In this blog I want to look at what causes us to fear the
Holy Spirit. For the Holy Spirit is the love between God the Father and God the
Son. Fearing the true Holy Spirit means we are afraid of the way God loves us,
or the way we should love Him. There should be no fear in our relationship with
God, for as John said, “fear has to do with punishment”. Our fear of God, or as
we are exploring in this blog, fear of the Holy Spirit, comes from a place of
misunderstanding. For if we plainly see who God is, and how His Spirit lives
within us, we would not be afraid of His presence or His power.
It is here I must make a confession. I believe in a God who
is high and lifted up, one who is so great we cannot fully grasp who He is. I
talk about this God a lot, emphasizing my smallness and His greatness. This
kind of thinking keeps us in awe of God, respectful of who He is, and careful
when we make statements about God’s nature or persona. Yet we cannot make this
image of God our complete image of Him. I am guilty of putting this image of
God first, and not giving enough recognition to the simple principles of God.
God is awesome and mighty, but also so easy to understand children can grasp
who God is. Too often we favor one image over the other, or completely divorce
them from each other. We choose either a majestic complex God or a simple child-like-faith
God. We need both. To tear these two images of God apart from each other is to
miss-out on who God is and create heresy. One heresy keeps us on our knees in perpetual
fear. The other lets us dismiss God because he’s too friendly and cannot
confront our issues. Join the pieces together and we have a great God who
alleviates our fears: He chooses to be close to us and make Himself known to
us. I serve a great God who has made Himself known to me, not because I have a
special knowledge or experience of God, but because He has made Himself
knowable and accessible to everyone. This leads us to our first fear, that of
accessibility. Has God made himself plain and knowable to all or only to a few
spiritual elite?
The Fear of
Accessibility
Looking at the opening of John’s first letter, he bases his
knowledge of God on something very simple: what he has heard, seen, and touched.
“That which was from the beginning, which we have heard,
which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have
touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we
have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which
was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have
seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship
is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.”
According to John, knowing God is simple. John’s knowledge
is based on what he has seen, heard, and touched. He’s not basing his knowledge
on a spiritual experience, or claiming that a spiritual experience is necessary
in order to understand God. He’s stating that God is easily accessible and
coming to knowledge of God is simple: experience God through those who have
experienced God. We can view God and see God by those who have been with God. The
only special knowledge John claims is the time he spent with Jesus. That’s it.
John knows God because he spent considerable time with Jesus, learned from Him,
and understood who Jesus was. John’s knowledge of the Spirit of God comes from
seeing Jesus go about His daily life.Too often people try to claim special accessibility or authority to God through a spiritual experience. “I had a dream” or “I had a revelation” or “An angel spoke to me”. These things do not take the place of regular time spent with God and coming to a practical experience of who Jesus is. John had dreams. John had revelations. Angels spoke to John, but he never uses these things as his authority. He doesn’t make spiritual experiences the hallmark of Christianity, even though he had experiences shared by few others. What’s most important, John never uses his spiritual experiences to elevate himself. Why? Because the experience of seeing Jesus, believing in Him, and doing likewise is enough. John says the spirit of God at work in our daily lives is enough.
Why is that enough? It’s enough because God plainly displayed himself for all to see. Not so we could speak about how good God is. Not so we could write about how good God is. But for us to live out how good God is. This is the opposite of having to experience something spiritual. For by living out who Jesus is we recognize that our daily lives are enough. It’s spiritual enough to recognize Jesus as God, believe in Him, and be changed through God’s love. We don’t have to have access to the extraordinary to be followers of Jesus, rather it is by following Jesus we have access to the extraordinary. That access is not subject to human will, but submitting ourselves to God’s will in our daily lives.
Why is this important? We need to recognize God is always
present, not just in the glitz, glam, and emotion of spiritual experiences. God
never leaves us by ourselves; He’s always with us from the most boring to most
exciting of moments. He’s accessible 24/7 to all. We don’t have to discover the
extraordinary to find God. He’s always present. He has even given us gifts and
abilities to realize His presence.
What about these gifts? What are they? What if I don’t have
spiritual gifts, am I still Christian? What if I do have them and people are afraid
of them, can I still use them? Our fear of being gifted, or not gifted at all, isolates
us from community. Which is our second fear: the fear of isolation.
The Fear of Isolation
Too often people fret at not having any special spiritual
gifts. I say special because sometimes we downplay spiritual gifts like
administration. Instead we wish we had the super spiritual authoritative ones
like prophecy, or the super cool ones like healing, or even the super
non-intellectual ones like speaking in tongues. The problem with this mentality
is that we’re not happy with what we have and put ourselves down for being
something and someone we’re not. We desire to be super instead of ordinary real
people. We’re afraid of not being great enough, or in some cases being too
great with our gifts that others will shut us out. Fear causes isolation, from
not being good enough, to being too great and unapproachable.
Paul writes about spiritual gifts in his first letter to the
Corinthians. Here is what he told them:“There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but the same God works all of them in all men. Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. To one there is given through the Spirit the message of wisdom, to another the message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he gives them to each one, just as he determines.”
The main idea? Our gifts are to be used in community. What kind of community? One based on special spiritual authority? No. A practical community where each individual’s gifts are used to build each other up. A community based on the love of God. Just as God’s love is available to all, so too are spiritual gifts given for the common good. Not to inflate our egos, but to share the love of Jesus with each other. That’s why when Paul goes to rank the gifts in his same letter to the Corinthians he starts with love, because if, “I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.” The community of Christ is knit together and united in love. It is through this love we are not left in isolation and fear of what we are or what we are not, but encouraged to discover who we are and what we have to offer, and to use our gifts for the benefit of others.
From my own experience, giftedness can be a scary thing. I often don’t understand my gifts or try not to recognize them or think of them as spiritual. I downplay my gifts, assuming everyone else’s gift is better than mine. I glaze over my gifts because they are as natural to me as breathing. I am often afraid of using and sharing them, or worse, wishing someone else’s gift was mine. I don’t like to talk about my giftedness, but I have a gift for writing. If you were to ask me how I feel about my writing I would say I’m decent, but I have a long way to go. I’m afraid of where that destination is. Even though I’m afraid, I practice and hone my writing skills by writing and sharing those writings with others. I want to be a faithful writer, but too often I find myself downplaying the power of the written word, forgetting the influence of other authors on my life. I struggle with my writing because I am afraid most of my writing is not good enough. I push myself to publish weekly writings. I know my writings aren’t perfect, but I let my fears of not being good enough go because a community of people have encouraged me. I also have an amazing spouse who encourages me, loves me, and loves my writing. She’s done more for me in the writing department than I could express. She helps me bring my fears to the light and helps me let them go. Left in isolation I would keep writing, but I would always be convinced my writing isn’t good enough, and I wouldn’t share it.
This brings us to our final fear of the Spirit of God, the fear of inadequacy: the fear of not being good enough.
The Fear of Inadequacy
I’m not good enough. A powerful unadvertised message many believe. An invasive lie used to keep people from reaching their potential. The words used by someone ready to give up. I’m not good enough is a simple enough statement, but the power of this self-fulfilling prophecy is damning. It crushes spirits. It deletes hopes and dreams. It erases life. Too often this statement get used to mean, “I’m not good enough for God to care about me.” The simple truth is that we are not good enough; however, God cares for us because He loves us. It has nothing to do with our ability to meet His standards.
Consider Peter, widely accepted as the founder of the universal Church. We would like to believe this man came from a highly trained background, which would therefore explain his success. We want to believe there is some physical or intellectual reason Peter succeeded where many struggle today. But the truth makes Peter’s success all the more greater. According to Luke’s gospel, Jesus encounters Peter on a night Peter has failed to catch any fish, even though he’s worked hard all night. In short Peter’s hard work has earned him nothing. Jesus gets into Peters boat and tells Peter to put out into deep water to catch fish. Peter’s response is classic, “Master, we’ve worked hard all night and haven’t caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets.” Peter is basically saying, ‘the only reason I’m going to catch anything is because you told me so.’ His response is simple, but also betrays some skepticism, “But because you say so” he’s saying his fisherman instincts say Jesus is one oar short of a rowboat, but he’s choosing to take Jesus at his word.
Here’s what happened: “When they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break. So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them, and they came and filled both boats so full that they began to sink.” From no fish after a hard night of work, to so many fish their tools of the trade started to break, showing their inadequacy. There’s no spiritual gift for catching fish, but Jesus just showed Peter the power of God by giving him more than he could handle. Jesus taught Peter a simple lesson, “It’s not about your efforts Peter, it’s about taking me (Jesus) at my word.”
You think Peter would be grateful, that he might bow down and show reverence to Jesus, and thank him for the fish, but Peter’s reaction to meeting God shows his recognition of inadequacy, “When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus knees and said, ‘Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!’” Peter recognizes he’s not good enough. No one is. But this doesn’t stop Jesus from taking notice of a hard working fisherman who has nothing to show for his efforts. Too often I feel like Peter, a failure at the best of times, constantly missing out on what’s right in front of me until I accept what Jesus is asking of me. Which is simply obedience in the most ordinary of tasks.
We have no reason to be afraid of the Holy Spirit: For God
makes himself accessible to us in the most ordinary and plain to experience
ways; God surrounds us and encourages us with His love, which is the most
important and foremost of all His gifts; and God shows us it’s not by our hard
working efforts we win His favor, but simply by taking Him at His Word and
applying it to the most ordinary of tasks
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