Open to the Spirit
Skydiving came as naturally as breathing for Ivan Lester McGuire. He was what you’d call a skydiving veteran: he performed over 800 jumps in his skydiving career. As a matter of fact, skydiving was so effortless for him that he actually became a skydiving photographer: he would take photos and videos of others as they took their free falls through the sky.
But on one one warm April day in 1988, something very unexpected happened. Ivan hopped onto an airplane with a group of skydivers just as he’d done 800 times before. He was very excited to get some new footage to add to his collection. The plane climbed into the air, reached a good jumping altitude, the door opened, and out jumped Ivan and the other skydivers. He started recording and got some great shots, and after a few moments of freefall, he reached for his parachute ripcord just as he’d done 800 times before -- but a curious thing happened: he couldn’t find it. He continued to reach for it frantically, only to eventually realize the unthinkable: he’d simply forgotten his parachute. Skydiving had become so routine to him that he simply forgot to harness up.
We marvel at the fact that a skydiving veteran with over 800 jumps under his belt could forget something so key, so essential, so fundamental as his parachute. But the same sort of tragic mistake and self-inflicted hardship occurs to Christians all the time: as Christians, we all want to fly at 12,000 feet with Jesus; but the adventure of the Christian life itself becomes so routine for us, so rote, so run-of-the-mill, that we too forget something key, essential, and fundamental: we forget that we must live and labor in the power of the Holy Spirit.
HARNESS UP
All Christians are indwelt by the Holy Spirit from the moment of conversion (the parachute, so to speak, is in the plane) -- but some of us feel so afraid, that we never go to the open door of the plane to follow Jesus and jump; while others of us have been Christians for so long that we try to live the Christian life in our own power and forget to “harness up.”
But the Christian life cannot be lived apart from the empowering work of the Holy Spirit anymore than skydiving can be done without a parachute. And here’s how we know that this is true: even Jesus Christ was reliant upon the empowering work of the Holy Spirit in his own life and ministry. If he had to do it, doesn’t it stand to reason that we have to? And if that’s the case, how do we “harness up”? How do we walk and labor in the power of the Holy Spirit who has already been given to us?
Let’s first think about all the different ways that the Holy Spirit was involved in Jesus’s life even before he’d started publicly teaching: he was conceived through the power of the Holy Spirit; when he was baptized the Holy Spirit descended upon him like a dove; and he was led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan -- and all this happened before Jesus had even “officially” begun his ministry!
But with these bedrock events underneath him, Jesus is now indeed ready to launch his public ministry; he is ready to begin the official mission that he was sent to accomplish -- through the power of the Holy Spirit, of course! Here’s what we read in Luke 4:
“Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside. He was teaching in their synagogues, and everyone praised him. He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written: ‘The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’ Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. He began by saying to them, ‘Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.’ All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips” (Luke 4:14–22a).
So here in this passage we have Christ’s “mission statement,” for lack of a better term -- or perhaps we could call this his “North Star.” He says that what he’s been sent to do is proclaim to the poor, “Blessed are you, for yours is the kingdom of heaven”; he’s been sent to fling wide the prison doors and set the captives free; he’s been sent so that those who were blind might at long last see both the majesty of a sunrise and the majesty of the Son of God; he’s been sent to proclaim a new era and reign of God’s grace and salvation for all who would receive it. That’s a grandiose mission; that’s a bright North Star to walk by; that’s something that any well-meaning person ought to aspire to! The world is in need of all of that to this very day!
But notice how Jesus says that this can be accomplished as he quotes Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me.” He is working and laboring in the power of the Holy Spirit. In other words, the very Son of God relied upon the Holy Spirit in order to bring this vision to pass. If the perfect and sinless Son of God was reliant upon the Holy Spirit to accomplish his God-given mission, how much more do you think that you and I must rely on the Holy Spirit in order to accomplish our God-given mission? Another way of saying it is that without the Holy Spirit, we’re like fighter jets without fuel -- we have all the mechanical pieces and items necessary, but without the fuel we’re stuck on the ground when we should be up in the air, fighting the enemy and following God’s orders.
WIDE OPEN
This is especially important now, because there are so many well-meaning people who are trying to accomplish this kind of mission: they’re working hard to literally help the poor by feeding and clothing them, to literally help free captives in the sex slave industry, to literally help those who are oppressed by terrorists and evil governments -- and for the most part, they’re doing good and useful work! As Christians, we should be engaged in that kind of real-world, physical help (which is why we’re so involved in a place like Cambodia); Jesus certainly was!
But as Christians, we do not merely want to address physical needs -- we want to feed the poor with both loaves of bread and the Bread of Life; we want to free captives from both the tyranny of evil men and from the tyranny of sin’s unchecked power in their hearts; we want to deliver people from oppressive governments and laws and see them delivered into the Kingdom of the Beloved Son.
And the only way to accomplish that mission is through the power and filling of the Holy Spirit. Anything less is like bandaging a fatal bullet wound and then giving the victim painkillers. We’ve been called to both bandage the wound and extract the bullet.
And that is perhaps the truly astonishing thing: this Spirit-empowered mission is not just for Jesus -- it’s for us, too. The Holy Spirit can work through anyone who is both wide open to God (by believing in him and getting in the plane) and wide open for God (by living obediently and jumping with the parachute).
ANYONE, REALLY
And just to show that this truly can happen to anyone, I knew a thirteen year-old boy who attended the youth group here at Horizons a decade or so ago. At that time, we were getting ready to launch our Legacy Campaign to get our youth facilities constructed. Everyone in the church was asked to pray and pledge a certain financial amount over the ensuing three years in order to make this dream a reality.
So this unemployed thirteen year-old prayed, and got the sense that the Spirit was leading him to pledge $50/month. Over the course of a couple weeks, he scrounged up 30 of those dollars -- but by the final week of pledging, he was still $20 short. I know for a fact that that young boy had started questioning whether he was really wide open to God and for God, when something remarkable happened.
On a Wednesday night before youth group, he was standing outside in the parking lot as one of the pastors, Duane Adams, rolled in. Duane called him over to his car and said, “My wife Teresa was praying, and she just felt led to give you this.” And through the window he handed him a fresh, crisp $20 bill. The young boy’s eyes welled up with tears and he told Duane all about what had happened -- and the reason I know so much about this story is because I was that young boy.
And certainly, from the outside looking in, it doesn’t seem to be all that spectacular; but that moment did something for that thirteen year-old me that is hard to describe. That night, God gave me a taste of what it’s like to live wide open to him and for him -- and I’ve been after him ever since. And if that can happen for an awkward, unemployed 13 year-old, it can happen for you too.
