A Personal Reflection On Promptings from the Holy Spirit

About eighteen years ago, when I first became a Christian, I began to get involved in learning what the Bible taught, and I tried to become regular at having a daily “quiet time” with God, although I was inconsistent at best. I remember, however, in those early days of the faith how tender I was to the Holy Spirit, often tediously taking notes of sermons, soaking up every morsel of biblical information I could possibly obtain, as well as often responding to sermons by going to the altar and confessing sins. I, also, recall how I had such an intense desire for God to use me and to do something amazing with my life, and that would often result in my involvement in various ministries of the local church.

One of the most vivid memories I have of God working in my life in those early years of following Christ was his Holy Spirit, on various occasions, prompting me to act in some specific way. I recall one such instance of God intensely prompting me to pray for a dear friend who, at the time, was away from the Lord. I shared the prompting with several of my other friends, and we committed to pray for him for several days, and he soon after came back to the Lord, and resubmitted himself to Christ. I also remember, when I lived in Jacksonville, how God impressed me to witness to a stranger carrying groceries and how he came to trust Christ, through a bizarre series of events. I know there were several other occasions I clearly remember of how God brought to my mind things to say when I was encouraging a believer, preaching a sermon, or witnessing to an unbeliever. Unfortunately, my promptings of the Holy Spirit began to diminish as I became more educated in doctrine.

This is not to downplay the importance of doctrine in a believer’s life and faith, because it is foundational to his health, but when knowledge begins to puff one up, the learning of doctrine can be devastating. The problem in my own life was my reading of men who valued the Scriptures so much that they thought any adherence to something subjective was an attack on Scripture itself. The tragic thing is that I not only became convinced of its teaching; I became closed to the working of the Holy Spirit in my life. That is not to say that the Holy Spirit did not do anything else in my life during this period, nor does it mean that I received no promptings from the Holy Spirit. In fact, I continued to receive convictions of sin through the Holy Spirit and the preaching of Scriptures and other believers; I continued to be moved to action at different times in my Christian life, but I always dismissed these occurrences as non-subjective, because they were in some way connected to the Word of God.

I am a pastor of a church in Atlanta now, and God has been teaching me some amazing truths. This morning on the way back from studying at my favorite coffee shop I confessed to God my lack of tenderness and sensitivity to the person and work of his Holy Spirit these past few years. I confessed that during this time I had even rationalized away the authenticity of some of the experiences I described above. I admitted that I had squandered many opportunities for God to work in my life, because I erroneously concluded that my sensitivity to those promptings was a danger to the sufficiency of Scriptures in my life. I confessed that I now believe that God primarily speaks to believers through the Scriptures, but often through other prophetic revelations, as well.

Now, some of you who read this (all two of you) might have agreed with everything I have written up to this point, but now you would disagree with my classification of these promptings as prophetic revelations. That is okay, I guess, but it is important that you are, at least, open to God’s workings and promptings in your life. But, more on this later…

Isaiah, a.k.a. Dr. Death

I have watched enough medical dramas, as well as witnessed real life episodes, to know how devastating it is when someone gets the bad news about their “condition”, their “disease”, their “inoperable brain tumor”, etc. Doctors, of course, don’t go to medical school for all those years to articulate the miseries of suffering and death; they go to school so they can help people heal and get better. No one dreams about being by the bed side of someone who has no chance of cure, and having to tell them that. They may have grand visions of performing the miraculous surgery to save someone from cancer, but not the other way around.

It is so much more interesting, then, when we consider the mission of Isaiah in chapter six of the book he wrote. He had a vision, also, and he made himself available to become a missionary: “Here am I ,LORD, send me.” But perhaps he didn’t have a chance to sit down with his guidance counselor or recruiter for an adequate amount of time, because it wasn’t exactly, perhaps, what he had envisioned. God told Isaiah essentially that he would be delivering the bad news to the family. He would be telling the people of Judah there is no hope; you have a disease; and you’re going to die. To make matters worse, God tells Isaiah to prevent them from hearing; keep them (spiritually) blind; make their hearts calloused. Why? “Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.” What? Isn’t that what we are supposed to be here for? Are we not supposed to be involved in healing people? When someone has cancer, don’t we want to tell them how they can be healed? Not so in this passage, where God appears not to want them to repent, so that they can be led into national desolation and exile.

I must admit that this is a difficult text to swallow, because of the apparent implications that God is merciless and unloving. The reader of the fact that God here does not want these people to be healed, nevertheless, has to extrapolate several other points from this text:

(1) Up to this point, God has been very longsuffering and loving with Judah. Time does not permit me to elaborate on the history of Judah, but suffice it to say, there has been much mercy and love and forgiveness poured out on this people. Not only that, but God entered into a covenant with this people, and the deal was if they broke the covenant he would break the covenant and judge them for their disobedience.

(2) The “until” in Isaiah 6:11 indicates a renewed opportunity of repentance that would occur. Isaiah seems to be as beleaguered as we are at the thought of delivering the message of doom and gloom, and questions “For how long, O LORD?” Surely this is only temporary, since Yahweh is a loving God and this is his covenant people. The answer he receives is not much comfort for the one in his shoes, however, but it does give some comfort to us, as well as insight into the character of God. The word “until” introduces the happenings of the Babylonian Invasion, in which King Nebuchadnezzar would sweep in and destroy the city of Jerusalem and lead the inhabitants off to Babylon as exiled slaves. The amazing thing is that judgment upon Judah ,in retrospect, was one of the greatest acts of mercy God could have ever shown the world, because it forced Judah to be “the Light to the nations” that it was designed to be. Therefore, Isaiah’s quest to become a missionary seemed very disappointing, when in fact he played an integral role in the nations coming to know the true God of Israel, by Judah’s dispersion into their regions. As they were exiled, many of them repented and were used to bring many others into a relationship with Yahweh, and eventually there was a collective repentance that took place.

So, what is the lesson from all of this? (a) God sovereignly works the events of history for his ultimate glory, (b) God is holy and just in all that he does, (c) Repentance is solely the work of God, and (d) God’s abundant mercy many times precedes abundant judgment, nor is it always an assumed given. Therefore, we must humble ourselves and take heed to the words of Dr. Death.

From Life to Death with Anna Nicole Smith

I am a pastor, so I have been preaching through a series in the Book of Ecclesiastes about “the Meaninglessness of Life”. In this series, we have talked about the futility that is contained in the things of life, not things that suck, but good things that were designed by God to be enjoyed. We all enjoy good food, like a Steak Diane from the Cheesecake Factory, or a piece of chocolate cake from Dailey’s. Those are things obviously to be enjoyed. We also enjoy good sex (those of us who are married). Although some of us might cringe when that word is mentioned, the truth is God has created it to be a beautiful thing; the world and our own wicked hearts have perverted it, so much so that we can’t even read the Song of Solomon without blushing, or if we do we buy into the incredulous idea that somehow the Shulammite woman’s breasts refer in some way to the church. We enjoy the satisfaction in accomplishments or the labor to which we give ourselves. Especially those of us who can be given to being a workaholic know how enjoyable work can be. We also enjoy the taste of good wine (especially white wine), because it was “made for the gladness of man’s heart”. We also enjoy friendship. I have really basked in the friendships God has given me in my life. I feel like a fool for squandering some of the ones I have had in the past, but still cherish the few valuable ones that I have, because they are priceless, and they make the world a safer place for me to live in. I also enjoy wisdom. I have been to school and to college and I still enjoy reading a theology book like nothing else. I enjoy learning and becoming more knowledgeable of the world in which we live. I love music, as well. I enjoy listening to good Christian rock as well as good secular rock, and I have learned to glorify God in both. I also enjoy laughter. Wow, my life is so stupid sometimes, I have to laugh. I have to give myself permission to laugh at the crazy things that take place at times. That is the world in which we live. I could go on and on about the many gifts that God has given each of us, and they are great and they are to be received with thanksgiving and enjoyed.

But they must never become the pursuit of our lives. They must become the bed of roses on the path to our goal. They are certainly beautiful to look at and to smell, but we must never pitch our tent in the bed of roses and make that our dwelling place. That is the thing that Solomon found out about life. Life has a lot of fleeting joy; it always leaves you wanting something more. It’s like drinking a Coke; you enjoy it when you’re thirsty, but it has a tremendous after taste that makes you want something purer, like water.

Life was designed by God to be like this. Our hearts have been fashioned in such a way to give us a longing for something greater, for something more long-lasting, for something more eternal, for something more divine…like God.

If we fool ourselves into thinking that this world will satisfy our starving hearts, we will die miserable. It reminds me of the news story I heard today about Anna Nicole Smith dying. Thirty-nine years of age. Table dancer, Playboy’s Play Mate of the year, Marilyn Monroe look-alike, widow of half-a-billion dollars-oil tycoon, star of a reality t.v. show, model, etc., etc., etc. And now she is dead. What is all that to her now? But don’t be so hard on her. We all have our own repertoire of things we value in this life. They’re certainly not as impressive as Anna Nicole Smith’s, but they are all the same nothingness.

The same way her life ended is the same way our own life will end- with the breath going out and our lives’ pleasures not meaning anything. Our challenge from this is to see our life as part of a grand purpose that God has for us; a purpose that is not fully known, but is manifestly acknowledged and submitted to. We are not here for ourselves, but for the glory of God, but our happiness depends upon God. Not the temporal, shallow happiness that goes away with the gift, but the deep, radical, God-centered happiness that is never-ending, because it is fixed on the Giver.