Showing posts with label Holy Spirit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Holy Spirit. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 3, 2022
Wednesday, April 10, 2019
The Perfection Of Weakness
BY CHERYL MCGRATH on SEPTEMBER 18, 2018
There’s a misconception, a lie if you like, that is pervasive within modern Christian church culture. At one time I was fully immersed in it; maybe you have been also. It goes along these lines: ‘’As Christians we are called to be strong, authoritative personalities who know what we’re about, face every challenge with courageous determination, and exercise spiritual authority with grit and fortitude. We are the mighty conquering army of Christ, His champions. We just need to believe it and walk this world demonstrating the authority with which He has crowned us.” Sounds like scriptural truth, and so it is, but it’s not the all-truth that the Holy Spirit came to lead us into (Jn. 16:13).
And so it was that Sunday after Sunday, and mid-week also, the message of this desirable Christian “persona” was preached, quoted, sung, encouraged and expected among the congregation. Unquestioned. For to question it would appear to display doubt and unbelief, which in such an atmosphere would mark us as less than committed. We would turn up for our regular infusion of positive attitude, often wounded, wrecked and ragged from just doing life in this world, receive our group power shot and leave quietly repeating the appropriate verses and phrases to ourselves, feeling uplifted, strong and ready to slay giants.
For a day or so.
By which time we needed another shot. And by which time instead of feeling strong, powerful and invincible, we were beginning to feel defeated, condemned and worthless, in fact anything but this Christian persona we were supposed to be living.
There’s another Christian persona promoted among some Christian church cultures that teaches believers they are weak, sinful, wicked beings, powerless to change anything in this world, who must daily strive for holiness to please a disapproving God who will hopefully one day whisk them away into Heaven where they will never have to think about the horrors of this world again. Let’s be clear this persona is just as false and impossible to live up to as the first one I described. Both are rooted in man-made religion. Both are anti-Christ. Neither are the Kingdom of God.
You may have spent some time in one or both of these environments, or you may not identify at all with either of them. If you don’t you can thank God for sparing you. But there are many who will read this and will know to either a small or a large degree exactly what I’m on about.
Many of us have heard countless sermons, sung myriads of songs, and read innumerable books telling us if we just believe we are the strong, bold leaders, warriors and life-bearers the Bible says we are, we will be walking as the overcomers God wants us to be. We are told over and over again that boldness, strength, determination and persistence are the character traits God values and needs in His people. And if you’re lacking in these, well you just don’t believe hard enough. We need to surround ourselves with “strong” brothers and sisters. We need to come to more meetings, sing more songs, hear more positive preaching, until we DO believe, right? Simple.
Here’s the thing. In decades of being immersed in various church cultures – mainstream, Pentecostal, charismatic and several varieties in between – I never once heard a sermon to explain this:
And He said to me: “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness”. Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.” (2 Cor. 12:9)
Power is perfected in weakness? Really? Bear in mind this is Paul quoting Christ. Who among us, in our church environments of spiritualised positive thinking, ever considered such a concept? As we told our stories and sang our songs about how strong we are, imagining Jesus in the background smiling, nodding and approving, who knew we were merely boasting in the strength of our own flesh?
Paul continues:
Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.
Friends, if we are intent on continuing the journey out of Christian religious culture and pursuing the Kingdom of God, we need a far deeper revelation of what it means to be content with weakness, and to be strong only when we are weak!
Personally, I am finding as the Kingdom expands within me, I am more powerless, more weak, more dependent on the indwelling Life of Christ than ever before in over fifty years on this Christ following journey. Don’t misunderstand me. I am not speaking of a weakness which is victimhood, nor am I speaking of a weakness that is grounded in fear and intimidation or indecisiveness. Kingdom living requires courage and deep commitment. But I am speaking of a weakness that manifests as utter and complete dependence on Christ’s love, grace and faithfulness at a deeper level than many of us have ever known. A weakness that knows nothing for certain except that He will get us through whatever we’re facing, because there is nothing left in us that can do so.
In my life I have known others to call me a ‘’strong woman’’. Determination has been one of my chief personality traits, even as a very small child. More often than not gritting my teeth and drawing on my resources of sheer dogged determination have propelled me forward where others fainted by the wayside. But at this point of the journey I feel the strength of that life-long determination fading as it is crucified along with other strengths of personality that are a stumbling block to my relationship with Christ.
I feel emptied.
On every level of life at this present time I am confronted with several impossible situations that are utterly beyond my influence or any semblance of control, no matter what I do. The reality that only Christ can change anything, from relationships, to health, to jobs, to finances, to politics, to weather, to weariness, to life and death situations, is more palpable by the hour. But so is the reality of His faithfulness and His ability to keep me, no matter what.
This is not comfortable. Pursuing the Kingdom is a costly venture. We may as well start to deal with the fact that strength in the Kingdom is infinitely different to what the world (and often the church) calls strength. We may as well start coming to terms with the truth that God actually chooses the weak over the strong (1 Cor. 1 27-29).
Pursuing Christ and His Kingdom will cost you everything that is strong in your flesh and you will be left feeling powerless, vulnerable and fragile. You will be required to surrender all the natural talents and attributes that you have relied upon, including all that is so admired by the world. But in exchange you will connect with the unmatched power of Christ’s endless Life within you and discover it is the strongest, safest, most trustworthy thing you can ever depend upon. And depend upon it you will.
Was this what Jesus was teaching us when He said “apart from Me you can do nothing”? (Jn. 15:5) Can it really be that He meant it…..literally? He Himself often repeated that He could do nothing on His own initiative. Absolute dependence on the Father was His life secret, hidden in plain sight (Jn. 5:19; 5:30; 8:28). Absolute dependence on Christ is to be ours, as the Spirit transforms the Bride ever more deeply into His perfect image. This is what it means to be found “leaning on her Beloved’’.
The perfection of weakness. It’s the way to the strength we have so long pretended to own. It’s the way of the Kingdom.
© Cheryl McGrath, Bread for the Bride, 2018. Copyright Notice: Permission is granted to freely reproduce any Bread for the Bride articles in emails or internet blogs, unaltered, and providing this copyright notice is included. To permanently display an article on any static website please contact me for permission.
There’s a misconception, a lie if you like, that is pervasive within modern Christian church culture. At one time I was fully immersed in it; maybe you have been also. It goes along these lines: ‘’As Christians we are called to be strong, authoritative personalities who know what we’re about, face every challenge with courageous determination, and exercise spiritual authority with grit and fortitude. We are the mighty conquering army of Christ, His champions. We just need to believe it and walk this world demonstrating the authority with which He has crowned us.” Sounds like scriptural truth, and so it is, but it’s not the all-truth that the Holy Spirit came to lead us into (Jn. 16:13).
And so it was that Sunday after Sunday, and mid-week also, the message of this desirable Christian “persona” was preached, quoted, sung, encouraged and expected among the congregation. Unquestioned. For to question it would appear to display doubt and unbelief, which in such an atmosphere would mark us as less than committed. We would turn up for our regular infusion of positive attitude, often wounded, wrecked and ragged from just doing life in this world, receive our group power shot and leave quietly repeating the appropriate verses and phrases to ourselves, feeling uplifted, strong and ready to slay giants.
For a day or so.
By which time we needed another shot. And by which time instead of feeling strong, powerful and invincible, we were beginning to feel defeated, condemned and worthless, in fact anything but this Christian persona we were supposed to be living.
There’s another Christian persona promoted among some Christian church cultures that teaches believers they are weak, sinful, wicked beings, powerless to change anything in this world, who must daily strive for holiness to please a disapproving God who will hopefully one day whisk them away into Heaven where they will never have to think about the horrors of this world again. Let’s be clear this persona is just as false and impossible to live up to as the first one I described. Both are rooted in man-made religion. Both are anti-Christ. Neither are the Kingdom of God.
You may have spent some time in one or both of these environments, or you may not identify at all with either of them. If you don’t you can thank God for sparing you. But there are many who will read this and will know to either a small or a large degree exactly what I’m on about.
Many of us have heard countless sermons, sung myriads of songs, and read innumerable books telling us if we just believe we are the strong, bold leaders, warriors and life-bearers the Bible says we are, we will be walking as the overcomers God wants us to be. We are told over and over again that boldness, strength, determination and persistence are the character traits God values and needs in His people. And if you’re lacking in these, well you just don’t believe hard enough. We need to surround ourselves with “strong” brothers and sisters. We need to come to more meetings, sing more songs, hear more positive preaching, until we DO believe, right? Simple.
Here’s the thing. In decades of being immersed in various church cultures – mainstream, Pentecostal, charismatic and several varieties in between – I never once heard a sermon to explain this:
And He said to me: “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness”. Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.” (2 Cor. 12:9)
Power is perfected in weakness? Really? Bear in mind this is Paul quoting Christ. Who among us, in our church environments of spiritualised positive thinking, ever considered such a concept? As we told our stories and sang our songs about how strong we are, imagining Jesus in the background smiling, nodding and approving, who knew we were merely boasting in the strength of our own flesh?
Paul continues:
Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.
Friends, if we are intent on continuing the journey out of Christian religious culture and pursuing the Kingdom of God, we need a far deeper revelation of what it means to be content with weakness, and to be strong only when we are weak!
Personally, I am finding as the Kingdom expands within me, I am more powerless, more weak, more dependent on the indwelling Life of Christ than ever before in over fifty years on this Christ following journey. Don’t misunderstand me. I am not speaking of a weakness which is victimhood, nor am I speaking of a weakness that is grounded in fear and intimidation or indecisiveness. Kingdom living requires courage and deep commitment. But I am speaking of a weakness that manifests as utter and complete dependence on Christ’s love, grace and faithfulness at a deeper level than many of us have ever known. A weakness that knows nothing for certain except that He will get us through whatever we’re facing, because there is nothing left in us that can do so.
In my life I have known others to call me a ‘’strong woman’’. Determination has been one of my chief personality traits, even as a very small child. More often than not gritting my teeth and drawing on my resources of sheer dogged determination have propelled me forward where others fainted by the wayside. But at this point of the journey I feel the strength of that life-long determination fading as it is crucified along with other strengths of personality that are a stumbling block to my relationship with Christ.
I feel emptied.
On every level of life at this present time I am confronted with several impossible situations that are utterly beyond my influence or any semblance of control, no matter what I do. The reality that only Christ can change anything, from relationships, to health, to jobs, to finances, to politics, to weather, to weariness, to life and death situations, is more palpable by the hour. But so is the reality of His faithfulness and His ability to keep me, no matter what.
This is not comfortable. Pursuing the Kingdom is a costly venture. We may as well start to deal with the fact that strength in the Kingdom is infinitely different to what the world (and often the church) calls strength. We may as well start coming to terms with the truth that God actually chooses the weak over the strong (1 Cor. 1 27-29).
Pursuing Christ and His Kingdom will cost you everything that is strong in your flesh and you will be left feeling powerless, vulnerable and fragile. You will be required to surrender all the natural talents and attributes that you have relied upon, including all that is so admired by the world. But in exchange you will connect with the unmatched power of Christ’s endless Life within you and discover it is the strongest, safest, most trustworthy thing you can ever depend upon. And depend upon it you will.
Was this what Jesus was teaching us when He said “apart from Me you can do nothing”? (Jn. 15:5) Can it really be that He meant it…..literally? He Himself often repeated that He could do nothing on His own initiative. Absolute dependence on the Father was His life secret, hidden in plain sight (Jn. 5:19; 5:30; 8:28). Absolute dependence on Christ is to be ours, as the Spirit transforms the Bride ever more deeply into His perfect image. This is what it means to be found “leaning on her Beloved’’.
The perfection of weakness. It’s the way to the strength we have so long pretended to own. It’s the way of the Kingdom.
© Cheryl McGrath, Bread for the Bride, 2018. Copyright Notice: Permission is granted to freely reproduce any Bread for the Bride articles in emails or internet blogs, unaltered, and providing this copyright notice is included. To permanently display an article on any static website please contact me for permission.
Friday, June 27, 2014
Why God Gave You the Holy Spirit by ALEX KOCMAN
If you have been cleansed from sin through Christ's death, you are a vessel of God's very own Holy Spirit—the same Spirit who enjoyed eternal fellowship with the Father and the Son for all eternity past.
That's an incredible thought.
But amid all our seeking the gifts of the Spirit, discussing what it means to be Spirit-filled, theologizing about the Holy Spirit's role, and asking Him to be at work in our midst, sometimes we forget to ask: why?
This is no shallow question. The Holy Spirit is the tangible, personified evidence that we now have total access to God through Christ. The Holy Spirit is the unbreakable seal on our salvation (Ephesians 4:30). The Holy Spirit gives us the gift of faith, resurrects our dead souls, and makes us more holy so as to be like Jesus himself.
But that isn't all He does.
With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility
It seems that whenever the Holy Spirit is given to someone, it's for one crucial reason: to preach the Gospel.
You may already know the verse I'm about to cite. It's in Acts, where Jesus tells the apostles right before His ascension, "[Y]ou will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth" (1:8, emphasis added).
But the thread of Spirit-filled witnessing runs far deeper than one verse.
In Isaiah 61, Jesus's life and ministry is foretold with a key phrase: "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news..." (v. 1a). Yes, that good news.
In Luke 4, right after Jesus receives the Holy Spirit at His baptism and spends 40 days being tempted by Satan, we're told that He returned to His hometown "in the power of the Spirit (v. 14), went to the synagogue, stood up, and read that passage.
In the presence of all his fellow Galileans, he openly revealed His identity as the Messiah for the first time meaningfully with these words: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me... to proclaim the gospel" (in essence).
A few short years later, in the Upper Room, Jesus tells his disciples that they're going to be hated and persecuted by the world. And he wraps up his warnings with this interesting prophecy:
"But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me. And you also will bear witness, because you have been with me from the beginning." (John 15:26-27).
And Jesus was right. In Acts 2, when the apostles were finally filled with the Spirit, what was the immediate outward manifestation? Of course they spoke in tongues—but what was the content of their speech? Peter stood up and preached one of the boldest gospel messages ever: "Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified" (v. 36).
The Big Picture
Different people have different gifts and roles in the mission, but nothing has changed since the day of Pentecost as far as God's motives in pouring His Spirit out on you.
No matter what you believe about the Holy Spirit, if anything you are seeking to do or be anything through Him and making the good news of Jesus known to others isn't somewhere at the core of your motives, you're entirely missing the point.
The Holy Spirit's work throughout all history—Old Testament, New Testament, and now—isn't just about elaborate miracles or exuberant utterances. It's about pointing people to the good news: (1) Jesus died to take your punishment and kill sin in your life, (2) rose from the dead to redeem your life from spiritual and physical death, and (3) ascended to Heaven to send you the Holy Spirit—so you could go and tell others about Him!
So today, consider: why did God give you the Holy Spirit?
Alex Kocman is an associate editor and writer for Christian Life News and Charisma News with a background in biblical studies. You can follow him on Twitter via @ajkocman.
That's an incredible thought.
But amid all our seeking the gifts of the Spirit, discussing what it means to be Spirit-filled, theologizing about the Holy Spirit's role, and asking Him to be at work in our midst, sometimes we forget to ask: why?
This is no shallow question. The Holy Spirit is the tangible, personified evidence that we now have total access to God through Christ. The Holy Spirit is the unbreakable seal on our salvation (Ephesians 4:30). The Holy Spirit gives us the gift of faith, resurrects our dead souls, and makes us more holy so as to be like Jesus himself.
But that isn't all He does.
With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility
It seems that whenever the Holy Spirit is given to someone, it's for one crucial reason: to preach the Gospel.
You may already know the verse I'm about to cite. It's in Acts, where Jesus tells the apostles right before His ascension, "[Y]ou will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth" (1:8, emphasis added).
But the thread of Spirit-filled witnessing runs far deeper than one verse.
In Isaiah 61, Jesus's life and ministry is foretold with a key phrase: "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news..." (v. 1a). Yes, that good news.
In Luke 4, right after Jesus receives the Holy Spirit at His baptism and spends 40 days being tempted by Satan, we're told that He returned to His hometown "in the power of the Spirit (v. 14), went to the synagogue, stood up, and read that passage.
In the presence of all his fellow Galileans, he openly revealed His identity as the Messiah for the first time meaningfully with these words: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me... to proclaim the gospel" (in essence).
A few short years later, in the Upper Room, Jesus tells his disciples that they're going to be hated and persecuted by the world. And he wraps up his warnings with this interesting prophecy:
"But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me. And you also will bear witness, because you have been with me from the beginning." (John 15:26-27).
And Jesus was right. In Acts 2, when the apostles were finally filled with the Spirit, what was the immediate outward manifestation? Of course they spoke in tongues—but what was the content of their speech? Peter stood up and preached one of the boldest gospel messages ever: "Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified" (v. 36).
The Big Picture
Different people have different gifts and roles in the mission, but nothing has changed since the day of Pentecost as far as God's motives in pouring His Spirit out on you.
No matter what you believe about the Holy Spirit, if anything you are seeking to do or be anything through Him and making the good news of Jesus known to others isn't somewhere at the core of your motives, you're entirely missing the point.
The Holy Spirit's work throughout all history—Old Testament, New Testament, and now—isn't just about elaborate miracles or exuberant utterances. It's about pointing people to the good news: (1) Jesus died to take your punishment and kill sin in your life, (2) rose from the dead to redeem your life from spiritual and physical death, and (3) ascended to Heaven to send you the Holy Spirit—so you could go and tell others about Him!
So today, consider: why did God give you the Holy Spirit?
Alex Kocman is an associate editor and writer for Christian Life News and Charisma News with a background in biblical studies. You can follow him on Twitter via @ajkocman.
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