Tolstoy’s Three Questions – Reflections (4)

  

In thinking about the king’s question, “Who is the right person to listen to?” we’re considering the Holy Spirit, the Word of God, and trusted men and women who have been given wisdom.

 

Jesus teaches us that the Holy Spirit is our Helper, Comforter, Advocate, Intercessor, Counsellor (all of these are shades of meaning in the Greek word “paracletos”).

 

“I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper [paracletos] that He may be with you forever…He abides with you and will be in you” (John 14:16 – 17; see also 14:26; 15:26; 16:7, 12 – 15).

 

Being led by the Holy Spirit, receiving the Holy Spirit’s counsel, listening to the Holy Spirit, is relational; it is something we learn through relationship, though spending conscious time with Him, with speaking and listening and asking and questioning throughout the day. There is no one experience that makes us mature listeners, nor is there a course we can take, a degree we can obtain, a measured process we can go through, which somehow makes us mature listeners – for we are (hopefully) ever learning and ever growing and our ears are ever being tuned to the Voice of the Father, the Voice of the Lamb, and the Voice of the Holy Spirit.

 

This is not to say that we don’t have experiences, life ought to be an experience in the Trinity. We can have mountain top experiences, just as we can experience the Valley of the Shadow of Death; we can experience the Mount of Transfiguration just as we can experience Gethsemane and Golgotha – and we ought not to teach the one without the other. Let us recall that the Holy Spirit drove Jesus into the Wilderness to be temped by the devil (Mark 1:12). Why don’t the “feel good” preachers teach this when they teach about the Holy Spirit?

 

Being led by the Spirit of God is a mark of the Christian and an element of our sonship in the Father and our inheritance in Christ (Romans 8:14 – 17). This leading is, at its foundation, twofold; it has to do with our doing and our becoming – with our becoming and our doing. Our Father’s desire is that we are conformed “to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren” (Rom. 8:29). This is worked out in our daily lives, at home, at work, in recreation and entertainment and the arts, in the social and civic arenas – this communion with God and engagement with humanity is all encompassing – it is to be our Way of Life in Christ.

 

There are times we “know” we are to do things, and as we respond in obedience to the Holy Spirit we learn and grow into the image of Christ, we become.

 

Then there are times that the Holy Spirit speaks to us about who Jesus is within us, and who we are in Jesus; God’s Word is revealed to us in ever unfolding glory and freshness, both in convicting us and in building us up, and our transformation is marked by the things we do – by the way we are among those around us, by our actions and our prayers and intercessions and words. The more we see Jesus the more we are transformed into His image (2 Cor. 3:17 – 18).

 

We “do” so that we may become, and we become so that we may “do.” We become so that we may “do,” and we “do” so that we may become.

 

As my friend Joe likes to say, “We are becoming who we are in Christ.”

 

Is there any doubt in our minds that we will hear God speaking in eternity future? Well then, if we will hear Him in eternity future, why not learn to hear Him in eternity present? Why not listen to the Holy Spirit today?