the Holy Spirit's cross

 

[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

[ * 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.]

a call to fast and pray for iran

this weekend, nov. 21st-23st, christian leaders in iran are calling on believers in Christ worldwide to pray and fast. recently a law was submitted in iran that would make death the mandatory punishment for all men that convert from islam to Christianity, and mandatory life imprisonment for women. the bill has passed one vote with an overwhelming majority, but has to go through a few more proceedures to be put into effect, including a second vote. please pray for our brothers and sisters in iran to have strength of faith, courage to share Christ and, if it is God's will, for this new law to be stopped. you can read more about it here. thank you.

thoughts on prayer

God desires to speak to us, to meet with us at all times, in all activities.  He wants us to experience His presence in every little thing we do, to be led by His voice.  but so often we have trouble hearing amidst the racket of a noisy world.  it is not that we don't want to hear Him, but that we cannot pick out His voice amongst the myriad of other, lying voices we are bombarded with.  how can we escape this cacophony to find the One Voice which we truly thirst to hear?

God speaks to us at all times, but i believe it is in the quiet place of prayer that God tunes our ears to the sound of His voice, so that when we are amidst the noise of the world, we will be able to pick His out of the crowd.  Jesus did promise that His sheep know His voice.  a flock of sheep recognize the voice of their shepherd even amidst a crowd of other shepherds because they have come to know His voice as they roam the pastures with him, listen to him talk with them and call them in the still grasslands when there is no one else around.  then when they are brought into the city, even among all the noise, they can still recognize him. 

so often the Bible exhorts us "keep silence before the Lord", "be still".  yet how often do we pass by this frequently repeated command?  as if because it is a command to cease doing, it is any less worthy of our obedience?  and when we do come to the place of prayer, is it often with so much noise of our own.  somehow we've been led to believe that unless we are saying something during our time of prayer, rattling off some need or request, then we are largely wasting time.  i would challenge you that the truth is actually the opposite: unless we are keeping silence before the Lord in prayer, listening to His voice, we are largely wasting time. 

sometimes i think we are just afraid of what He might say if we gave Him the opportunity.  perhaps our machine-gun prayers are more evidence that we do not trust the goodness of our God, or what He might say (or not say) given the chance.  i think we've all been in a situation where we are with someone we are not entirely sure if we can trust and the conversation suddenly hits a lull.  usually we start to frantically search for some topic, ANY topic to alleviate the awkward silence.  however, contrast that with a true friend - you are totally comfortable, even happy just to sit in that person's presence without trying to force any conversation.  you could sit for minutes or even hours without a word and feel no hint of awkwardness because you are convinced of that person's love for you.  are we convinced of the Lord's love for us?  and if so, why do we deal with Him as with someone whom we are not sure about? 

we need to learn to keep silence and listen to the Voice of Love which desires to speak words of life into our hearts, to refresh, encourage, strengthen and bless us.  that Voice is speaking constantly if only we would listen, but before we can listen in the crowd, we must come to the silent grasslands and learn its sound.  anyway, just some random thoughts on prayer on Rosh Hashanah.