Our Spirits Cry For His
Paul William Helms shares his thoughts on the glory of God…
Something that I read on Adrian Warnock’s blog pointing to the work of the Holy Spirit among Seattleites through the preaching of Mark Driscoll and the ministry of Mars Hill (not to be mixed up with the other Mars Hill of MI) made a few things click in my mind today. Above all, please read Mark’s blog — if you still have time after that, read and respond to some of my own thoughts.
It seems to me that we slip into thinking that the Holy Spirit’s work is only visible in God mopping-up people’s moral lives. We have no gauge for emotional experiences of the Spirit’s work and conclude that therefore the experience isn’t really the meat of Christian life — only the growth in ‘holiness’ is (I use quotes because we usually minimize it into simple morality). We want people to grow in doctrinal understanding, to give up their sinful habits, to talk the Christian talk. We won’t press people for proof of the indelible marks of the Holy Spirit — a renewed heart that is full of praise, thanks, and singing to God (Col. 3:15-17), an inner assurance that God is now ‘my Father’ because of Christ (Rom. 8:15), a peaceful sense that pervades our hearts with the love of God in Christ (Rom. 5:5). And much more (Galatians 5:22-23)! Deep down we know that if we press our friends and our families about these basic experiential norms of the Christian life, we will likely find that many are content with mere religion or with devoted talking. I know that for much of my re-life, I have been content with intellectualism and fearful of heart-felt crying to God.
But even though this is the common experience of many, we are not called to settle with the way things are. We are called from ‘one degree of glory to the next.’ We must be on that path and we must help others on it. Now, I don’t believe that the Holy Spirit is anti-intellectual, but we do know that He is at least anti-wisdom — in the worldly sense of the word (1 Corinthians 1:26-31). How many Christian leaders do we admire because of their intellectual pedigree or because of their ability to talk? We may actually be fools for admiring them as if smarts were the thing that pleased God the most! What does our Lord Jesus say? “Blessed are the poor in spirit… blessed are those who mourn” (Matthew 5). Nowhere does He bless the college-bred as if they were somehow more useful to God. A contrite heart, a broken spirit — these things God will not despise (Psalm 51). And it is precisely these things that God brings about in us when His Spirit is working.
Like Driscoll, I have been near to the point of crying several times over the past few months. I’ve actually broken down a few times. I don’t think that I am an especially emotional person, though (someone let me know if you think I am). What is it that causes this, then? I want to say that it is the glory of God that causes our souls to tremble and weep. The sad thing is, we speak about glory so often but know far too little of it in our own experience. What happened when Ezra read the Law to the Jews after having rebuilt the temple? Weeping (Nehemiah 8:9)! Perhaps some of us would rather not know His glory manifested in our hearts and lives. For the Spirit of God works through repentance, and this is a path of sorrow and pain. We’d rather not have any of that. But it is so crucial! The Spirit leads God’s people through paths of mourning in order to bring about real transformation and to make us dance with joy. Too many of us prefer to be strong, wise, always-together, and certainly we are not into dancing. And it’s plain unprofessional to cry in front of people, especially in the midst of a public gathering.
Has God’s presence — His glory showered over you — ever brought you to tears? The root word that we derive the concept of glory from basically means “heaviness, weightiness.” My Hebrew dictionary translates the word chavod as “abundance, honor, glory, splendor.” Have His words, full of grace and Truth, hit you with full force to the point of emotional breakdown? This is the effective and weighty presence of God, the sheer power of His Spirit — His awe-inspiring holiness. What has led me to near tears on several occasions can only be described as this weightiness and splendor. We are to seek it, not because we want to feel all tingly but because we want to seek God! We believe His words are life and light, and they demand our entire soul and spirit to bend and stretch into the image of Christ. We want to feel the way that He feels, to know the intimate workings of His mind (see 1 Cor. 2:16 — meditate on that). We want to pray with deep sorrow for ourselves and others, for the world that is aching and groaning for the glory of Christ’s Church to be revealed.
So, the question is simple. ‘Have you cried lately?’. Has His glory hit you with full force, the weight of His words and the truth of the Gospel truly driven you to your knees? Or are you proud? If we seek God earnestly, we will not find ourselves wanting.
Tags: Adrian Warnock, Mark Driscoll, The Glory of God, Holy Spirit, The Presence of God, Mars Hill
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