Is the Presence of God’s Spirit in your life?
Posted by Donna Cunningham on May 23, 2011 | 3 comments
Is the Presence of God’s Spirit in your life verification that all of your beliefs are right?
“God looks down from heaven on all mankind to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God.” —Psalm 53:2
Have you ever wondered how it is that so many people with so many different beliefs about God have “felt” God’s Spirit in their lives?
We think to ourselves something like:
“I thought this way about God, I praised God in this manner, I read this Bible text, and God’s Spirit drew near! That is how I know that what I believe about God is true!”
Generally this experiential feeling is what we use to validate that what we believe about God is 100% “The Truth”. However, This experiential viewpoint becomes more problematic when you have held more than one set of religious beliefs at different seasons in your life, yet have felt that same unmistakable ”Presence” during both seasons. How do you make sense of it? Did you really NOT feel God’s Presence earlier, when you believed differently? How can it be “God’s Spirit” both times?
What if … we have it all wrong?
What if … the Presence of God drawing near to us is not actually validation and verification that what we believe about God is completely true?
What if … God’s Spirit is really not tied to the “rightness” of our beliefs, but the purity of our hearts?
Sometimes, understanding God’s relationship with us is best understood by looking at our relationships with our children. How many times will we tell our eager, trusting child, ”Yes sweetie, that picture you have drawn of me is beautiful!” when it is merely a few crayoned scribbles that don’t resemble us at all?
At the time, we reward our children with pats and accolades because of their heartfelt efforts. We kindly realize that “they can’t handle the truth!”; that is, that their depiction of us is no more accurate than if they drew a three-headed horse and called it Mommy. However, their hearts are pure and they are offering us the best that they have, so we reward their efforts with hugs, attaboys, and affirmations.
In like manner, our best efforts at reaching out to God and portraying God to others will fall far short of what God is actually like. We might even be way off base in our depiction of what God really desires from His children!
What if … what we think about God doesn’t matter when it comes to how God responds to us?
What if … God instead judges us on the purity of our hearts and not the correctness of our doctrines?
What if … our loving Father, in His great mercy and kindness, rewards us with the gift of His Spirit because He loves us, not because we are 100% ”right”?
“YAHWEH detests the way of the wicked, but he loves those who pursue righteousness.” —Proverbs 15:9
An insightful piece. Far too many of us only think we can “feel” God on some experiential level. If our entire experience is tied up in only how we “feel” about God through our church’s music or powerful charismatic preaching, we have really missed the “come let us reason together” thoughtfulness of Yahweh our God. I’m glad somebody took the time to notice this.
Very insightful. God tells us to come to him as little children. What do children know of doctrine? God knows us and knows our character. My three year old son has no concept of what his Mommy is really like except that she loves him more than anything she has ever loved in her entire life. She loves him unconditionally. And, really, at his age and his purity, what else does he need to know?
What his parents, in his wisdom, feel like he’s ready to know!