than a one-day event.  It began a whole new way of living.  It was a continuation of Jesus’ work – his words and power keep going; his leadership and protection keep going; his blessing and laughter keep going.  As they opened their souls to God’s work, the Spirit moved in and began a deep, lasting transformation.  Their place in the world – changed.  Their understanding of circumstances – changed.  Their interactions with others – changed.  Their minds, wills, and emotions – changed.  But most of all, and the root of all the change they experienced, their connection with God – changed.  Their relationship with God was taken to a completely different level.  From that day onward they lived in the presence of God.  God himself was with them, in them.

You see, life in Christ has more to it than knowing true information about God, maintaining correct doctrine, and adhering to appropriate behaviors.  Those are part of it but not all of it.  The actual center of life in Christ is a real connection with our God.  The Holy Spirit makes that happen.  The Spirit is God here, God with us, God in us.  The Spirit is God revealing himself to us, calling us to himself.  The Spirit is God involved with us, making his purpose for us into reality, generating his Kingdom in us and with us.  We don’t live abundantly by following rules and religious rituals.  We live by being Spiritized.

Jesus said that the Spirit is like having streams of living water inside us.  A constant, powerful flow of life-giving water.

I am fascinated by moving water.  I could watch a faucet run for hours.  Streams and rivers rivet my attention.  Once when my family was camping in the Rocky Mountains I hiked along a stream.  It was fairly steep terrain so the river was rushing and roaring, foaming and frothing. I walked to the edge and just watched it, and I imagined the river of God in our souls.  After a while I noticed, at the side of the river,  among the rocks, a small stream, about what comes from a kitchen faucet, running into a pool.  The water was practically still – quiet, gentle.  I saw small colored rocks lying in the pool.   I imagined the river of God in our souls.  The Spirit works like that.  Sometimes a powerful, rushing torrent.  Sometimes a smooth-flowing gentleness.  Both are the work of the same Spirit.

The Holy Spirit works the way he chooses.  Our part is to surrender our lives to him daily, to hunger and thirst for all of God’s glory, and to not put limits on what he does and how he works in us.