Time to Turn the Power On

This summer after the storms, a guy went down to the hardware store early one morning and asked for a saw. The salesman took a chain saw from the shelf and commented that it was their “newest model, with the latest in technology, guaranteed to cut ten cords of firewood a day.” The customer thought that sounded pretty good, so he bought it on the spot.

         The next day the customer returned, looking somewhat exhausted. “Something must be wrong with this saw,” he moaned. “I worked as hard as I could and only barely managed to cut up one of the trees from my lawn. I could have done it easier with my old-fashioned saw.” Looking confused, the salesman said, “Here, let me try it out back on some wood we keep there.”

        They went to the woodpile, the salesman pulled the cord, and as the motor went vvvrooommmm. The customer leaped back and exclaimed, “What’s that noise??”

In my experience, the Christian life has been a lot like the do-it-yourselfer’s experience with the chainsaw. We don’t know what to do with it once we have it. Jesus told his followers to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything he commanded them (Matthew 28:19-20), and we’ve often focused on the baptizing part without teaching what comes next.

Last summer I went to a Christian summer camp where every night we got enthusiastic evangelistic messages. Which was fine, except that the audience was already 100% Christian. But the problem is that this is frequently true in our churches as well. We’ve focused on “get ‘em to the altar,” but once we do, we leave them there!

I am convinced that most of the problems in our churches stem from this issue; we have considered the altar, where we make our decision for Jesus, to be the finish line, when it is really the starting line.

So if the decision for Christ is the starting line, how do we continue in the faith? What does discipleship look like? Let me start by saying that as Christians we have focused on correct behaviors, which is good, because when we are Christians, we are expected to behave in certain ways. Ephesians 4:17 tells the new Christians that they must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. In fact, Ephesians 4 and 5 have lists of how Christians are supposed to conduct themselves – and I don’t have enough time this morning to go into all of them. But what we often do is attempt to hold the unbelieving world to Christian standards while refusing to submit to church discipline ourselves. Nobody wants to call it what it is – we’re much more comfortable pointing out someone else’s sin than confronting our own.

So does being a Christian consist of working really hard to get rid of all the sinful behaviors that were the hallmark of our life outside of Christ? Not really. Once I met a guy who trained dogs. His dog was really talented; not only could it sit and stay and roll over, but his master would tell it to say its prayers and it would rest its head on a chair and fold its paws over its eyes. He would tell it to praise the Lord and it would start to howl. It was great. Many of us who have owned pets have at some point quipped that our pet thinks he’s part of the family or is “almost human.”  But guess what: your dog, no matter how smart he is, is a dog. You cannot turn it into a person no matter how well you train it. And likewise, we can train ourselves to do and say all the right things, but when it comes down to it, even with all that training, we cannot change who we are at the root. This is why simple behavior modification doesn’t work in the Christian life.

Now, understand that there are cases where someone is immediately and instantaneously delivered from a behavior, whether it is an addiction or a sinful behavior. I know people who were addicted to drugs and had an epiphany and never touched another illegal drug, and didn’t even have the desire to. But I also know people who, for the last twenty years, have avoided family gatherings because they know there will be alcohol there, and they recognize that they are one drink away from a relapse.

And there are still others who do everything they can to hold their tongue, and they can usually act really nice in social situations, but inside they are mean, spiteful, and judgmental. And then sometimes it just forces its way out. You know, those times when you’re hungry or tired or when the wrong person pushes the wrong button. I remember reading in Richard Foster’s book the Celebration of Discipline that when you’re fasting and you’re grumpy, that’s the real you coming out, the you that has been covered by food. It can be easy to point fingers at someone in our culture who is self-medicating with prescription drugs (or who has turned to heroin) but the fact is, most of us self-medicate – we do so to hide or suppress the real “me” who isn’t very pleasant whatsoever.

So if the Bible calls us to live in a certain way, and if it really doesn’t work, then what are we to do? It kind of seems hypocritical, doesn’t it? God tells us to do something, and it’s not something that is possible… Does God really expect us to do what is impossible?

The answer is no.  And yes. Think about this: you probably know that I like to give homework assignments during my sermons – what if the assignment was to slam dunk a basketball on a regulation basketball hoop? And I said don’t come back until you’ve dunked. I hope you realize that I’m asking the impossible. But what if I brought in the USA Men’s Olympic Basketball team and said that they would be dunking for you. Would you still insist on trying yourself?

When it comes to living out the Christian life, on our own, we are totally unable to comply. We just cannot do it. If it were possible, then Jesus came to earth and died a brutal death on the cross in vain, and if he did that in vain, why did God send him here anyway? So God requires the impossible, but God does not require us to do something that cannot be done. Did you get the subtle difference here? God requires the impossible, but God makes the impossible possible. The Gospel of Luke first introduces the Holy Spirit in Luke 1, where God’s angel comes to Mary, telling her she will give birth to a son, Jesus, who will be the Son of the Most High. She asked, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be barren is in her sixth month. For nothing is impossible with God.” (Luke 1:35-37).

What makes it possible for us to live holy lives, something that is impossible for us? The question isn’t “what” but “who” and the answer is the Holy Spirit. I’m convinced that the one thing that most American churches are missing isn’t a thing, but a Person. With the right combination of personalities and strategies and hard work, any church can grow and can attract a crowd, but if the Holy Spirit isn’t in it, then it’s an exercise in missing the point.

When it comes to the Trinity, we know God’s character pretty well. Our culture really loves Jesus and we have been given the advantage that he came in the flesh and lived here on earth, demonstrating his character. But it seems that the Holy Spirit, as the third Person of the Trinity, is the God we hardly know. The Forgotten God, as Francis Chan has dubbed him. In Acts 19, Paul is making his first trip to Ephesus, and there he finds some disciples and he asks them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” They answered, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” (Acts 19:2) Though most American Christians wouldn’t say that, our actions suggest it. We have to reverse this trend. The church without the Holy Spirit is like the person without the spirit – dead. In the late 1980s there was a movie called Weekend at Bernie’s, which was a terrible movie – bad acting, bad writing, and a bad premise, but the movie was about these two guys who had to pretend that their wealthy dead benefactor, Bernie, was alive. So they carted him everywhere, propping him up to go cruising in his convertible and for boat rides. A really ridiculous movie, to be sure.

But American mainline denominational churches, of which we are one, are running around like it’s Weekend at Bernie’s. We try to do all the right things – we have our worship services, but they are devoid of any power. We offer altar calls, but nobody comes. The district asked for stories of transformation for the district charge conference, and I asked around and couldn’t find any. Listen to what Isaiah says All of us have become like one who is unclean, all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away. (Isaiah 64:6) In other words, though we look right and though we seem to be doing the right things, if the Holy Spirit is not in the center of all of it, even our most righteous acts are like filthy rags. We can feed every person in Jackson County, but if it’s not done in the Holy Spirit, we might as well eat it all ourselves, because it’s all filthy.

So if we are going to be the church God has called us to be, we must be filled with the Holy Spirit. What might it look like if this church was filled with the Holy Spirit? It might look a little bit like the early church, which we see described in Acts 2:42-47: They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All of the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

Isn’t that an awesome description? And it doesn’t have to just be a historical account; it can be our personal experience. But we are going to have to get to know the Holy Spirit. If you are a Christian, you have been given the Holy Spirit – all of Him, not just part. But the issue is that you haven’t given Him all of you. In the coming weeks, we will continue by looking at the Person and work of the Holy Spirit, praying not just that He fill us, but that we accept His filling. Perhaps you already know that you’ve been walking around like a zombie. That you’ve been trying to cut with a chainsaw without power. That you’ve been trying to live the Christian life without the Holy Spirit. And it’s all fruitless, and you want, no, need the Holy Spirit to empower you. You may not understand fully what all this means, but you know it’s who you need, and you’re willing to step out in faith and ask God for the openness to accept what He will do, to receive the Holy Spirit to lead and guide you in everything. If so, please come forward during our last song and allow me to pray for you. Maybe you know that you’ve been given the gift of the Spirit and you just haven’t allowed the Spirit to have free reign in your life and you need to step back and allow Him. Please come.