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Alert to the Spirit’s Work

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By Linda Rex

Lately I’ve been reading a book my regional pastor gave me called “Deep Mentoring”. This is a great book about engaging others in deep meaningful relationships in which both people are able to grow and develop. Wherever we are in life, there are areas in which we are given the task or responsibility to lead others, and we need to grow in our ability not only to lead ourselves, but also to help others grow as leaders.

An important part of this mentoring process is learning to pay attention—to see where people are on their journey, where they are headed, and what God is doing in their lives to bring them to that place. When you prayerfully pay attention, then you begin to join with them in those places and bring God’s grace and truth with you there.

So now I’ve been more and more conscious of the need to pay attention—especially with regards to what God is doing in a particular person’s life during a certain circumstance. I’ve never realized before how little I pay attention to what the Spirit is doing. I’m too busy either trying to work it out myself, or I’m distracted by other things which are going on at the same time.

On that night so long ago, Jesus told Nicodemus, “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” (John 3:8 NASB) Jesus pointed out the reality, we cannot see what the Spirit of God is doing, but we can see and experience the results of it. The problem is not with our ability to see the Spirit. It’s more we aren’t paying attention to what he is doing and has done, and what he is wanting to do in a person’s life, because we’re paying attention to the wrong things.

It would be like seeing someone standing in a field staring up at the clear blue sky. Around both of you, the leafy branches of the trees are waving back and forth, and the green and brown grasses are bending and straightening as the wind plays with them. But the other person remarks about how still and quiet the day is: “This is so boring. Nothing’s happening.”

We can share their blindness and agree with them, or we can notice what the wind is doing, and point out all the things which are happening because the breeze is blowing over the meadow. It all depends on what we are paying attention to, what we choose to notice, and how we respond to what we see.

It’s easy to be blind to what the Spirit is doing with and in our children since we are so close to them and see them most every day. We may forget to pay attention to their efforts to be kind and to serve others because what we tend to pay attention to may be their annoying habits and disobedient behavior.

We may never have considered their unique learning style or creative nature which drives the way they think, act and interact with others, is part of the way they image the God who made them. It is so easy to go through our days never recognizing and affirming the ways in which our children reflect God and are growing in Christlikeness, though we may give them plenty of kudos for getting good grades, cleaning their room, and practicing piano.

Sometimes because of the everydayness of our life with our spouse, we lose sight of those things which make them unique and special people. We stop seeing what God is doing in their lives, and what he has done through them in our lives. It’s possible to over time allow the hurts between two people to bring them to the place the hurts are the only things which can be seen, rather than seeing how the couple is bound together in the oneness of Jesus Christ through the Spirit.

It’s easy with the people we are closest to, to come to the place we stop noticing. We stop paying attention to what is God is doing in their lives and how he wants us to be a part of that. We can fail to realize one of our purposes in being in their life is to be the image of God to them—to reflect God’s grace and truth, his love to them, and to notice all the things Spirit is doing in their life and to point them out.

We may think we are supposed to be the leader in a relationship, but sometimes the reality is we need to be following rather than leading. We all have times in which we are blind to what’s really going on. We need that person who we think is a follower, or who we think should be the “submissive one”, to step up and speak the truth in love to us. But can we receive the truth of God’s image in Jesus Christ being reflected back to us when the Spirit moves this person to speak?

More and more I am realizing God’s whole purpose in “condemnation” and “judgment’ is not to punish and destroy evildoers, but to eliminate all of the evil which they embrace and are beset by so they are able to be fully who God created and redeemed them to be as his beloved children. God means all this for our good—he’s not out to get revenge for all the badness—he’s just wanting to remove the blindness and badness so the true reality of the goodness and love of Christ in each of us can shine unhindered.

As we grow in our relationship with God and our relationships with others, we participate in God’s work of transformation of ourselves and those others. We go through struggles and difficulties, and God uses them to grow us up in Christlikeness when we turn to Christ in faith and respond to the Spirit’s work. We walk alongside others, and go deeper with them, sharing with them the positive and negative parts of our walk of faith. And we create space for the Spirit to go to work in them and in us, to grow us up into greater Christlikeness, so we can more accurately reflect the image of the God who made us and redeemed us.

One of the best things we can do then, is to obey Jesus’ command to be alert. God is coming and is present at every moment by the Holy Spirit. Jesus is at work in us and in each person we encounter throughout the day. Ask God to make you aware of what Jesus is doing by his Spirit. He wants us to notice, and to participate in what he is doing through prayer, speaking the truth in love, and ministering the love of God in Christ to each person in whatever way the Spirit directs us to. When we learn to pay attention, we may be surprised by all the things we discover Jesus is up to!

Thank you, Abba, you are always at work doing things in this world we never even notice. Make us aware more and more of what you are doing through Jesus and by your Spirit, and enable us by your grace to respond appropriately. Help us to notice more and more what you are doing in the lives of those around us, and enable us to share in healthy and loving ways the truth of what you are doing and wish to do by your Spirit. May you complete your perfect work in each and every one of us through Jesus our Lord and by your Spirit. Amen.

“Be on guard, so that your hearts will not be weighted down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of life, and that day will not come on you suddenly like a trap; for it will come upon all those who dwell on the face of all the earth. But keep on the alert at all times, praying that you may have strength to escape all these things that are about to take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.” Luke 21:34–36 NASB

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Face to Face

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by Linda Rex

One of the hazards of a long-distance relationship is the inability engage a person in face-to-face conversation. Communication tools such as Skype™ and Vsee™ make video-chats possible now, and I love the way we are able to see someone while we talk with them without having to make a long trip somewhere in order to do so. A conversation via computer may not be the same as having a face-to-face conversation, but it is much better than simply having one on the phone.

Face-to-face conversations have the advantage of enabling us to see the body language and facial expressions of the person talking with us. We are able, if we are good at it, to sense the sincerity and intent behind what is being said. Often we can determine a person’s mood, their hostility or friendliness, just by how they respond as they talk.

To some limited extent we can have meaningful and deep conversations over the phone. But in order to have an honest and open relationship, we really need to meet with someone face-to-face. We need to be able to meet with them in person. If we want get to know someone in a deeper way than just an ordinary, casual conversation, we’ll want to get them by themselves, and spend time just talking, face-to-face.

I love the way God made the effort to engage Moses in these kinds of conversations. In Exodus we read about the relationship God built with Moses over time, and how the Lord spoke to Moses “face to face, just as a man speaks to his friend.” As time passed, their relationship grew to where they conversed just like we do when we are talking with a close friend.

We may think to ourselves, that’s just Moses. God doesn’t have those kinds of conversations with ordinary people like you or me. After all, he is God. He has much more important things to do than talk to all the people in the world individually. We can kind of grasp the idea of everyone praying to God, but God replying and having a conversation with each person? Now that’s a different story entirely.

And yet, this is what each of us was created for. When God walked and talked with Adam and Eve in the garden, it was a prelude to what he had in mind for each of us. He created you and me for relationship—with him and with one another. He did not intend for us to live independently of him, or of one another. We are created for interdependence, for intimate relationship.

And when I say intimate relationship, I’m not talking about a sexual or romantic relationship. I’m talking about sharing the deep parts of our minds, hearts and souls with another person—sharing life and being at a very deep level.

I believe the current obsession with sexual and romantic relationships of every kind has short-circuited our capacity for true, deep relationships—the kind we were created for with God and one another. Our ability to use social media for relationships is great, but we need to be careful not to let this keep us from building deep, meaningful relationships with the people in our lives through face-to-face interactions. It is very easy to keep people, and God, on the fringes of our lives and never really engage anyone at any kind of a deep level. And this is not healthy.

Going deep with people and with God in this way means becoming vulnerable and facing up to the mess inside ourselves. We don’t want to expose our deepest hurts and brokenness to others, much less to God. And yet, this is the path to healing.

Opening up these wounds to others, to us, or to God, means facing things we don’t want to face. We may have to change or deal with things we don’t want to have to deal with. We may have to do the dirty work of dealing with family dysfunctions or grieving our losses. Sadly, we often prefer taking painkillers and finding other ways to numb our pain rather than facing our issues. But we weren’t created to ignore our pain or to try to hide it—we were created to engage it, and through sharing it with God and others in healthy ways, find comfort and renewal.

Face-to-face sharing is an important part of the process of healing. Getting real with someone about what’s going on at a deep level in our hearts and minds is essential to our mental, emotional and spiritual health and our physical health as well. We need to drop our facades, and our false selves, and just be real with God and one another. And this is not easy to do, much less safe. Not everyone can be trusted with our secrets.

But God understands our need for face-to-face, conversations at this deep level. This face-to-face sharing is so important to God, he came himself to share in our humanity. He became one of us—the Word in human flesh. He experienced what it was like to be born of a woman, grow up as a child, be baptized and live as an adult, and he shared every part of our human existence. God came and met with us face-to-face in an even more personal way than how he met with Moses centuries before.

God wanted to share every part of our existence and be included in it. This was so important to him, he was willing to take on our humanity and share all we experience as human beings, including death and suffering. But he did much more than that.

He brought our human existence to a new level by raising Jesus Christ from the dead, and by sending his Spirit to dwell in human hearts. God’s Spirit in you and me means God dwells in humanity—he meets with us face-to-face within our own human hearts. Nothing can be more intimate than that!

In fact, we cannot escape him now—no matter how much we try. Eventually he will open our inner eyes to see, we have Christ in us, the hope of glory. We have God in us—Immanuel. Better than any Skype™ conversation—we can converse with God in our hearts and have a dialogue in which, by the Spirit, God knows us intimately and we can know God’s heart and mind as well. Our conversations with God can be just as deep and wonderful as those Moses had because God calls you and me friend, and speaks to us in our hearts.

You may say, “How can this be? God doesn’t speak to me. And that’s kind of creepy, you know—someone talking to me in my heart.” Well, perhaps it’s not that God hasn’t been speaking, but rather, that we haven’t been listening.

I was taught to be afraid of that inner voice who spoke in my heart and so I never listened. I ignored it and pushed it away. But when I did finally talk with God and invite him to speak to me and to help me to hear and discern what was his voice (and not the other unhealthy voices), I discovered he was speaking words of love and grace to me all along. I found that God really does want to walk and talk with us, and share all of life with us. And this has been the experience of many others who have sought a deeper walk with Jesus.

God has brought each and every one of us through Jesus and by the Spirit to a place where we are able to have a deep, intimate, face-to-face relationship with him. In growing in our relationship with him, we will find ourselves growing in our ability and desire to have deep, meaningful relationships with one another. And we will be living out who we really are—human beings, created for loving relationship with God and one another.

Father, thank you, through your Son and by your Spirit, you have brought us into deep, intimate relationship with yourself. Thank you for making it possible for us to have close, intimate relationships with one another as well. Grant us the grace to set aside time and space to listen and talk with you and one another face-to-face, for this is what we were created for. Through Jesus and by your Spirit. Amen.

“Thus the LORD used to speak to Moses face to face, just as a man speaks to his friend. … And He said, ‘My presence shall go with you, and I will give you rest.’” Exodus 33:11a, 14 NASB

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When Forgiving is Hard

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By Linda Rex

This morning I was listening to the You’re Included interview with David Torrance “The Grace of the Finished Work of Christ” (https://www.gci.org/yi/dtorrance104) and “Already Forgiven” (https://www.gci.org/yi108). I was struck once again by the significance of all that Jesus did for in his life, death and resurrection, specifically in regards to our ability to forgive the unforgiveable. And he calls for us to do just that, because being forgiving people properly reflects who we are as image-bearers of God.

I’m beginning to see that much of the mental anguish we go through in life has its basis in our inability or unwillingness to forgive wrongs done to us. Many of us go through life with deep emotional, mental, even spiritual wounds caused by significant people in our lives. We carry the hurts from our childhood into adulthood or from relationship to relationship, and they twist our thinking and feeling, holding us hostage in ways we don’t even realize or may even be willing to acknowledge.

It is inevitable that at some time in our lives we are going to be faced with the challenge of forgiving someone a wrong that we just can’t let go of. When that event comes back over and over in our mind and colors the way we think and feel about what’s going on in our life today, that is the time when we need to take seriously Jesus’ command to forgive.

But facing the challenge to forgive does not begin with us. We, of ourselves, are inadequate for the task. Even if we knew we needed to forgive and wanted to forgive, we may find ourselves unable to. The hurt or wrong may just keep rehearsing itself in our minds and hearts and we are unable to let it go.

This is especially true when there is a significant injustice involved. Forgiving may feel like we are letting someone off the hook for a very real wrong they have done.

But this isn’t the case at all. What a person may have done or said that violated us in some way is not ignored or passed over. Rather, it is put in its proper place—in the hands of a loving, just God, who is both our Judge and the one who was judged in our stead. Instead of us seeing that justice is done, we place this issue into the hands of the One best qualified to handle it—he is impartial and he is gracious, and he will deal with the issue in his own time and way.

Yes, there are times when we have to take action to protect ourselves and others from future harm. But, even so, we need to do so in a spirit of grace. Forgiveness does not require us to turn our backs on justice, but asks that justice be executed with mercy and compassion.

Placing our hurts and wrongs into the hands of a loving, just God, not only frees us from the need to make someone pay, but it also enables us to approach our need to forgive within the context of community. God does not ask us to forgive all on our own, under our own power.

God is the one, who since the beginning of time, forgives. If God had executed justice without mercy every single time one of us humans had done something wrong or hurtful, the human race would have long ago become extinct. Thankfully, forgiveness is God’s nature.

Because God knows we can’t forgive the way we should and need to, God gave us his forgiveness in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus, in his life and death, experienced some tremendous violations of his personhood and was horribly abused. There is nothing that we as humans experience that he cannot and does not sympathize with. Yet, his final words on the cross included these: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” (Luke 23:34)

This same divine capacity to forgive is ours. God has given us in Christ and by his Spirit all that we need for life and godliness. (2 Pet. 1:3) Therefore we are able to forgive—in Christ. It is Jesus’ forgiveness that we draw upon and live out.

Jesus taught his disciples that forgiving others is something we need to do so that we are able to participate in God’s forgiveness of us. (Luke 17:3-4) It’s a relational thing, something we do in community with God and each other. We forgive and we are forgiven. We are forgiven and so we forgive. This is what it looks like to live joyfully and lovingly within the Triune relationship of Father, Son and Spirit and with each other. It is our nature as God’s children to forgive, so we forgive.

So in the midst of whatever we are struggling with, we acknowledge the reality that forgiveness is not going to be something that is humanly possible on our own, but is instead, a divine reality that we participate in. We agree with God that forgiveness is not something we are able to do on our own, but is something we need from him—we need Christ’s forgiving heart and mind. We need the forgiving Spirit of God to change us from the inside out and enable us to forgive.

And God will do that. We make the choice to forgive and we seek from God the power and ability to forgive. God will begin, as we participate with him in the process, to change our hearts and minds and enable us to forgive. And we thank God for the gift of forgiveness that he gives us from his Son Jesus Christ through his Holy Spirit.

This gift of forgiveness is life-transforming and healing, and we participate in it gratefully throughout our lives, in every situation we may find ourselves needing to be forgiving or forgiven. It is God’s grace to us in Jesus Christ and by his Spirit. May you experience and share with others the grace of God’s forgiveness in your life today.

Forgiving God, thank you for the gift of forgiveness. May we be as forgiving of others as you are of us. Thank you that in Jesus and by your Spirit we participate in your divine life and love, sharing in your forgiveness just as we share in every other part of your divine nature, through Jesus, our Lord. Amen.

“Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives…. Therefore, He had to be made like His brethren in all things, so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.” Hebrews 2:14-15, 17 NASB

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