I am in a season of what we who speak Christianese call "pruning." It is also referred to as "the winepress." In regular people talk, it's called, "OUCH."
If you want true transformation, if you want to become who He designed you to be, it usually means spiritual heart surgery. The world has influenced our minds with its abuse and ideas. He removes those things to make room for His endless, perfect love: the only thing in the universe that offers us unconditional security and hope.
Through His Holy Spirit (and only through Him), God has brought me such a long way, and freed me from so many wounds and issues that I didn't even know were there, which is awesome. It's just that the process sometimes feels heavy...or like someone is giving you a shot in your soul...a shot with a really long, fat needle that burns and makes you want to slap the nurse. You feel SO MUCH BETTER when it's over, and it doesn't even last that long, but the whole time it's happening, you're screaming, "This is not what I signed up for!" You come in for a lovely little checkup, and you end up having a procedure for a problem you didn't know you had.
Have I made my point clear? God gets rid of the cancer that is killing us. He heals those emotional wounds and the prideful mentalities and the false hopes, replacing them all with the eternal goodness of Himself. But boy is it a rattling process sometimes.
I realized recently that, due to years of of-and-on pruning seasons (and one too many dramatic, taking-yourself-too-seriously worship songs), I tend to think of Holy Spirit as the cosmic killjoy of the Trinity, the mean nurse with all the shots. This is the picture in my head: Jesus is leaping around doing backflips on His white horse and yelling, "I'm King of the Universe!" and Holy Spirit is standing nearby with a scowl like Felix Unger, shaking His head and saying, "Tsk, tsk, Jesus...there is really no need for all these shenanigans. The are people are messed up and MUST be FIXED if I am expected to live inside them. What a dirty job, but...(sigh) someone has to do it. Since you and Daddy are having too much fun, I guess it will have to be me."
I know this sounds ridiculous. When I realized it this week, I was like, "Wait a second....that's not what the Bible says."
I've been re-reading Romans 8, and it's been coming at me from every sermon I've heard over the past week or two, so I guess there's a reason for that. I won't retype the whole thing here, but I think you should go read it for yourself.
To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace (v. 6).
Life and peace. Not stress, hopelessness, and punk alternative music.
Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom (2 Corinthians 3:17).
What if we really believed that? God Himself--Jesus and the Father--are the Spirit. He's not some awkward third-party body guard, silent and moody, waiting to kick people in the rear end. Nor is He God's enslaved minion, like the Genie from Aladdin, a special friend who just grants selfish wishes whenever we snap our fingers. He's not an afterthought to the Trinity. He is THE Spirit of GOD, with all of God's personality and goodness. And He is Jesus' greatest gift to us, and actually a better part of God to have around even than Jesus in the flesh, because He can live inside of us. Jesus said so Himself (John 16:7).
And Paul goes even further.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control....(Galatians 5:22).
If we work to obtain these things ourselves, we simply can't do it. Yes, you can be successful for a time at managing your behavior....But it's not really about the behavior. If you don't address the root issue that causes unhealthy behaviors, or adopt the right thinking that causes the good behaviors, sin is always going to be a challenge, and you're always going to be fighting it.
But what does Romans say the Spirit brings?...Oh yeah, peace.
So although the pruning process is painful, it's way less painful than spending your life fighting against your own wounds and then internalizing victimization as your identity. This goes WAY deeper, but if you want a great example of "failure to heal," you could just read Judges. It's the story of people recognizing right and wrong, then trying to live up to a moral code without addressing the issues that caused their hearts to want to sin in the first place. They always failed, which resulted in such disasters as people poking out one another's eyeballs, stabbing obese kings to death, and cutting up their own concubines...oh yeah, and then mailing the body parts to different people.....Folks got issues.
"Royal fail" doesn't begin to describe humanity in so many of our failings. But it's really not our fault that we're messed up. I think that when we go through seasons of pruning, we tend to think we're defective. The light of God shines on us (Ephesians 5:13), we see our faults, and we think, "Gosh, how can He ever use me? I'm a hot mess." We even sometimes feel hopeless, like there is no way we will ever overcome these issues, sins, negative thoughts, wrong beliefs.
And let me assure you: we won't. Thanks be to God: it's not up to us, because we can't do it. That's like asking a 2-year-old to perform brain surgery. Even if they were smart enough, they don't have the fine motor skills to even pick up the utensils.
But Holy Spirit does.
And His ultimate goal is not to condemn us or make us feel down on ourselves. He convicts the world of sin, but He convicts God's people of who they are (John 16:8). He doesn't "discipline" us like earthly fathers, who get angry and spank without explanation (Hebrews 12...just read the whole chapter). Rather, God disciples us through His Holy Spirit, leading gently and healing and comforting through Holy Spirit in a way only He can do.
Basically, Holy Spirit doesn't have ulterior motives to crush followers of Jesus into submission to God. He has one aim: to make the love of God known to the world through Jesus Christ. When that love enters, sure, it prunes some things; but it's only clearing things out of the way so we can experience the JOY of knowing the love of the Father through Jesus Christ.
Holy Spirit isn't some mysterious, creepy old sorcerer. He is not a grumpy old man. He is not some floating, enigmatic mist, either. He has a personality. He is actually God Himself coming to live within us. He is deep and rich and sometimes, well, weird. (I mean, regeneration of limbs and being raised from the dead is kind of strange....and these things do happen in the world today. Holy Spirit is working.) He can seem mysterious. However, relationship with Him is really not that complicated. He comes to bring simplicity to our walk with the Lord by revealing the heart of the Father through the Son. And when we get the epitomal revelation that the Father loves us, and in that is our whole identity, we're relieved, filled not with emo songs about rejection and failure, but with joyful songs of worship. (Sorry, Death Cab.)
If you're in a time of pruning, great! God is just de-complicating your spirit to make room for His joy.
From now on, I will picture Holy Spirit smiling and laughing, full of life and the realest kind of love there is.
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light (1 Peter 2:9).
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