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Seized
He speaks in the burning bush.
He speaks in the belly of the whale.
He leads in a thundering cloud by day
and a pillar of fire by night.
Our God, our Awesome God is a consuming fire
Who shakes the mountain.
The elders fall on their faces
and the angels cry out
HOLY HOLY HOLY.
He seizes our hearts and minds and spirits,
and in a twinkling of an eye
He teaches us of purity and love and passion
beyond what our mortal beings can comprehend.
We are undone.
By the standards of human reckoning,
the Holy Spirit,
the very Shekinah of the Living God
is most certainly not always gentle...
and even more certainly is not a man.
No, the Holy Spirit is not a gentleman.
It has been said that He never comes unbidden,
And never violates our will.
He has seized and transformed my will,
And violated my stubbornness.
He has done me the loving and holy violence
of touching my lips and my heart
with a coal of fire from the altar of His presence.
Of ruining me
for anything but to live and move and have my being
in Him.
In her first encounter with the Lion Aslan, Lucy asks if He is a tame Lion.
No, He is most certainly not tame.
Well, then is He at least safe?
No, He is not safe either.
But He is
GOOD.
~second movement~
bellywater: Thanks firedancer. But where does the teaching about Him not coming uninvited fit in? Is it wrong? If so, then why do so many believe it?
firedancer: I think many believe it because they so desperately want it to be true. It makes for a god who is much "nicer"...more polite and fitting with their/our sense of spiritual propriety and decorum. It also goes to the root of a control issue. We do not naturally want an experience of God in which we do not remain firmly in control. Of our senses. Of our behaviour. Of our emotions. Now there are those "bruised reeds" who will not be broken by His coming. At times He caresses and whispers, comforts and coos. He woos us like a lover, bringing us along a step at a time, and never more than we can handle. At other times, though, He stirs inside us strangely and with such fire and passion that we can almost feel the roar of the Lion of Judah in the atoms of our being. He never really comes the same way twice or with two different people. He is infinitely wise and infinitely creative. And infinitely loving. He simply packages His love in such a way as to always catch us off guard, surprising us afresh with the joy and power of His presence, or overwhelming us with His Holiness and Fire. |
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