Jon Bloom's Blog, page 25

Lay Aside the Weight of Discouragement

Discouragement often feels circumstantially determined, something we can’t help feeling because powerful forces beyond our control are causing it. That’s why our response to discouragement is often passive — we sit, weighed down with a heavy spiritual listlessness looking at the world through the grey, bleak lenses of fear.

Yes, discouragement is a species of fear. It is a loss of courage. We don’t always recognize discouragement as fear because it can feel like hopelessness with a side of cynicism. We might even call it depression because we have an accumulation of fears that are intermingled and seem somewhat undefined. And, of course, if we’re discouraged, we feel depressed. We feel like giving up.

And when we feel like giving up, we are vulnerable to a whole range of temptations. When we give in to those temptations, our sin just confirms our discouragement, and we easily slip into a cycle in which fear drives us into hiding, hiding opens us to sins of selfishness and self-indulgence, and caving in increases our sense of helplessness and self-pity. So we sit, weighed down by fear and condemnation, feeling stuck.

But God doesn’t want us feeling stuck. Jesus didn’t endure crucifixion so we would live defeated. He has purchased our forgiveness of sins, our freedom from the weight of fear, and our power to overcome the world, our flesh, and the devil. Discouragement is not as powerful as it feels. We can defeat it if we confront it.

Discouragement Defeated

A famous biblical example of discouragement is when the twelve spies returned after scoping out the Promised Land. They reported the land indeed “[flowed] with milk and honey,” but the inhabitants were “strong,” some were giants, and the cities “fortified and very large” (Numbers 13:27–28). Ten of the twelve spies said, “We are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we are” (Numbers 13:31). This so discouraged the people that they refused to trust in God’s promises and power. As a result, they wandered in the wilderness forty more years. Only Joshua and Caleb, the two faithful spies, lived to see those fears defeated.

Another famous example was the discouragement Saul and his army felt over Goliath’s challenges and taunts (1 Samuel 17). Fear immobilized all the warriors until a teenage shepherd named David arrived with faith in a huge God. He stood up to the giant, and dropped Goliath face down with one stone (1 Samuel 17:49). Then suddenly full of courage, Israel decimated the Philistines.

A New Testament example is found in Acts 4, after the same council that had facilitated Jesus’s death threatened Peter, John, and the rest of the Christians. When the apostles reported these threats, everyone felt the seriousness. But the church responded very differently than the ancient Israelites or Saul’s army. When tempted with discouragement, instead of being immobilized by fear, they responded with faith, asked God for help, and as a result “were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness” (Acts 4:31).

Strengthen Your Weak Knees

While we are not facing fortified Canaanite cities, or giants with javelins, or councils with crosses, we face a number of things in life that tempt us to lose courage.

One morning recently, discouragement settled over me like a thick, grey fog. I didn’t even recognize what it was at first. I just felt fear creeping over me that all my hope in God would end up disappointed. My courage started draining out of me, and suddenly I didn’t have energy to read my Bible or pray or do anything spiritually meaningful.

Then I caught myself and said, “Why am I fearing that God won’t be faithful?” Then I recalled numerous times when God had been wonderfully faithful to me, as well as numerous times I had felt needlessly discouraged — just like this time.

I began to talk back to my fears and to the devil: “No! I’m not falling for this again!” I prayed for God’s help. Then I took up my Bible and in my scheduled readings read this wonderful text:

Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed. Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. (Hebrews 12:12–14)

Faith-fueled courage poured in and revived me. The grey, depressing outlook changed into a color-filled world of hope in God. And my spirit, which just minutes before had cowered in discouragement, was full of the bold energy of the Holy Spirit.

Confront Discouragement

Satan loves to tempt us with discouragement because he knows we are easily intimidated by what is or looks dangerous and overwhelming. He casts God as the bad guy for bringing us to this hopeless place, and then encourages us to feel justified in feeling discouraged. The way out of this demonic deception is to confront the discouragement head on. How do we do this?

First, we ask, “Why are you cast down, O my soul?” (Psalm 42:5). Press for an answer.

Second, we preach to our souls to “hope in God” (Psalm 42:5). Don’t listen to discouraging self-talk; preach courage-building promises.

Third, we lift our drooping hands and strengthen our weak knees (Hebrews 12:12). Pick up our Bibles and get on our praying knees and pursue the strength that God supplies (1 Peter 4:11).

Fourth, we make straight paths for our feet (Hebrews 12:13). Get out of the mental or physical place that is making us stumble in discouragement.

Fifth, we strive for holiness (Hebrews 12:14). We are made holy through faith in the justifying work of Christ, and we walk in holiness through the obedience of faith (Romans 1:5). Walking by faith in Christ is not easy. It is a striving (Hebrews 4:11); it is a fight (1 Timothy 6:12). It’s meant to be hard. God has all sorts of sanctifying good for us in all the fighting he requires of us.

When we’re discouraged, remember the Canaanites, remember Goliath, remember the council, and remember your own stories — when God showed up to deliver you from discouragement. What discourages us is not as powerful as it feels in the moment. We overcome our fear by confronting our discouragement and exercising faith in God’s promises. Those are precious moments in which we will see the power of God.

Lord, Free Me from the Fear of Death

Jesus has a deep, intense desire to give you a gift so great you do not yet have the capacities to conceive of it (1 Corinthians 2:9). But you do catch glimpses of it in biblical metaphors and imagery, and in sublime moments when an experience of glory briefly transcends anything else here on earth.

Jesus longs so intensely for you to have this gift that he pleads with the Father to give it to you:

“Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.” (John 17:24)

This supreme request is the great culmination of Jesus’s prayer in John 17. That you may receive this gift is the reason why he manifested the Father’s name to you (John 17:6), gave you the Father’s words (John 17:8, 14), and guards you so you will not be lost (John 17:12). It is why he prays that you will be kept from the evil one (John 17:15), know the joy of helping others believe in him (John 17:20), and experience the sanctifying wonder of knowing and living the truth (John 17:17, 19).

More than any other good thing Jesus asks from the Father for you, he wants you to be with him forever. More than anything else, he wants you to see and savor the glory that the Father bestowed on him from eternity past (John 17:5, 24). For he knows that nothing else you ever experience will provide you such profound and lasting joy and pleasure (Psalm 16:11).

What Do You Fear Most?

But Jesus’s fervent prayers for you come with a sober implication, one that makes you recoil, even fear. In fact, one day you might find yourself pleading with God to give you the very opposite of what Jesus wants for you. The answer to Jesus’s prayer eventually requires your physical death. Unless Jesus returns first, you must die before you experience the forever fullness of joy in his glorious presence.

We must endure what we hate and fear most in life in order to enjoy what we love and long for most.

Yes, we hate death and resist it — and we are right to do so. God originally created us to live, not die. Death is a curse we bear, the tragic wages of rejecting God and his kingdom (Romans 6:23).

Nowhere does the Bible encourage us to view death itself as a good thing. Death is not a good thing; it’s a horrible, evil thing. Anyone who has watched loved ones die can attest to its hideousness. Death is our mortal enemy (1 Corinthians 15:26).

How Is Death Gain?

If that’s true, why does God count precious the death of his saints (Psalm 116:15)? And why do his saints even call death gain (Philippians 1:21)? Because in that most horrible, most evil moment of the death of the Son of God himself, death as we fear it — the extinguishing of our life and the seeming loss of our soul and joy — was killed! Jesus conquered our great enemy when he rose from the dead (Romans 4:25; Revelation 1:18), and will ultimately destroy death forever (1 Corinthians 15:26).

In fact, so powerful, so complete is Jesus’s defeat of death that he speaks of it as if Christians no longer even experience it:

“I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.” (John 11:25–26)

It isn’t death itself that is precious or gain to us. It is the Resurrection and the Life, who has removed death’s sting and swallowed it up in victory (1 Corinthians 15:54–55), in whom we are receiving an eternal inheritance beyond our wildest dreams (Ephesians 1:11), and in whose glorious presence we will experience unsurpassed joy forevermore (Psalm 16:11). He is precious to us. He is our great gain in death.

Prepare Through Prayer

When our earthly assignment from Jesus is done (Acts 20:24), he will call us to be with him to enjoy most what we are made to most enjoy: him. This will make death gain for us on that day (Philippians 1:21).

Jesus is eager to give us this great gain, and he wants us to grow in our eagerness to receive it. How do we do that? Like he does. We ask the Father for it! We join Jesus in praying for the time we will finally see him in all his glory. We ask him to decrease the hold that the fear of death has on us due to unbelief in our hearts. And we ask him to give us such faith and longing to be with Christ that we no longer wish to live as long as possible here, but only long enough to faithfully finish our course (Acts 20:24). Because to finally be with our Savior will be so much better (Philippians 1:23).

Whatever It Takes, Lord

Someday Jesus’s prayer for us to be with him will overrule our prayer to be spared physical death. And when it does, we will know such joy and pleasures that we will wonder why we ever felt any reluctance to pass through the valley of its shadow (Psalm 23:4).

Whatever it takes, Lord, increase my faith and joy in the truth that death is gain for me, so that I can “let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also.” Do not let the fear of death cause me to resist your will for me, and let me die in a way that declares that Christ is gain.

Lord, Prepare Me to End Well

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted . . . a time to seek, and a time to lose. (Ecclesiastes 3:1–2, 6)

When a new child is born, a new crop is planted, a new project, phase, degree, career, friendship, resolve, marriage, house is pursued, we feel fresh excitement and anticipation. We enter a new season feeling hope about the future. We invest a lot of dreaming, planning, energy, and often money in our beginnings, which explains all the books and videos and coaches offering to help us begin well.

But there is not nearly as much help available teaching us how to end well. Probably because the demand is much lower. We typically don’t relish thinking about or planning for endings, because endings are goodbyes. They are chapter closings that often leave us feeling regret, grief, or confusion over who we are and what our purpose is going forward — or some ambivalent mixture of the above.

Are Beginnings Better?

But the end of a season is often more important than its beginning. When a person dies, we can see much more clearly who they really turned out to be, which is eternally significant. When a crop is harvested, we know what the season and farming diligence actually produced. When a season of life ends, we see, at least to some degree, the true fruit of all our dreaming, planning, labor, and investment.

This is why the Bible says, “Better is the end of a thing than its beginning” (Ecclesiastes 7:8). At a beginning, when we’re looking ahead, we envision a possible future, not a real one. And our vision is always some mixed bag of good and bad motives, love and selfish ambition, serving Jesus and serving ourselves. But looking back, we see reality with greater clarity how various factors — our indwelling sin and Spirit-filled goodness, our strengths and weaknesses, the futility woven into this created age (Romans 8:20–21), and others — affected what we began.

In other words, endings are usually more truthful than beginnings. A review of the day in the evening is more truthful than the caffeinated optimism of the morning’s good intentions.

So, why is a sobering dose of realistic retrospect better than a hopeful high of optimistic prospect?

Because wisdom does not want to build its house on the sand of fantasy. It wants to builds on the solid rock of truth.

Because at the end of a thing, more than at its beginning, we see our need for a better, more lasting hope than anything we could possibly build here (Hebrews 13:14).

And because often an ending, more than a beginning, exposes our idols — things or people in which we have placed false hope and from whom we have drawn a misplaced sense of identity.

Endings are often better than beginnings because they more powerfully point us to God as our only hope.

Mentor for ‘A Time to Lose’

For every “time to seek,” there is “a time to lose” (Ecclesiastes 3:6). Learning to end well, to let go well, is one of the most neglected subjects in Western Christian discipleship. There’s little teaching and guidance for navigating these tricky waters. Perhaps it’s no surprise that Christian leaders frequently struggle to step out of leadership, and churches struggle with leadership transitions, and Christians, in general, frequently experience confusion and disorientation at the end of various seasons of life and ministry.

But God will help us. One way to prepare for our “time to lose,” and help others do the same, is to intentionally pray about it. God can make our transition out of a season uniquely powerful in glorifying Jesus.

My favorite model and “time to lose” mentor is John the Baptist. At the end of his season of call, this voice in the wilderness (John 1:23), this second Elijah (Matthew 11:13–14), this greatest man born of women (Matthew 11:11), who blazed across Israel like a prophetic comet, said as he watched his great ministry eclipsed by the bright morning star (Revelation 22:16),

“Therefore this joy of mine is now complete. He must increase, but I must decrease.” (John 3:29–30)

Those words, as much as anything John ever said, revealed the heart that made him so great. He understood what his life was about: Jesus! The beginning of his ministry was about Jesus and, even more so, its end.

And that is what every end of every season of our lives is all about: the increase of Jesus in our decrease.

Whatever It Takes, Lord

There will be a God-given time to exit every role we enter. Some endings will feel sweet and clear; some will feel bitter and confusing. Therefore, it requires a different kind of wisdom to end well than to begin well. It demands Spirit-wrought humility and Spirit-empowered faith to trust God’s sovereignty, wisdom, and goodness in those transitions.

We must prepare for these moments or, better, we must ask God to prepare us, so that as each moment ends, we will say with John the Baptist, “He must increase, but I must decrease.”

Whatever it takes, Lord, increase my love for your supremacy and my trust in your wise purposes so that, when it’s time for me to step out of something to which you had appointed me for a season, I will receive the decrease in personal influence with joyful faith.

The Key to Spiritual Breakthrough

“You do not have, because you do not ask” (James 4:2). How much enjoyment of God’s presence and experience of his power for mission are we missing out on because we do not ask God for them?

Jesus also says we do not have because we ask with such little faith (Matthew 17:19–20). How much enjoyment of God’s presence and experience of his power for mission are we missing out on because our expectation is so small that prayer will result in anything?

Jesus also says we do not have, because we do not ask long enough (Luke 11:5–13). All over the Bible we see, not in great detail but in sufficient detail, that we are involved in a great cosmic battle and that the prayers of the saints are crucial to the advancement of the kingdom of God (see Daniel 10:12–14 and Ephesians 6:18). We don’t need to know how it all works; we just need to know it does. The testimony of Scripture and church history is that great, Spirit-empowered, Great Commission-fulfilling works of God are preceded, carried, and prolonged by the fervent, persistent, prevailing prayers of the saints. When prayer dissipates, spiritual power dissipates.

How much enjoyment of God’s presence and experience of his power for mission are we missing out on because we simply don’t ask long enough?

Jesus Prayed

When Jesus encouraged us “always to pray and not lose heart” (Luke 18:1), he wasn’t telling us to do something that he himself didn’t need to do. Jesus knew from his own human experience that he needed to ask his Father for everything, to ask him in faith, and at times to persevere in prayer until the breakthrough came.

In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence. (Hebrews 5:7)

This text gives us unique insight not so much into what Jesus prayed, but into how Jesus prayed. And it has something to say to us about how we should pray.

First, let it hit you that Jesus prayed. “In everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving [he let his] requests be made known to God” (Philippians 4:6). Hebrews 5:7 gives us a glimpse of the glory of Christ’s humility in his incarnation. We see some of what it meant for him to empty himself by becoming human and taking the form of a servant (Philippians 2:7).

In his fully divine nature, Jesus had continual communion with his Father. But in his fully human nature, he had to pray to the Father just like we do. That’s why “he would withdraw to desolate places and pray” (Luke 5:16), sometimes praying entire nights (Luke 6:12). He knew he could do nothing on his own and was completely dependent on the Father (John 5:19).

If Jesus had to pray, and pray a lot, so do we.

Jesus Prayed with Passion

And he prayed “with loud cries and tears.” Complete dependence on God was not merely an abstract theological concept for Jesus; it was a desperate, experiential reality. This verse isn’t referring only to Gethsemane, because Jesus prayed this way “in the days of his flesh.” During Jesus’s human experience on earth, he repeatedly, and likely regularly, prayed with loud cries and tears.

Why was he moved to pray so passionately? He was keenly aware that heaven and hell were real outcomes for real souls as a result of his mission. He knew there were demonized persons needing deliverance, sick needing healing, particular gospel truths needing to be proclaimed at particular times in particular places for particular persons. He and his disciples were also usually living hand-to-mouth on a daily basis.

He also had the forces of hell constantly trying to destroy him, his disciples, and his mission. We know the spiritual warfare that erupts whenever we attempt real, meaningful kingdom labor. Imagine what it was like for Jesus.

And, of course, the cross was always looming before him, growing larger as the day drew nearer. He knew that when he offered himself as a sacrifice, and absorbed the full wrath of God for the sins of all who would believe in him, and died (John 3:16), only the Father “was able to save him from death.”

Jesus knew the nature of his freely chosen human helplessness made him dependent on the Father for all these things. So, he prayed with loud cries and tears out of his desperate human need for his Father’s help. We also desperately need the Father’s help in all these things, too, including preparing for our own death, through which we trust him to deliver us.

Why Did God Hear Jesus’s Prayers?

Would you have expected the author of Hebrews to say that Jesus “was heard because of his reverence”? Wouldn’t we have expected, Jesus was heard because he was God’s Son? Jesus had positional access to the Father, and in him so do we. But the author didn’t say that. He chose “reverence.” Why?

Reverence is a holy fear of God. Now, this is astonishing: God the Son regards God the Father with an appropriate holy fear. The Son is not afraid of the Father’s judgment. He simply has the appropriate regard of the Father’s omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and eternal greatness.

Terror is what persons experience when they truly encounter God and yet have no access to him as a Father. Reverence is what persons experience when they have free access to the Father as his children — when they know the Father, and believe what the Father says.

Reverence isn’t a feigned respectful or formal demeanor we put on when we pray to God that looks quite different from the rest of the way we live and talk. Persons who truly revere God do so all the time. When you hear them pray, it doesn’t sound much different than the way they usually talk. You can just tell they believe they are speaking to God himself.

Their reverence enables them to approach him like the loving Father that he is. God’s throne is a throne of grace (Hebrews 4:16). So, a reverent child of God feels the freedom to come to him in desperate need, even with loud cries and tears, because God is honored when that child comes to him in desperate faith.

If we lack reverence for God, it shows up in the way we live and in the way we pray. These are indicators that we do not know him like he wants us to, and therefore our faith in him is very small, which is likely why we aren’t realizing more answered prayer.

Pray Like Jesus

If this is true about us, let’s forget trying to guilt ourselves into praying more, except to allow our guilt to drive us to repentance. Rather, let’s note how Jesus prayed and pray like him!

Jesus prayed because he knew the extent of his human need. He prayed in reverential faith because he believed God and loved him with all his being. And he persisted and prevailed in prayer, sometimes praying with loud cries and tears, because he knew what he was up against, the strongholds imprisoning people, and the cost of his mission. He prayed, and he was heard.

We only pray when, like Jesus, we are aware of our real need. The greater this awareness is, the greater our sense of desperation for God’s help. And the greater our desperation for God, the more we will pray. And the more we will pray, the more we will experience the joy of his presence and his power for mission.

That’s why God wants us to pray like Jesus. He wants us to come to him. His great invitation to us is to come and ask, to ask in faith, and to keep asking in faith until we receive his answer.

Do not lose heart; do not give up; pray, even with loud cries and tears, until God grants the breakthrough you seek.

Do You Think You’re the Exception?

At the root of many of our sins is an assumption that we are exceptional. I don’t mean “exceptional” as in extraordinarily gifted, like “she’s exceptionally good at math.” I mean exceptional as in what applies to most people doesn’t apply to me.

Do any of these ring familiar?

I’m running late, and don’t want to be thought of as disorganized or inconsiderate, so I will make myself the exception to the speed limit instituted for the safety of everyone else (unless I spot a police car).
Though I know the Golden Rule (Matthew 7:12), and that we should be slow to anger (James 1:19), and answer softly (Proverbs 15:1), I’m angry right now, so I’ll speak harshly (and make myself the exception). Don’t take offense, but understand that this is just the way I am (but if you speak harshly to me, I will definitely take offense).
I know that small/accountability group members should confess sin to each other in order to battle future sin and walk in humility, but this sin is too embarrassing to confess to anyone, and it really will make me look bad. So, I’ll make myself the exception and just try harder on my own. Maybe I’ll confess it when I can talk about it as something I have victory over.
I know the law says I’m underage for drinking alcohol, but I’m a legal adult, I think it’s a stupid law, I’m not going to get drunk, and I just want to have some fun with my friends. So, I will make myself the exception.
I know the Bible says we shouldn’t neglect meeting together (Hebrews 10:25), but Sunday’s my only day to catch up on sleep and just relax (I mean, it’s the Sabbath, right?). I won’t get that much out of the singing or the sermon anyway, and besides, the early church didn’t have Spotify and podcasts. Therefore, I’ll make myself the exception to needing to be a regular active part of Christ’s body in a local church (1 Corinthians 12:27).
Pornography may be dangerously addictive to some people and damage how they view others and destroy their ministries and contribute to the slavery of sex trafficking, and I know Jesus says lust is a sin (Matthew 5:28). But I will make myself the exception to these warnings because I won’t let any of those things happen to me. One more indulgent look isn’t going to affect the sex trade, and Jesus will forgive me, like he always does.

We could go on and on, couldn’t we? We could fill books, and perhaps we should. Writing them out and reading them helps expose these exceptional assumptions for what they really are: selfish pride.

Pride in Our Presumptions

Behind every willful sin, every conscious act of disobedience to God, is a presumption that what God, or his rightful authority (whether government, school, employer, or parent), says is best for the masses around us need not apply to us. We are born with a belief that we are the best arbiters of righteousness and justice for ourselves, and that we are the most reliable definers and appliers of love, honor, and respect.

We love to feed ourselves such baloney. But it’s far worse than baloney; it’s old-fashioned, Eden-birthed, sinful, self-centered pride.

We know this because we can see it clearly in others, especially when their presumptuous baloney directly affects us. We do not like when someone inconsiderately speeds past and cuts us off in traffic, or speaks harshly to us, or isn’t honest in our small group. We are unhappy when our child drinks illegally, someone in our church neglects everyone else, or someone we know is viewing pornography. When others behave this way, we can quickly call it exactly what it is: selfish — which is how pride behaves.

It’s ironic, isn’t it, how we feel indignant at others’ selfishness and yet indulge in our own?

But why does our selfishness not seem that bad? Because pride skews our self-perception. When we evaluate our own motives and actions, unless we are ruthlessly intentional, we will view ourselves through the rose-colored lenses of delusional pride.

Quick Diagnostic Check

This kind of pride weighs us down (Hebrews 12:1) more than we know, because it is a gateway sinful disposition. It opens our heart-door to innumerable sins with the rationalization that they really won’t affect us much or do much damage.

Meanwhile, just like one more cigarette, one more piece of pie, or one more lust-filled click, the weight grows a little heavier, our spiritual affections grow duller, our capacity for love grows smaller, and our tolerance for anything that interferes with our selfish desires grows thinner. Before we know it, we wake to some spiritual health crisis and wonder why this is happening.

If you want to do a quick diagnostic check, here are a few common symptoms of a ponderous exceptional pride:

A lack of real gratitude (translate: Of course I should receive this good).

Bitterness (I shouldn’t have to bear with adversity, conflict, suffering, pain, disappointment, or grief).

Envy (I should be honored and admired like that).
Impatience (I should not have to bear with this person’s foibles or sins).

Irritability (I should not have to endure this inconvenience).

Covetousness (I should have what they get to have).
Indulgence (I should be able to have what I crave).



Lay Aside the Exceptional Weight

As heirs of original sin, we all pick up these close-clinging sin-weights and so must learn to lay them aside as quickly as possible (Hebrews 12:1). We pick them up because they look like keys to the freedom of self-determined autonomy. But they end up being heavy balls-and-chain of self-indulgence that drain the true joy that only comes when we give to others (Acts 20:35), serve others (Mark 10:43–45), honor others (Romans 12:10), and love others as ourselves (Matthew 22:39).

Jesus came to liberate us from exceptional pride so we can live in the glorious, humble, healthy freedom of the children of God (Romans 8:21).

We begin to lay this pride aside by honestly confessing it to God, and repenting of what manifestations we do see, and asking for the Holy Spirit to expose what we don’t see. The more we wince at praying such a prayer, the more we need to pray it.

But we don’t stop there. God has already provided us some help in the form of our spiritual brothers and sisters in our church and family. Since our pride so skews our self-perception, we need their candid observations of us as mirrors, to help us see our blind spots. Often they will be hesitant to volunteer it, so we need to humbly ask them for it, and make it safe for them to answer honestly.

We are not exceptional. But that is very good news, for that kind of exceptional only leads to the myopic misery of the self-consumed. Those who are freed from the weight of thinking themselves above the law of love, or the law of the land, realize that they deserve nothing but wrath, and find in Christ everything to be only grace. Which makes every good a gift, and every burden light. They find the glorious open door to the expansive, wonder-filled, joyful life of humility. And there they discover why Jesus calls the meek blessed (Matthew 5:5).

She Still Enchants Me

I am in love at middle age. In honor of Lover’s Day, perhaps you’ll grant me the indulgence of praising my beloved. And allow me also to explain why I share my praise with you.

She enchanted me.

I knew three weeks before we started dating that I would marry her. How I knew this is a mystery of the Spirit. I can’t explain it. I’ve only experienced it a few times in my life. This New Testament, Spirit-given gift of “knowledge” (1 Corinthians 12:8) came clear as crystal as I parked my ‘78 Dodge Aspen in the lot of Perkins Restaurant. I told no one except God for years.

She was beautiful. But I was enchanted by something far deeper than her flesh (itself a miracle of the Spirit in a young male). There was something else, something I fumble with words to describe. Her love for Jesus was rare for her age — or any age in my experience. She radiated purity, being fun-loving yet not flirtatious. She possessed the powerful allure of shameless modesty. And she spoke with godly insight and wisdom. My words, though true, can’t fully capture it. I was enchanted with her spiritual beauty.

We married in 1988.

Enchantment Grows with Age

That was almost thirty years ago. Our marriage is now older than we were on that unseasonably hot day in May, when we vowed to God and each other fidelity till death.

The passing years have brought educational degrees, kingdom work, seasons of deep spiritual wrestling, five precious children, countless joys, and storms of many kinds. And they have taken most of my hair, our wrinkle-less skin, our faster metabolisms, and our over-confidence. Our love is no longer young.

But it still feels young. No, that’s not quite accurate. Our love feels youthful, yet mature. Comparing our newlywed love to our middle-aged love is sort of like comparing one’s 15-year-old self to one’s 30-year-old self. Both are beautiful in their time (Ecclesiastes 3:11) and may exude a youthful joie de vivre. But the former lacks the life experience essential for the maturity of the latter. The 30-year-old looks back with nostalgic fondness on the 15-year-old he once was, but would not trade hard-earned wisdom for teenage naiveté.

Our love still courses with youthful joy, but now it’s infused with the complex richness of experience. It is seasoned with tears and laughter, provision and perseverance, and the humility that only comes with failure and being confronted with one’s limitations and weaknesses and utter need for God. It is a love laced with grace — a shared belief that we do not deserve the other and that God has been immeasurably merciful to us. It is a richer love.

I am, in fact, more in love with her now than thirty years ago. “Every little thing she does is [still] magic.” That old, yet youthful crush-rush surges through me at the most ordinary times: when she’s cutting vegetables in the kitchen, reading in the living room, walking toward the house from the garage, when my phone rings and her name appears. We exchange glances like dating couples and frequent kisses like newlyweds, prompting gags and eye-rolls from our kids.

She is still very beautiful. But as in the beginning, it’s her soul that holds me spellbound. All the spiritual qualities of the remarkable young woman I fell in love with remain, but they have grown stronger and deeper and radiate out of her with a loveliness I can’t capture and she can’t see.

Yes, she still enchants me. More than ever.

What It Has to Do with You

So, why am I telling this to you?

First, in a world where deceitful charm and vain beauty are cultural goddesses, a woman who fears the Lord is to be publicly praised (Proverbs 31:30), especially by her husband (Proverbs 31:28). My wife will not prefer this public praise; she’s too humble. But I know she will not withhold from me the joy of singing her praise, something that actually completes my joy.

Second, if you are newly married or hope to be married someday, you know of too many marriages that have broken on the reefs of human sin. And you are inundated with stories that distort and pervert love. Pop culture celebrates the infatuated highs of new love, and says very little of the deep, mature richness of middle-aged love. So, I want to encourage you with a word of hope: the best married love is ahead of you — though you likely won’t know it for a while. You will push through some steep mountains, deep valleys, and miry bogs to get there. You will wonder if it will happen; you will doubt. But if you trust God, stay true to your vows, and press on, you’ll discover that the relational reward of steadfast, persevering love is worth every struggle. Allow the wine to age.

Third, if you have had your heart broken and your love shipwrecked on the reef, your love story is not over — not if you are part of Christ’s bride. Your truest love story will have a wildly happy ending. The best marriages in this age are dim, defective reflections of the love Christ has for you (Ephesians 5:22–32). But they are reflections. The better the marriage, the greater glimpse we get of what’s coming for us all: a steadily growing, deeper, richer, stronger love for all eternity.

I am still wonderfully enchanted with my earthly beloved after many Valentine’s Days. And what’s more wonderful still is that it’s just a small taste of the Great Enchantment, the Deep Intoxication, the divine head-over-heels love we will all someday know with our true Beloved.

[image error]

Lord, Make Me More Bold

Do you want to live and speak more boldly for Jesus Christ? I do.

How badly do we want it? Do we want it enough to ask, seek, and knock until God answers us and to take risks that press on our timidity? Or, if we’re honest, would we rather just keep wishing we were bolder — admiring bold people, being inspired by biographies about bold people, talking with our friends and small group members about our struggles with fear of man — all the while staying where we feel safe and relatively comfortable and letting fear go unchallenged?

My flesh likes the second option with a more flattering description. The Spirit says, “If you want to walk with me, choose the first.”

There’s the battle line. “The desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do” (Galatians 5:17). But in this battle, there’s no stalemate. One side always holds sway. So, “choose this day whom you will serve” (Joshua 24:15).

If we are serious about choosing the Spirit, God will grant us our request (Luke 11:13; John 15:7), and enable us to “walk by the Spirit [so we] will not gratify the desires of the flesh” (Galatians 5:16).

What Is Christian Boldness?

Boldness, in the biblical sense, is not a personality trait. A typically soft-spoken, introverted, calm person can be bold at a time when a typically driven, outspoken, brash person shrinks back. Boldness is acting, by the power of the Holy Spirit, on an urgent conviction in the face of some threat.

That last sentence contains the three ingredients to Christian boldness: Spirit-empowered conviction, courage, and urgency.

If one of the ingredients is missing, we won’t act boldly. Without sufficient conviction that something ought to be said or done, what’s there to be bold about? Without sufficient courage, we don’t have enough fiber in our conviction to face opposition or threats. Without a sufficient sense of urgency, we lack the fire under our feet to get us moving. People who are halfhearted, fearful, or indifferent are, by definition, not bold.

But if you’re aware of deficiencies in any of these three areas, take heart. The Bible gives us every reason to hope for transformation, and no reason to keep living with debilitating fear.

Jesus Bought Boldness

In Christ, “we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith” to God our Father (Ephesians 3:12).

The truth is there’s no power in heaven or on earth or under the earth that remotely approaches the power of God. He is the only one we need to fear (Luke 12:4–5). And Jesus took upon himself every reason we have to be terrified of God. Now in Christ God is for us. And,

If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? (Romans 8:31–32)

If we can now “with confidence draw near to the throne of grace” (Hebrews 4:16), who then should we fear (Psalm 27:1)? Jesus did not die on the cross to have us quivering in a corner because some human being might say something mean, or stop our paychecks, or sever a relationship, or even kill us (Luke 12:4). No! For Jesus has ensured that,

neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38–39)

The only reason fear-based timidity remains in us is that we don’t believe these mind-blowing promises. What freezing fears might melt away, like snow in April, if we let the bright rays of Romans 8 shine on our shadowy places of unbelief, even for just a week?

The Spirit Empowers Boldness

After sunbathing in Romans 8, we should take an invigorating walk through the book of Acts and watch how Spirit emboldened the early Christians were.

Peter and John, once frozen with fear, when filled with the Holy Spirit, were out preaching the gospel for everyone to hear (see Acts 2:14–41). This soon got them arrested — the very thing that had terrified them before — and their boldness astonished the Jewish authorities, who then “recognized that they had been with Jesus” (Acts 4:13). 

Don’t you want to bear that bold spiritual family resemblance? It requires the Spirit of Jesus (Philippians 1:19).

Pray for Boldness!

The early Christians knew this. Post-Pentecost they didn’t always feel bold. In fact, in Acts 4, when the disciples came back from the astonished authorities, they told the church of the threats they received. Everyone understood the implication: persecution and possible execution. So, did they flee back into hiding? No, they prayed for boldness:

“And now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness.” . . . And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness. (Acts 4:29, 31)

In answer to prayer, fear melted away and they received a fresh filling of the Holy Spirit and renewed boldness to keep speaking.

Boldness is not constant or taken for granted. We must keep praying for it whenever we need it. Even the apostle Paul experienced this. That’s why he asked the Ephesians to pray that he “may declare [the gospel] boldly, as [he] ought to speak” (Ephesians 6:20). Boldness is not an option for us, but it’s also not a given. Since it is not a constant gift of the Spirit, we must pray for it frequently.

Act the Miracle

But we should not think every time boldness is required we will feel some heroic swell of confidence. God often gives us Spirit-empowered boldness when, in spite of feeling fear, we step out in faith that the Spirit will provide the measure of boldness we need in that moment.

If we look, Acts is full of instances where boldness was given in situations where no doubt the speakers were tempted with fear:

In Antioch Pisidia, Paul and Barnabas “spoke out boldly” when the Jews publicly reviled them (Acts 13:46).
In Iconium, they were also vigorously opposed, “so they remained for a long time, speaking boldly for the Lord” (Acts 14:3).
In Ephesus, Apollos spoke “boldly in the synagogue” (Acts 18:26).
In Ephesus, Paul taught in the synagogue “and for three months spoke boldly, reasoning and persuading them about the kingdom of God” (Acts 19:8).
In Caesarea, when Paul was imprisoned, he spoke “boldly” to King Agrippa (Acts 26:26).
And the last thing we know about Paul is that, while under house arrest in Rome, he went on “proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance” (Acts 28:31).

Yes, we should pray to be filled with the Spirit. But when boldness is needed in fearful situations, and we act in spite of sweaty palms and pounding hearts, Jesus promises to fill our mouths by the Spirit (Matthew 10:20). And so we act the miracle.

Boldness Is Contagious

And a wonderful thing happens when we act the miracle: others begin to act it, too. Paul described this phenomenon:

And most of the brothers, having become confident in the Lord by my imprisonment, are much more bold to speak the word without fear. (Philippians 1:14)

Paul’s imprisonment for being bold for Christ emboldened other Christians. And we’ve all experienced this in some way. The best way to start a movement of bold witness is to step out in boldness ourselves.

Whatever It Takes, Lord!

And this is just what our flesh emphatically does not want to do. It resists the Spirit in order to keep us from doing what we want to do. To prayerfully pursue boldness in the power of the Spirit requires dying to our flesh (Romans 8:13).

But that’s a death that leads to life! For “to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace” (Romans 8:6). To die to our flesh in order to pursue boldness is really to choose life. That should lead us to pray:

Whatever it takes, Lord, decrease the hold that unbelieving fear has over me and increase my boldness to declare the gospel to everyone you put in my path.

Your Weakness Is Not Meaningless

God has given you so many limitations because he loves you.

If you’re like most people, you don’t feel loved by your limitations. You feel confined, stunted, trapped, and exposed by them. You feel discouraged by how weak you are and how many things you can’t do well or at all. You might even be tempted to resent God for equipping you with what looks like a stingy allotment of abilities.

But that’s only because you’re mainly looking at yourself from the wrong perspective, which is looking too much at yourself.

God gave you your finiteness, your very limited strengths and weaknesses, in order that you might know and delight in his glorious love for you in as many of its manifestations as you possibly can. You are so limited because you are so loved.

Where We Experience Love Most

Our finiteness itself is not a consequence of the Fall, even though the corruption that infects it is (2 Peter 1:4). God created humans incredibly limited from the very beginning because we were designed to live in world of love.

What do our limitations have to do with love? Just about everything. Because the way God made us, we always experience love most in the places where grace is most needed. This is true both in how we receive love (from God and others), and in how we give love.

When Do We Love God Most?

Humans always have and always will live only on the grace of God, our “Maker, Benefactor, Proprietor, Upholder” (Valley of Vision, 115). It was true in Eden before the Fall, and it will be true in the age to come when we are finally free from sin.

But it is especially true in this age where we are such great sinners and in need of such amazing amounts of grace. In the Father’s giving his only Son for us in our wretched, undeserving state to die in our place, we have been loved with the greatest love possible (John 3:16; Romans 5:8; John 15:13). And our response of gratitude-drenched love to him for his gracious love to us produces a holy reverberation of love-infused joy between God and us. We gratefully love God because he so graciously and sacrificially loved us first (1 John 4:19).

The more we grasp his incomprehensible love for us in our immeasurable need (Ephesians 3:19), the greater our love for him grows. That’s why the woman forgiven by Jesus of her great sins had the greater love for God than Simon the Pharisee (Luke 7:47). Our greatest experience of God’s love for us is in the place of our greatest need for his grace.

When Do We Love One Another Most?

It’s also true that we experience the most love for one another in the places of our greatest mutual needs.

When God gave me my strengths, few though they are, his purpose wasn’t to give me some basis on which to feel good about myself. He gave them to me so I could have the astounding privilege of loving someone else by graciously serving them in a place of their need, and then by receiving their grateful love in return.

And when God gave me my weaknesses, which are legion, his purpose wasn’t to make me ashamed and discouraged. He gave them to me so I could have the astounding privilege of humbly receiving someone else’s love as they graciously serve me in a place of my need, and then joyfully responding to them with grateful love in return.

And just like the vertical reverberation of love between God and us, there are horizontal reverberations of love between us as we extend love to one another. And since God is love and all love originates in him (1 John 4:7–8), the vertical and horizontal reverberations all meld together into one glorious song of love to God.

Do you see God’s beautiful design of love in our limitations? The transactions of love occur in the very places of our various and different needs. As John Piper so helpfully says, “Love is the overflow of joy in God that gladly meets the needs of others” (Desiring God, 119). There it is: the dynamic melding of the vertical and horizontal love of God. God’s glory is revealed when, however imperfectly in this age, we obey the greatest commandments (Luke 10:27).

A Body of Love

God has given you so many limitations because he loves you. He wants you to experience as much of his love, in as many ways as possible. And for that to happen, he must provide you a never-ending river of reasons, and an enormous range of diverse ways, to receive and give love.

And this is just what he’s done! He has made you a very limited part of his body, the church, and he places you with other parts that are also very limited in different ways (1 Corinthians 12:18, 27). As the interdependent parts work together, the whole body functions (Romans 12:4–5) and displays the love of God (John 13:34–35). Your unique strengths and weaknesses are indispensible gifts to this body. Without them the whole body suffers because unique expressions of God’s gracious love will be missed.

If you’re frequently discouraged over your limitations, it’s an indicator that you’re looking at yourself from the wrong perspective, and looking at yourself too much. You’re not seeing what God sees; you’re likely feeling discontent from comparing yourself to other people, other parts of the body.

A wonderful treatment for such discouragement is prayerfully meditating on 1 Corinthians 12 and 13. And also it’s likely time to reframe the question from “Why can’t I be more like that?” to “What opportunities is God giving me in my limitations to experience more of his gracious love?”

Because the truth is, you are so limited because you are so loved.

Lord, Fill Me with Your Spirit

“The kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in power” (1 Corinthians 4:20).

If we are not disillusioned with how much we have allowed our talk to pass for our walk, discontented with the sparse amount of spiritual fruit we are truly bearing, and disappointed by the impotence of our own efforts, we will never be distressed enough to really plead with God to fill us with the Holy Spirit.

If we’re not disturbed by how little we can do in our own power, we’ll never be desperate enough to ask God for his.

What Is the Filling of the Holy Spirit?

But when we pray for this, what are we asking God for? In the words of Wayne Grudem, we are asking God for “an event subsequent to conversion in which a believer experiences a fresh infilling with the Holy Spirit that may result in a variety of consequences, including greater love for God, greater victory over sin, greater power for ministry, and sometimes the receiving of new spiritual gifts” (Grudem, 1,242).

Now, of course every Christian receives the Holy Spirit upon conversion. Being born again is the greatest miracle any human being can possibly experience, and it only happens by the omnipotent power of the Holy Spirit (John 3:3–8; 1 Corinthians 12:13).

But the reason we talk about the filling of the Holy Spirit as “an event subsequent to conversion” is because that’s how the New Testament usually talks about it. Paul was exhorting born-again Christians when he wrote, “be filled with the Spirit” (Ephesians 5:18). And almost all of Luke’s description of Spirit-fillings occurred to people who were already born again (see Acts 2:4; 4:8, 31; 9:17; 13:9, 52). And we’re actually talking about events (plural) because, just like the same people received repeated fillings of the Spirit in the book of Acts, we also need to be filled repeatedly.

According to the New Testament, we need to be repeatedly filled with the Holy Spirit for two primary purposes: empowered worship and witness.

Intoxicated with God

When Paul told the Ephesian Christians to “be filled with the Spirit,” he was talking about Spirit-empowered worship:

And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. (Ephesians 5:18–20)

Be careful as you read these verses. Don’t let your familiarity with it or your experience-based preconceptions about worship styles or other things cause you to dodge the punch the Holy Spirit intends to land here.

Paul is saying, don’t be intoxicated with alcohol, but be intoxicated with God! His words confront each of us with the penetrating question, “Are you intoxicated with God?” Does our heart so overflow with love for God that our heart, whether light or heavy, can’t help but sing, both to God and to one another? No matter what our circumstances, are we overflowing with thanks to God?

If not, we need to be filled with the Holy Spirit because we are not worshipfully enjoying God according to the grace available to us. That means we are not glorifying God as we ought, and are we not experiencing satisfaction in God like we might.

Empowered by God

When Luke described this experience of Spirit-filling among Christians, its purpose was for Spirit-empowered witness:

“And now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness, while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus.” And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness. (Acts 4:29–31)

Those early Christians were feeling fear from the threats of the religious authorities, the same ones who had crucified Jesus. But their response was to ask God for boldness to preach the gospel and supernatural power to minister to people. And God answered their prayer.

Don’t let yourself be immediately distracted by popular controversies, like whether all the miraculous gifts in the New Testament continue, or some have ceased. Those questions are important in their place. But there are more fundamental questions for us here. “Are you responding to your fears of real physical threats, disapproval, or scorn with desperate prayer for God to empower you to overcome?” Are we laying hold of God until he answers?

If not, we need to be filled with the Holy Spirit because we are allowing fear and unbelief to gag or mute our witness to the reality and gospel of Jesus Christ. And because we are silent, people who need the gospel aren’t hearing it.

Whatever It Takes, Lord!

Here’s wonderful news: our heavenly Father loves to give his Holy Spirit to those who ask (Luke 11:13)! “For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened” (Luke 11:10).

Do you feel dry? Are you weary? Are you tired of talking so much about glorious theology, but not experiencing the reality of it? Does your worship feel distracted and hollow? Are you lacking in gratitude to God? Do you long for more fruit, both the internal fruit of the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:22–23) and the external fruit of empowered ministry?

Then you are a good candidate for the filling of the Holy Spirit. Your dryness and discouragement may, in fact, be invitations from God to press in to him. The desperation that comes from living with low-ebbing affections and spiritual impotence can itself be a gift from the Holy Spirit, because it’s when we become disillusioned enough with our mere talk, our anemic worship, and our weak selves that we really become prepared to pray:

Whatever it takes, Lord, fill me with the Holy Spirit and any gifting you would be pleased to give me.

Lord, Fill Me With Your Spirit

“The kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in power” (1 Corinthians 4:20).

If we are not disillusioned with how much we have allowed our talk to pass for our walk, discontented with the sparse amount of spiritual fruit we are truly bearing, and disappointed by the impotence of our own efforts, we will never be distressed enough to really plead with God to fill us with the Holy Spirit.

If we’re not disturbed by how little we can do in our own power, we’ll never be desperate enough to ask God for his.

What Is the Filling of the Holy Spirit?

But when we pray for this, what are we asking God for? In the words of Wayne Grudem, we are asking God for “an event subsequent to conversion in which a believer experiences a fresh infilling with the Holy Spirit that may result in a variety of consequences, including greater love for God, greater victory over sin, greater power for ministry, and sometimes the receiving of new spiritual gifts.” (Grudem, 1242)

Now, of course every Christian receives the Holy Spirit upon conversion. Being born again is the greatest miracle any human being can possibly experience, and it only happens by the omnipotent power of Holy Spirit (John 3:3–8; 1 Corinthians 12:13).

But the reason we talk about the filling of the Holy Spirit as “an event subsequent to conversion” is because that’s how the New Testament usually talks about it. Paul was exhorting born-again Christians when he wrote, “be filled with the Spirit” (Ephesians 5:18). And almost all of Luke’s description of Spirit-fillings occurred to people who were already born again (see Acts 2:4; 4:8; 4:31; 9:17; 13:9; 13:52). And we’re actually talking about events (plural) because, just like the same people received repeated fillings of the Spirit in the book of Acts, we also need to be filled repeatedly.

According to the New Testament, we need to be repeatedly filled with the Holy Spirit for two primary purposes: empowered worship and witness.

Intoxicated with God

When Paul told the Ephesians Christians to “be filled with the Spirit,” he was talking about Spirit-empowered worship:

And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. (Ephesians 5:18–20)

Be careful as you read these verses. Don’t let your familiarity with it or your experience-based preconceptions about worship styles or other things cause you to dodge the punch the Holy Spirit intends to land here.

Paul is saying, don’t be intoxicated with alcohol, but be intoxicated with God! His words confront each of us with the penetrating question, “Are you intoxicated with God?” Does our heart so overflow with love for God that our heart, whether light or heavy, can’t help but sing, both to God and to one another? No matter what our circumstances, are we overflowing with thanks to God?

If not, we need to be filled with the Holy Spirit because we are not worshipfully enjoying God according to the grace available to us. That means we are not glorifying God as we ought, and are we not experiencing satisfaction in God like we might.

Empowered by God

When Luke described this experience of Spirit-filling among Christians, its purpose was for Spirit-empowered witness:

And now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness, while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus.” And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness. (Acts 4:29–31)

Those early Christians were feeling fear from the threats of the religious authorities, the same ones who had crucified Jesus. But their response was to ask God for boldness to preach the gospel and supernatural power to minister to people. And God answered their prayer.

Don’t let yourself be immediately distracted by popular controversies, like whether all the miraculous gifts in the New Testament continue, or some have ceased. Those questions are important in their place. But there are more fundamental questions for us here. “Are you responding to your fears of real physical threats, disapproval, or scorn with desperate prayer for God to empower you to overcome?” Are we laying hold of God until he answers?

If not, we need to be filled with the Holy Spirit because we are allowing fear and unbelief to gag or mute our witness to the reality and gospel of Jesus Christ. And because we are silent, people who need the gospel aren’t hearing it.

Whatever It Takes, Lord!

Here’s wonderful news: our heavenly Father loves to give his Holy Spirit to those who ask (Luke 11:13)! “For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened” (Luke 11:10).

Do you feel dry? Are you weary? Are you tired of talking so much about glorious theology, but not experiencing the reality of it? Does your worship feel distracted and hollow? Are you lacking in gratitude to God? Do you long for more fruit, both the internal fruit of the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:28-29) and the external fruit of empowered ministry?

Then you are a good candidate for the filling of the Holy Spirit. Your dryness and discouragement may, in fact, be invitations from God to press in to him. The desperation that comes from living with low-ebbing affections and spiritual impotence can itself be a gift from the Holy Spirit, because it's when we become disillusioned enough with our mere talk, our anemic worship, and our weak selves that we really become prepared to pray:

Whatever it takes, Lord, fill me with the Holy Spirit and any gifting you would be pleased to give me.