Pondering what the Holy Spirit will do in my little life today

By Mark A. Taylor

I told some friends about the book my men’s group was reading, Forgotten God by Francis Chan. Subtitled Reversing Our Tragic Neglect of the Holy Spirit, it focuses on what should happen in our lives because the Holy Spirit is with us today.

“Basically, Chan challenges the reader to a complete surrender to the Spirit’s presence and power in his or her life,” I said.

I was speaking with a friend who has spent her lifetime in ministry—in local churches, Christian colleges, and the mission field—and she made a one-word response.

“Scary.”

I readily agreed, and now, several weeks later, after finishing our discussion of the book, I’d add a little nuance to my reaction. The word that comes to mind is intimidating.

Truly willing?

Chan prods his readers honestly to answer the question, “What would happen if you told God you were truly willing to follow the Spirit’s lead to go anywhere and do anything he wanted?” His challenge: “Quit asking what is God’s will for your life.” For too many people the prayer is ultimately a delaying tactic. The better question, Chan suggests, is “What is the Spirit leading me to do today? This afternoon? Right now?”

But all of us in my group wrestled with how to know that.

Some would say, of course, that the Holy Spirit works today only through the Word. Most in our group are not satisfied with that conclusion.

Neither is Chan. But he does not minimize the role of the Bible in the Spirit’s work today. And while he assumes the Spirit may give individual, personal directives not spelled out in Scripture, his book is filled with Bible teaching on the Spirit. He focuses on the impact the Spirit had among the first Christians as they discovered how to pursue God’s mission. He asks, “Are you open to experiencing this same power today?”

He stresses at one point that his goal is not to make readers feel guilty, only open and aware. Everyone in my group seemed open, but how to stay aware was a question largely hanging in the air unanswered, even as we finished the study.

Conclusions . . . for now

For now, I’ve come to these conclusions:

• Certainly the Spirit does work through his inspired Word, and one of the best ways to experience his presence and power is regularly to meditate on the Bible. Perhaps it is Satan, aware of this, who continually proposes excuses and creates roadblocks to keep me from this daily habit.

• In their volunteer handbook on prayer ministry, David and Kim Butts remind us to pray for God’s will as he’s already explained it in the Bible.

Consider the example of the first Christians praying after Peter and John were released by the Jewish authorities and commanded to stop preaching Jesus. The believers prayed for God to give them boldness as they continued to preach, and “the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness” (Acts 4:31).

They were praying for God’s work in the world. They were praying for something they knew God wanted to happen. Their prayer was focused on his will, not their own problems. No prayers for Peter and John’s health or sick relatives. No prayers for a “hedge of protection” or “travel mercies.” Theirs was a prayer for boldness to proclaim the truth of Jesus to a hostile world, and the walls trembled as the Holy Spirit gave them power to see their prayer answered.

I think I might see the Spirit’s power more evident if my prayers were so concentrated on the purposes God has already made clear.

What if my prayers were concentrated on the purposes God has already made clear?

• Meanwhile, I need to get on with my life. Trying harder doesn’t produce spiritual fruit. Chan said, “What does effect change is when we begin to ask God to make these fruit manifest in our lives, by the power of His Spirit, and when we spend time in communion with our God” (pp. 148-149). But fruit doesn’t grow overnight, and there is much for me to do today.

I’m struck by Tish Harrison Warren’s observation about the first decades of Jesus’ life on earth. For all those years he worked as a simple tradesman, building stuff that has long since been lost or destroyed. “In this dark world, where men and women were dying, where the poor were suffering, where injustice raged in a vast and violent empire, God became flesh and built some furniture” (Prayer in the Night, p. 76).

Her point is to lift up the value of everyday work, and it’s a point well taken. But as I considered this in light of my Holy Spirit study, I’m taking her observation a bit further. I’ve decided it’s OK to relax a little.

Watch, wait, work

This doesn’t mean I forget about the Holy Spirit or cease looking to see his presence. It doesn’t mean I don’t ponder the Scripture and discover new dimensions of God’s will. I won’t stop praying for power to put his will into practice.  

But today I must go to the grocery store. My wife and I will ready the house for dinner with friends tonight. Tomorrow we’ll rise early to go to church, and then we’ll spend time in the afternoon packing for an upcoming trip. We’ll fill the little compartments in our plastic pill sorter, and we’ll wash some dishes.

Through it all, I can watch and wait for the Spirit to show up. I can continually work to remove the obstacles in my spirit that hinder the presence of the Spirit in my life.

And I can breathe easy, trusting God to use my ordinary life to make some extraordinary difference somehow, somewhere, with someone, sometime.

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