[this post has been revised from the original version for greater clarity]
... is me. (before you get out the heresy sticks to beat me with, a) it’s an illustration and b) read the whole explanation :) i've recently been praying over some challenging ideas from In the Name of Jesus (which if you have not read, it's a must). the Lord has been convicting me on a lot of things through this. one of these is how i often allow deep and intimate prayer to slip between the cracks of a thousand other things i think i have to do, the majority of which are completely unnecessary and none of which are more important than He whom i sacrifice for them. as i have reflected on and been challenged concerning the source of my ministry, the source of my identity, there was a phrase from the book that struck me, "my lack of contemplative prayer... was a sign that the Spirit was being suppressed."
"how exactly could i be capable of suppressing the Spirit?" i thought. as i considered the Cross, it all became clear (as usually happens when we focus on the Cross). when Christ was on the Cross, His greatest suffering was not physical. there has been many a sermon on the much deeper spiritual anguish Christ endured beyond His bodily wounds. sometimes this is posed in a strictly individual sense: that Christ, the sinless Lamb of God suffered the spiritual anguish of becoming sin for us (2 Cor. 5:21). while that's true, the Gospels themselves paint a slightly different picture of the source of His anguish. they record that right before His death, Jesus cries out, literally screaming while He’s suffocating "my God, my God, why have You forsaken Me!?" what rent Jesus' heart, what caused Him such agony that He is screaming with His dying breath were not the nails, or crown of thorns, but His separation from His Father. it was nothing less than the rending of the eternal unity and fellowship of the Godhead. it's something we will never be able to fully comprehend in this life or the next.
but here’s where we come in. God has put His Holy Spirit in us. the third person of the Trinity has taken up permanent residence in those of us who believe in Christ. this is, in some sense, another incarnation of God. (put those sticks down and let me finish! :) obviously not that Christians become God in any sense (sorry, mormons), but that God is now dwelling "in the flesh"; as Scripture says, our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. (1 Cor. 6:19) now, i think because we as Christians are so familiar with the idea of the Spirit of God living inside us, we don’t really contemplate what that means. i believe this relates especially to prayer. we typically see prayer as being a sort of point-A-to-B communication from us to God (or both directions if we’re really spiritual. :) however, we forget that the desire and ability to commune with God is obviously not from our own selves originally, but from the Spirit of God in us (as “no good thing dwells in our flesh”). prayer, if truly inspired and begun by the Spirit of God in us, may be said then to be not merely A-to-B (us to God), but A-B-C, from the Holy Spirit through us to the Godhead. for the sake of not writing out a whole phrase to explain it each time, I’ll call this “A-B-C” communication: “transcommunion” (copyright! :) - that is, the Spirit of God communing with the Father and Son through (trans-) us.
how does all this tie together? in this: similar to how the Incarnation of Jesus placed Him in a position where He could be cut off from the Father, so in the Spirit's indwelling of us, God has opened Himself up to another breaking of His fellowship; specifically the breaking of the Holy Spirit’s transcommunion in us with the Godhead. the Bible says that we as believers in Christ are capable of "grieving" or "quenching" the Spirit. but what does that mean? i figure it's like this: the greatest joy and delight God has is His own glory, enjoyed eternally among the members of the Trinity. when Christ was incarnated, He was cut off from that eternal bliss because of our sin and experienced the anguish of separation at the Cross. now God dwells "in flesh" again; the flesh of those who believe in Jesus. but sadly we once more subject God to deep grief in hindering His fellowship through us by our sin. the Spirit in us, who longs above all things to enjoy unity with the Father and Son, is kept, as it were, at a distance from the transcommunion He desires with the Godhead by our lack of prayer, by our decision that our work, our comfort, our games, our glory are more important than His divine fellowship. it's a sick irony. our self-seeking and neglect of God was the cause of that awful rupture in the Trinity at the Cross. now our same selfishness causes a break in His transcommunion because through prayerlessness we deny the indwelling Spirit the intimacy He desires to have through us with the Godhead. we cut off our own fellowship with God and so we cut off the Spirit's who dwells in us. in that sense, we become a "cross" to the Holy Spirit in breaking His fellowship through us with the Lord. to use the biblical phrase, we "grieve" the Spirit in us.
you may or may not be squirming as you read this now (though i hope you are :). the fact is, it makes us uncomfortable to think that we could have this kind of effect on the Godhead. we like to think that He is completely impervious and unaffected by our neglect of Him. though in no sense does He depend on us or "need" us, yet He has chosen of His own will to make Himself vulnerable to us. He has willingly linked His own being with those of us who have received Christ, even so much as to be in us. but maybe this thought of our hindering the fellowship of the Godhead* is uncomfortable for us most of all because we like to think that our prayerlessness doesn't really affect anyone except maybe ourselves (and even that we try to talk ourselves out of). when we choose to neglect intimate fellowship with God we tell ourselves, "well, i might be a little less chipper today, but i'll manage." but the truth is it’s not merely an issue of “i’m not in the mood to pray. i can get by without it.” this would be a logical statement (though not an accurate one) if prayer were strictly A-to-B. but when we realize that it’s primarily the Holy Spirit in us who desires that communion with the Father and Son and who is prompting us to pray, then this statement becomes out of place, irrelevant, absurd. the question then becomes, “if the Holy Spirit has taken up residence in me and desires above all to enjoy fellowship among the Godhead, and that through me, who am i to stand in the way?” the truth is that not only do we affect ourselves negatively when we neglect fellowship with God, we affect everyone around us negatively (and i don't just mean with a bad mood, but by stopping our ears to the ways the Spirit would want to use us to bless others that day). what is most unsettling though is to realize that not only do we affect others by our lack of intimacy with God, but that we grievously affect God Himself. He has put His Spirit in us so that He may draw us into the glorious fellowship of the Trinity, not so we can be the roadblock in His transcommunion. i know it's something i am guilty of and am glad that God is convicting me of it so that i can repent and allow His Spirit to rejoice through me in the fellowship of the Godhead; a decision i am glad i make each time i do.
"Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's."
- 1 Corinthians 6:19-20
- 1 Corinthians 6:19-20
[ * footnote/disclaimer: i am not implying that we as individuals or even as the corporate church as a whole are capable of "stopping" God's fellowship among Himself. this complete rupture happened once at the Cross and never again. the Spirit, however, is grieved over the loss of fellowship through us with the Godhead. this loss of “transcommunion” is on a subjective and personal level as concerns us. this does not equate to the Spirit being deprived of union with the Godhead on an objective and complete level, in as much as the Holy Spirit is not bound exclusively in the Church in the same way that Christ was bound in His body at the Incarnation.]
