One thing that has gotten my mind tumbling, is this: Why, when the Holy Spirit is at work in the local church, some people leave to attend another church or worse yet, stop attending altogether?
I have been praying about this, and also praying for some people who need a touch of the Holy Spirit in their lives and yet have for some reason decided to stay away. As I was praying I heard the Holy Spirit say:
“An encounter with God’s presence brings changes in life;
when people do not want the change,
they will stay away from the presence of God”
As I was praying, I remembered a dream one lady in our congregation had some years ago. In her dream, she was coming into church one Sunday morning, and there were people running toward the altar and people running away from the altar, and from the church. When she got closer into the sanctuary she saw that Jesus was at the left of the altar, standing there in visible form. People were running toward Him, or away from Him.
This dream explains, in a sense, what I am trying to convey: That every time we come close into the presence of the Holy Spirit, there will be changes in our lives, and there will always be the question hanging in the air,
“do we want to change?”.
Over many years of ministry, both as pastors and in the mission fields, we have learned that most people want change for good, but they want change in their own terms.
When my friend Sergio Scataglini was a young boy, he disobeyed his mom, and was skating barefoot on the shiny wooden floor until he got a big splinter in his foot. Of course, he did not want to admit he disobeyed so he remained silent until his limping was too obvious. He had an infection developing and needed CHANGE, but that would involve a process that was painful; the process was perceived as more painful than walking with the splinter still on his foot: Admitting the disobedience and going through the splinter pulling procedure! Finally, he admitted it, and his mom took the splinter out and cleaned and disinfected the infected area. In a few days his foot was alright. And he learned a lesson.
Whether we admit it or not, we all need change. We need changes that involve leaving the past behind, or changes in attitude, or the change of submission to God; sometimes, we need the kind of change that involves abandoning some of our acquired traits, or leaving behind harmful behaviors; many times, we harbor anger, or harmful thoughts; and if we are to be honest, a lot of times we have developed a vision of life that expects God’s blessing so that we keep doing what we do without change: We just need the blessing to carry on with our unchanged lives.
God wants to bless us. That is the amazing fact of grace, that God wants to bless us, and that He sent Jesus to open the gate through His sacrifice on the cross. But the fact remains, that His blessings, more often than not, involve a change in life that can only happen through the action of the Holy Spirit, when we come into His presence.
Yet how many of us have stayed away from true encounters with the Holy Spirit, for fear of change?
Are you suffering from a splinter that does not belong in your life? Don’t stay away from the Holy Spirit. Don’t stay away from the Body of Christ. Don’t pull yourself out of the atmosphere of healing in the Body of Christ, don’t stay far from God’s Presence because of fear of loss of what you are used to. What God has for us is always much better than what we have created for ourselves.
Sometimes what we cherish is a splinter.
J. Conrad Lampan
connect@conradlampan.com
360-692-2010
Advertisement
