Pentecost
May 2010
About forty years ago I remember instructing three middle-aged men who wanted to join our church. I talked to them for about an hour each week for six months.
The three of them were baptised or were received into the church the following Easter.
Within six months one of them had left the church.
They all got the very same instruction. Why did one leave?
I think that being a Christian, or for that matter being God centred in any religion, depends very much on having or acquiring a sense of gratitude to Your God.
We know that in our lives a sense of gratitude motivates and enables us to do all sorts of things; sometimes quite difficult things. Gratitude can be based on knowledge alone, but for most of us knowledge alone is not sufficient to motivate us strongly.
For us Christians it is only when we experience the Risen Lord in some way that we become motivated strongly. Experiencing the Risen Lord and receiving the Holy Spirit are one and the same thing. It can be sudden or a slow process over many years. The essential factor seems to be a total conviction of ones own helplessness in this matter and an attitude of openness and waiting hopefulness.
I remember in Kenya experiencing a drought that lasted for ten consecutive months. Not a cloud to be seen except clouds of dust being hurried along by the strong wind.
Every evening after dark I stood on the veranda watching the distant horizon longing for the flickering of lightning. I could only wait in humble expectation.
That is the attitude I am talking about.
Ps. 42. puts it well; ‘As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When shall I come and behold the face of God?
My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me continually,
Where is your God?’
Then when one experiences the Risen Lord in some way; when one receives the Holy Spirit; there is a change.
As Isaiah says; ‘Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert.’
Only then do I experience true repentance and total forgiveness of sins - quite a different experience to what most of us are used to after confession.
Then gratitude to my God fills my heart and motivates me to do things I would never dream of doing before.