Where is the Spirit Leading

Have you ever followed a leader? Follow the Leader is a simple children’s game where everyone lines up behind one leader and then they try to mimic the leader’s actions. The leader is usually happy to get to lead and does simple things, like waving arms, jumping, or walking in zigzag patterns. If you don’t follow the leader more or less exactly, the consequence is you’re out of the game. Until the next round, that is.

There are other times, however, when following a leader exactly is more important. For example, if you are walking through a minefield, it’s important to walk directly in the footsteps of the one leading you through. If a guide is leading you along a cliff, chances are that the guide knows where the footing is solid and where it isn’t.

Most of us have probably found ourselves in a situation where we think we know more than the one who is leading us. That phenomenon is nowhere more obvious than the Monday Morning Quarterback, where everyone at home knows better than the coaches and players who played on Saturday and Sunday. We are caught in a difficult tension of being self-determined and independent and also needy. We understand that we need God’s guidance and leadership, but when God tells us to go, all of a sudden, we know better.

Twice in Luke’s Gospel we hear directly from God. The second time is at the Transfiguration, where we read: A voice came from the cloud, saying, “This is my Son, whom I have chosen. Listen to him.” (Luke 9:35)

God himself gives his approval to Jesus and tells Peter, James, and John to listen to him. God wants to make sure that there is no mistake or question about Jesus’ authority. His leadership is important. Where he leads, we must follow. This is what being Jesus’ disciple is all about. Unfortunately, we often take an unbiblical view of the path the Holy Spirit leads us on, expecting everything to be sunshine and roses and when it isn’t, we wonder if maybe God isn’t with us. There are pastors and entire church movements the claim that we can “name it and claim it” – meaning all we have to do is believe something and act like it’s true and it will come true.

There comes a moment when theology and practice collide. In her essay, Redemptive Suffering: A Christian Solution to the Problem of Evil, Marilyn Adams poses that the big question is “How can I trust (or continue to trust) God in a world like this (in distressing circumstances such as these)?”

Most of us can agree on the idea that we can trust God, that the Holy Spirit is a trustworthy guide, but can we be “confident that God is actually trustworthy in the present situation”?

Can we trust that God is active in a town where jobs have dried up? Can we trust God to provide in a town where government assistance is the largest source of income? Can we trust God in our cancer treatments?

It can be difficult to trust God when the evidence around us is less than affirming. When we don’t see God at work, we can wonder where God is. An ancient poem sums up that experience: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, and am not silent. In case you’re wondering where that came from, it’s Psalm 22:1-2. How can we trust in God when what we see around us isn’t what we want?

Earlier I mentioned how God spoke out loud in Luke’s gospel twice. The first was at Jesus’ Transfiguration. The other time was at Jesus’ baptism. (Luke 3:21-22) When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized too. And as he was praying, heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.” Right after this, we get a genealogy, and immediately after, we read this: Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the desert, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry. (Luke 4:1-2)

Aside from the great understatement that after fasting for forty days, Jesus was hungry, one incredibly interesting moment in this passage is that it was the Holy Spirit who led Jesus into the desert where he was tempted. Every week we pray that God will not lead us into temptation, but it was the Holy Spirit who brought Jesus into the place where he would be tempted. And God works like that. From Marilyn Adams again: “For what God wants most from us is wholehearted trust and obedience. Yet it is conceptually impossible to trust someone if you know in advance every move that he will make.”

If we were not ever in a position where we were tempted, where there were troubles and struggles, we would never have to trust God. When we are financially solvent, we don’t have to think about relying on God to provide for us. When our family is in great shape and we’re all happy, then we don’t have to turn to God. When we have all kinds of ways that we can satisfy our own desires without God, why would we need to ask him to help? Why would we want to follow the Holy Spirit, when we’ve already experienced that this is a difficult path?

The answer is that the Holy Spirit is leading us to be like Jesus Christ, and to identify fully with Jesus, we must walk the path that Jesus walked. But our God can take even our worst moments and makes them into something beautiful.

One of my favorite preachers is Francis Chan, who wrote Crazy Love and Forgotten God.  He tells a story of a group of Korean missionaries who went to Afghanistan. While they were there, the Taliban arrested them for their gospel ministry and threw them in prison. Francis Chan had dinner with one of the missionaries who told him about the conditions of the prison. A woman managed to sneak a Bible into the cell and they tore it into as many sections as there were people, so that they could have the Scriptures to read whenever they had the opportunity. It became apparent that some of them were going to be put to death and the senior pastor of the group announced that he would die first. Another man told him that he could not die first, because he was their shepherd, and that the second man must die first as he was an elder. They argued back and forth, with the senior pastor eventually winning. It was however the elder who died first and it was the senior pastor with whom Francis Chan spoke.

The senior pastor told Chan something that has stuck with me. In fact, I can picture exactly where I was when I heard Francis Chan recount this conversation with the senior pastor. He said that since the incident members of that group kept coming to him privately and saying, “Don’t you wish you were back there! In prison!” They wished they could go back to the prison cell, with the looming threat of death and torture ever upon them, because the fellowship with Jesus brought them so much joy. Faith felt real! It was alive! The group unanimously agreed that they had never been so close to Christ as they were in that cell, completely dependent on Him as to whether or not they carried on in the flesh or went immediately Home to Heaven. 

In other words, by the Holy Spirit, they lived out what Paul wrote about in Philippians 1:21: For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. This is life led by the Holy Spirit. Completely satisfied with where you are no matter where it is. As Paul says in the conclusion of his letter to the Philippian church, I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. Do you want to know what his secret is? I can do everything through him who gives me strength. (Philippians 4:11-13).

This bears repeating, and I’d like you to say it aloud with me, because there is power in the spoken word. I can do everything through him who gives me strength.

Because our God can give this kind of contentment here and now, but even more, he gives the promise of heaven. Our God can take our moments of deepest suffering and sanctify them to the point where, when we look back on them from heaven, we will not wish away even one of those trials – not because we see something good coming from them, but because we will recognize our times of suffering as times of identification with and vision into the inner life of God himself. This is what Paul meant when he wrote: I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection of the dead. (Philippians 3:10-11)

Life in the Holy Spirit is not always easy. Know that whenever we begin to surrender fully to the Spirit, to give him the deed to our lives, to relinquish all control, to die to self daily and allow resurrection, whenever this happens, Satan will attack. It is inevitable. As a church, things are about to get difficult, and that’s as close to a guarantee as I can give. Satan hates it when people give over control to the Holy Spirit and he will do everything he can to oppose you. He will cause confusion. He will use well-meaning friends and relatives and co-workers to try to make you doubt where the Holy Spirit is leading you. He will try to cover you with the same cloud of despair that he has sown over this entire region.

But what did we repeat just a minute ago? I can do everything through him who gives me strength. Do you really believe this? It comes back to the question that we asked earlier – can we really trust God in our current circumstances?

When I was preparing to come to Wellston, and almost every time I talk about Wellston, people tell me the same thing: this is a town with no hope. I don’t think it’s irony that this church is called “Hope” because as we are filled with the Holy Spirit, we have a hope that transcends everything that might come against us. The hope we have is multi-layered:

·         In Christ, we have the hope of our salvation and freedom from sins.

·         We have the hope that God is working all things together for the good of those who love Jesus and who are called according to his purpose.

·         We have the hope that we can do everything through Jesus, who gives us strength.

·         We have the hope that God has already won, and that Satan’s attacks will ultimately be futile.

·         We have the hope that when we reach heaven’s glory, we wouldn’t even want to change the difficulties, struggles, and sufferings that we have gone through on this earth, as we will see that they presented us with the chance to identify with Jesus Christ himself.

Your assignment this week is prayer. I don’t mean little impotent prayers, but prayer as if your very lives depend on it. Pray for hope. Pray against the hopelessness that Satan has sown in our church and in our town.