On Easter we begin a fifty-day journey to Pentecost Sunday, a day in history that literally catapulted the Christ event of Palestine, to a worldwide movement of the Living Word of God. So powerful was the event of Pentecost that the story of Jesus resonates today with about 2.3 billion people around the planet, and the message is still changing lives.
Concerning Easter, Professor N. T. Wright said this, “The message of Easter is that God's new world has been unveiled in Jesus Christ and that you're now invited to belong to it.” This means that Easter is the transition into the immense and unmistakable influence of the Resurrected and now living, Christ Jesus.
In the fifty-day journey to Pentecost my prayer is that the Holy Spirit might awaken in us a deep and profound response to what God is doing in the world. We will look at various Scriptures that will quicken our thinking and hopefully our obedience. As we journey I pray we will accept by faith that God is at work in His world and in our lives, leading and guiding and directing us into a way of being which can only make sense as we grasp the fact that the things God is doing in His world are “Things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard, and which have not entered the heart of man, All that God has prepared for those who love Him” (1 Corinthians 2:9, NASB).
In his book, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, C. S. Lewis has this wonderful quote about Aslan, the Lion. He says of him,
“He'll be coming and going…One day you'll see him and another you won't. He doesn't like being tied down--and of course he has other countries to attend to. It's quite all right. He'll often drop in. Only you mustn't press him. He's wild, you know. Not like a tame lion….“Aslan is a lion -- the Lion, the great Lion.”
Then one of the four children who had come into Narnia through the Wardrobe said,
"Ooh…I'd thought he was a man. Is he - quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion"... "Safe?" said Mr. Beaver ..."Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you.”
This makes me think of the words of Jesus to Nicodemus in John 3:8, “The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
We are not called to manage the Spirit. We are called to set our sails to the winds of Spirit, and then let God be God. Whatever happens on the journey we know that it begins with a resurrection and ends with an outpouring of the Holy Spirit that literally
rocked the world.
No comments:
Post a Comment