Rend the heavens
The summer of my first year in London, I tuned my ear to the recital of some of the most famous passages in history, gaining a large affinity with William Shakespeare stood in the courtyard of the globe, aided with an all too good to be true five pound ticket. One particular day, as the performance was about to begin, I spotted a commotion beginning to arise. The tide of bodies began to spread and shift as a man dressed in a crass England shirt and cap, mouthing off, forced his way to the stage. I started to panic and scoured the outer edges of the playhouse longing for someone to intervene. Meanwhile, the hooligan with a clear path, throws himself upon the stage and is spitting, thrashing around and grabbing members of the audience. I recoil from the stage edge to avoid becoming the next target. And then, out of this melee, breaks the line ‘I’ll pheeze you, in faith.’- and I realised, that this man was not an impostor at all- for he was the one and only Christopher Sly.
Yet maybe Christopher Sly isn’t the only one I, or the church, address as an imposter. I think sadly, we have done this with Holy Spirit. We’ve deemed him unsafe and kept Him at arms length, placed Him in chains through our own fear and reluctance, yet, it turns out, the only people we’re really condemning to bondage is ourselves- our own ignorant selves.
I never knew the spirit, and when I say knew, I mean, knew his presence let alone His gifts. I prayed pre-composed prayers, prayers smothered in a religious spirit, prayers of a pharisee, of deceit rather than desire. Prayers to fool, when the hours I spent in the throne room alone accosted to 0. I could barely smell what the spirit could do in another life, let alone what He could do within my own.
The spirit appeared to be a force of destruction, and one to be feared. a spirit that was of interest to those who weren’t biblically sound, and wanted to be tickled by a theatrical show. Anyone who gave room to the spirit was surely neglecting the father, anyone who laughed, rolled on the floor and wailed like a dog was of course a faker. For, I wonder how long it took producers, and how much they paid out, to gather a cast of people who would tell testimony (false of course) of finding gold dust on the palms of their hands, legs elongating and gold teeth. The spirit, I concluded was dangerous- and He would earn no curiosity or membership of me.
So, in a bid to make sure the spirit didn’t have the chance to move, it was as if we just closed all doors to Him. Hushed the holy, making a biune out of the triune. Yet, it turns out, that sometimes it’s those who are most trained to see the trinity, that become the ones who miss Him altogether. For, I was scoffing… mocking for all those days at the very spirit that was wanting to make a monument out of me.
We need a hunger to be birthed within us for the very thing in front of our faces. To not be afraid of looking undignified and not caring whether we are made the outcast. May we want him so much that we will go to any lengths to have Him. May we not miss Him, or what He’s doing. May we not squander that which has already been won.
Dawna De Silva, spoke when I visited Bethel about the story of the prodigal son. You know it: a father has two sons. One day, his youngest approaches him and demands his inheritance. He wants to be wild and reckless, he wants the gambling, the girls, the alcohol and the abuse. Yet, soon, his pockets are empty and he finds himself eating from the rubbish dump. The son decides to return home, planning an apology carrying a heart full of shame. Instead, he is greeted by the open arms of his Father running along the dusty path to claim him as his own. A father longing to bring his child back into sonship, place a crown upon his head, and rings upon his finger. As the music starts from the celebration party, the older son working in the field starts to hear the commotion and queries as to what is going on. As the servant explains the joy of the father over his lost son, the older brother is distraught, finding his father to explain:
“‘all these years I’ve slaved for you […], and in all that time you never even gave me even one young goat for a feast with my friends. Yet when this son of yours comes back after squandering money on prostitutes, you celebrate by killing the fattened calf’-”
The problem here, and as Dawna mentioned, is not the son who squandered his inheritance but the one who didn’t spend his inheritance at all. For although the younger son’s money was spent in frivolity, he was the one who decided to act with what he had been given, a step further than many of us. He understood what he was entitled to, so much so that he came to his Father for it early.
Paul doesn’t bid us to ‘desire the special abilities, the spirit gifts’ (1 Corinthians 14:1), because they’re going to hinder us. No, Paul, like Father God, wants us to desire them because they are SO GOOD FOR US. They are His gift to us, and Father’s give their children good gifts! And as we understand our inheritance, who we are and what He has given us, we become awakened to the transforming spirit of power in us and its ability to move through us.
“‘DO YOU NOT KNOW THAT YOU ARE GOD’S TEMPLE AND THAT GOD’S SPIRIT DWELLS IN YOU?”
Do we know?! Jesus showed a life that is within reach, but must be reached for. Much of what we need in life will be brought to us, but most of what we want we will have to go and get. That’s the way of the kingdom. We have access to our inheritance, Jesus is asking us when we’re going to claim what he paid for.
Jesus doesn’t take qualified, gifted or, got it all together. He doesn’t take, ‘that is for other people and not for me’, or ‘maybe another time’. He takes the vulnerable and the willing. We can scrape our way in to heaven doing the bare minimum, or we can rend the heavens come down, and live life under an open heaven through the transforming power of the spirit. (Isaiah 64:1) We are called to host His presence, it’s not optional. We forget that the Spirit is here to make much of God, not much of men.
Bill Johnson wrote:
“‘the holy spirit is our greatest gift. with that in mind, *each of us has become the target of God for a specific encounter that redefined our purpose on the planet earth.* it’s the baptism of fire. we were born to burn. and while the danger of turning our attention from the person to the experience exists, it’s worth the risk. no amount of miracles, no amount of insight, no amount of personal success will ever satisfy the cry of the heart for this baptism. and while many would like to just get it over with, often times there is a deep process involved. such a singleness of focus is rewarded. i personally don’t think these encounters are to be a one time event. we must have frequent encounters with God that continuously recalibrate our hearts that we might be entrusted with more and more of God. what a person values, they will protect. God will give us the measure of His presence that we are willingly jealous to guard”
Will gifts guarantee us a place in heaven? No. Yet, when I see my Daddy God face to face I want there to be such a familiarity knowing that my mind whilst on earth had allowed the fragrance of heaven to pour into me so much that I saw him in part of the fullness of what was to lay ahead. I want to know that I searched out the entirety of the Father as much as my earthly being could hold, so that I leave no room for Him to ask me when I stand before Him on that day, ‘Megan, sweet child, why did you never claim what was yours?’.
God doesn’t need an explanation or the go ahead to place gold dust in peoples’ hands. He is God. Maybe people roll around on the floor laughing because God brings people back to a vulnerability and a freedom that was intended for us from the start. Maybe the spirit moves in what may appear as madness, because He is not tame. Why should we even ask Him for an explanation? I’m not naive in saying the only spirit at work is God, but, I think we have given the devil far too much leeway forgetting that God has more power to direct than the devil has to deceive. The church need to focus on what God is willing to do through us and with us rather than what we seem to appear He is not willing to do or hasn’t done.
The church cowers in the corner over issues like human slavery, pornography and homosexuality passing it over to politicians when the Father gifted us with the spirit to overcome and to handle these very issues. We think on such small scales.. scale didn’t stop Gideon, Joshua or Nehemiah. God has the same power in each of us. We are those called to teach the nations to rebuild cities, lead people across parted waters, and defeat the giants.
It’s time to let the spirit reclaim lost ground, to let Him invade the area He has wanted all along, our hearts. To understand that Holy Sprit is not here to tickle us but to transform. It’s time to become a culture bearing the ‘miraculous signs’ of a God of the miraculous, unwilling to settle for the natural when we serve a God of the supernatural. unwilling to settle for pauper when we’ve been called prince. seeing radical as our only method of living; miracle as His normal, our normal.
““These miraculous signs will accompany those who believe: They will cast out demons in my name, and they will speak in new languages, they will be able to handle snakes with safety, and if they drink anything poisonous, it won’t hurt them. They will be able to place their hands on the sick and they will be healed.” ”