Monday, November 23, 2009

I really want to graduate and go to seminary

Why are conservative Christians afraid of the Holy Spirit? It's like they don't want to have the most awesome power in the universe residing in them.
I really don't like it when i come across things that deny the power of the Holy Spirit. I was looking for Bible studies on the Holy Spirit and i came across a very hostile website. They were blatantly attacking Pentecostals as if they were heretics or something.
I think the problem is no one fully understands the Spirit so they try to define Him in their own mediocre way, and what happens is everyone's views conflict and we're left with people trying to quench Him by limiting Him, and others who quench Him by trying to make Him move.
Let's come away from this.
Let's actually tap into the power we have as believers.
Let's go to the OT for a minute.

But Moses said to him, Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the LORD's people were prophets, that the LORD would put his Spirit on them!

Numbers 11:29

Why on earth would Moses want everyone to prophesy and have the Holy Spirit? Answer: so they could prophesy and have the Holy Spirit...
I mean it's quite simple to me really. God wants us to have the Holy Spirit in our lives so He can reside with us and give us the power and strength that He has.
There's a lot of what Matt Chandler calls "textual tennis" going on regarding the Holy Spirit, and it's really starting to get on my nerves. For one thing, the scriptures that conservatives use for their point make little to no sense regarding why there would be no manifestations of the Spirit today.
On the other hand, some charismatics take it way too far. They are in effect, hurting any chance the Spirit has to show Himself because they are trying to make it happen themselves. This just fuels the conservatives fire and gives them some nanny nanny boo boos to throw.
In 1 Corinthians Paul makes it very clear that we should always aspire for the higher things of the Spirit, and i think if everyone took these verses to at least a partial extent this argument would be null and everyone would get along a whole lot better.
And of course might I mention that right after Paul explains that we should seek after gifts, he goes straight into probably the most well known passage of scripture, the "love" chapter. If we spent more time loving each other, as Jesus commanded in John 13:34, maybe the Spirit would manifest Himself in whatever way He chooses, 1 Corinthians 12:7, and no one would argue about anything.
So here's a question for both camps regarding this issue:

Where is your love?

1 comment:

Mike said...

I feel exactly the same way bro! God is slowly changing this.