Before I began my ministry journey I was well on a personal voyage of self and faith. Growing up in a traditional middle-class family life was fairly predictable. But if I thought life was conventional then faith and religion was far more planned and unsurprising. Week after week I attended church knowing what to expect from any given Sunday worship experience. This was not to say my church was “dead” or boring; in fact that would be the farthest thing from the truth. The church of my childhood, and youth, was home to amazing families, weekly visitors, dynamic teachers, vibrant praise and worship and most of all a commitment to allow the Holy Spirit to move freely during the service. Still, despite this freestyle approach, week after week without any intentional planning Sunday more or less always felt the same. Consequently as the church marched on living in a steady expectation of what worked, felt and seemed right, I also found my spiritual appetite, more or less, mirroring the church. In a phrase, I became content to live spiritually predictable.
One Sunday morning, in the mid-90’s, a particular service forever changed the identity of my childhood church; and though there was no expectation for that service to unfold as it later did the events that followed led to many changed lives for years to come. For close to seven years, the Holy Spirit revolutionized the church from the pulpit to the pew and from the pew to the community; and what was once a place of worship with predictability became a center of praise, healing and ministry that knew few boundaries. While lives were changed, marriages restored, people healed and ministries launched I still stayed on the sidelines and watched from afar, though remained faithfully present. With each life changing testimony I knew the people whose lives were changed. They were part of our spiritual family and the miraculous brought joy to us all. Still, my joy for God’s gracious healing and outpouring never translated to my personal pursuit of such changes in my own life.
As the years have passed I have been able to reflect on those experiences and my unwillingness to personally encounter God’s outpouring. Once the Holy Spirit finished moving, as he did those seven years, I remained with many in my church. And while they had been set free, and delivered, from their trials I found myself beginning to wrestle with the personal issues of pride, rejection, insecurity and fear. I too wanted to be “set-free” but also remain at a distance. Why was I unwilling to upset my desire for spiritual predictability in favor of the supernatural unpredictability of God?
It came down to a simple truth: I was unwilling to change from the old comfortable “self” and embrace a new, rebuilt and redesigned man living in the new humanity of Jesus! When such a sobering reality set in I was shaken to the point where I even asked if I was really saved? Of course I knew, deep within, I had accepted and received Jesus’ gracious invitation but in my desire to maintain a spiritually predictable existence I had missed out on the intimate hunger for God’s supernatural to change my life. Not only had I witnessed the Holy Spirit but I did my best to avoid Him which resulted in my adoption of other-Biblical views on salvation, grace and mercy. Salvation, for me, became going to church, tithing, being the best moral person I could be, wearing a cross and identifying myself with fellow Christians. But when I began to wrestle with “self”, having avoided the Holy Spirit, I discovered that salvation, grace and mercy could only be understood with the Holy Spirit! So as I returned to the Bible, for my answers, it suddenly became very clear: THE MARK OF A SAVED LIFE IS THE ALTERED LIFE.
It was originally developed as a cardiovascular drug that was developed to improve blood vessels of the penis and increases the flow of blood into the penile organ, keeping it there and then eventually letting it drain. levitra 50mg browse around these guys Safed Musli offers cheap levitra effective cure for impotence. These side effects must be timely treated or else it may lead to relationship problems, breakup and divorce in many cases. devensec.com order levitra This Sildenafil citrate devensec.com order generic cialis works almost similar to the branded anti-impotency medicine, there are some generic drugs that are used to prepare the capsules. Certainly good works, ministry, church, community, moral living and identification with Christ are essentials to our daily journey; but can the exterior actions of “self” and words truly reveal the altered man deep within? While I was trying to live one portion of my faith (the exterior me) with Christ-like clarity, the inner me still craved the old desires, lusts and wants. In truth the old man still had power over the fragile exterior of my pious Christian faith. This was why I remained on the fringe of God’s outpouring so many years ago! Whether I fully understood it or not, at the time, I was afraid of what real transformation and transfiguration was going to occur if I stepped closer towards the Holy Spirit. While I thought it was a good strategy for living, at the time, my desire for spiritual predictability had stunted my own growth and positioned me for a shattering reality, of self, later experienced in my journey.
One of the trademarks of God’s encounter, and visitation, is that He has altered you deep within. If you still hunger for the old life, or crave the old appetites it is illogical to talk about being born-again when you are still juggling yourself. This is not to say even the altered man will not face temptations however when we are born again the Spirit of God makes the alteration visible and livable in your ordinary of life. When we live life firmly rooted in His Holy Spirit we complete, through Him, the amazing adjustment that is the evidence we are truly a saved soul, redeemed person and transfigured life.
“Because of this decision we don’t evaluate people by what they have or how they look. We looked at the Messiah that way once and got it all wrong, as you know. We certainly don’t look at him that way anymore. Now we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life burgeons! Look at it! All this comes from the God who settled the relationship between us and him, and then called us to settle our relationships with each other. God put the world square with himself through the Messiah, giving the world a fresh start by offering forgiveness of sins. God has given us the task of telling everyone what he is doing. We’re Christ’s representatives. God uses us to persuade men and women to drop their differences and enter into God’s work of making things right between them. We’re speaking for Christ himself now: Become friends with God; he’s already a friend with you.” (2 Cor. 5:17 MSG)
Grace and Peace
JOSHUA