The warm light of the morning sun is creeping up over the city and my latte is hot and delicious this morning. The children are playing at my feet and Eric is reading a book on biblical eldership and making small comments on how good it is. I want to carve the soft and simple mornings like this forever on my memory. I read in 1 Corinthians this morning, “Don’t you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit?” and I am reflecting on that question deeply.
Do I know? Do you know?
What are the signs that we believe we are the home of the Spirit of God?
Some years ago we were in the throes of working in crisis in our city. I had been engaged in deep levels of traumatic experience for some years and I was feeling the impact. It was over that time that my husband Eric was praying and fasting for more of the Spirit’s infilling in His life. I was neutral, open-ish, but very spiritually proud. His humility and hunger kept him asking, seeking, knocking until one night he had an encounter with the Spirit and received the gift of tongues. The next evening he came into the bedroom, laid hands on me, and prayed for me. In the morning I knelt as normal by the doorway overlooking our square and began to pray in another tongue. I was quite taken back because I had been skeptical, a bit aloof and sarcastic, and not praying for that gift!
God knew what would crack my spiritual pride.
I was properly humbled, intrigued, and a deep thirst for the Spirit of God settled into my soul.
Whenever I share this I always feel like I need to mention this caveat; not everyone experiences the Spirit’s infilling exactly the same way and I don’t believe that the gift of tongues is a sign that you are full of the Holy Spirit. However, it is a gift from God and six years later I can testify that it is a good gift, and one that has undoubtedly kept me from sinking under the weight of the reality around me. I pray in tongues over my children, in the brothels, down the street, and whenever I can’t find words to express pain. It is a gift that has given me the capacity to express the agonies that I have difficulty finding words for.
Six years later I know why God dropped that gift straight down through the doorways of our Victoria Square apartment. By His grace He decided to crush my pride and simultaneously help me develop intense desire to experience God on this earth.
I have experienced a lot of the devil’s work. My friends have experienced more. One of the most common arguments I hear relating to seeking after the Holy Spirit is “don’t run after experiences!” and I am here to entreat you to please run after experiences with God because the devil has filled the world with so many experiences of evil. Somehow we think we can encounter the dark corners of religion, the deep impact of trafficking and sexual exploitation, and the sinful areas of our own hearts without having experiences with God.
Do you think the woman with the issue of blood was longing for an experience of healing? What about Naaman dipping into the Jordan? There was a man so desperate to experience healing a rooftop came off and he was dropped to Jesus. There was no condemnation from Jesus when people pressed for Him, called after Him, or broke through a roof to get to Him. He affirmed their good desire and blessed their faith. All of those individuals crying, seeking, pressing to get to Him could have held back and viewed Jesus skeptically like the Pharisees.
The disciples often tried to quiet down the loud crying of the desperate ones and keep away the clamouring little ones. They wanted a more orderly gospel that wasn’t interrupted by imperfect people. They wanted to stay on mission with their agenda instead of moving with Jesus. They were annoyed by the earnest desire of the individuals who had suffered for many years. They didn’t understand the depth of desperation in the voices of those crying loudly for Jesus.
How many times does the church trade a vibrant life in the Spirit for order and predictability? How many times do we close the door to seeing radical transformation and miraculous healing because we have no capacity to welcome in? How many times do we try to quiet the cries of the desperate so we can continue building systems with the comfortable?
I have developed a holy desperation for everything God has promised for me on this earth. I cannot live and breath without it. The Holy Spirit is our spiritual lungs on this earth and many of us are walking around without knowing how to really breathe life into our own bodies and the ones around us. We feel desperately alone because we don’t feel Him within us.
It was Pentecost Sunday here last week. I want to publicly testify that I have seen the power and anointing of the Holy Spirit up close. I am praying for more encounters with Him. I want deeper experiences of God in my life. I am hungry to hear more from Him and to experience everything promised to me in scripture. I earnestly desire to prophesy and recently decided to pray for revelation for specific people when I’m hanging my laundry into the sunshine. He gives it. I share it. It brings life.
Last Saturday we had our prayer meeting and I was tired and had a cranky baby but my desperation led me to sit in that middle chair for prayer. I didn’t share anything with anyone about what I was asking God for. Five or six people directly spoke to the deep desperate place in my heart crying out for answers.
God speaks today. He heals today. He delivers us from demons today. He wants to give us experiences of hope and freedom and healing today. Don’t hide behind the walls of a polished and maintained faith when God wants to lead you into an ocean of abundant life. Everything promised to us through the Holy Spirit will be everything we need to face the evil spirits of this world and overcome. A robust theology of the Spirit in the church is the only way to experience the resurrected Christ today through seeing the lame walk, the blind see, and the demonised delivered. It is the only way believers in Jesus will actually be believers as they see deep personal and communal transformation up close.
God wants to develop a holy backbone in us so we can face the incomprehensible evil of this world and in our hearts, stand firm, and watch how He chooses to overcome it. There are enough flimsy believers who say a lot about faith but recoil when they need it. You and I can become disciples of Jesus by welcoming every biblical encounter He has for us today and allowing our senses to be fully engaged in experiencing Him.
Pentecost was real then. The tongues of fire, the holy uproar, and the skeptics.
Pentecost is real today. The power is the same, and source is the same. It’s Jesus. If you believe in Him you can be filled with a Spirit that raises the dead and transforms us all, filling our Mondays and Tuesdays with the divine hope that all darkness will one day be made light.
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