Do not stifle the Holy Spirit. [1 Thessalonians 5:19 (NLT)]
Since my 18-year-old grand is a new driver, I was surprised when her parents purchased a new car for her. Remembering the many dings, scrapes, and dents our teens left on their cars, I asked why they’d replaced the 15-year-old car on which she learned to drive with a new one; “safety features” was their simple and logical explanation. This new car offers things like forward collision warning, automatic emergency braking, adaptive cruise control, blind spot monitoring, lane departure warnings, lane-keeping assist, backup cameras, active park assist, rear cross traffic alert, and a whole variety of air bags (front, side, seatbelt, knee, foot, and curtain along with rollover sensors to deploy them.) Knowing that accidents happen to even the best drivers, damage to a new car is far more acceptable than any damage done to their daughter!
Although God doesn’t outfit us with safety features to warn and protect us, like any good parent, He wants to safeguard His children. To keep us safe and within His will, He gives us the Holy Spirit as standard equipment once we accept Jesus! Moreover, even though His technology hasn’t changed through the centuries, it remains state of the art.
As much as those various safety features will keep my grand safer, they can’t entirely protect her. Free to ignore their many warnings, she remains vulnerable to her own choices. Whether or not she abides by the speed limit, stops at stop signs, yields the right of way at roundabouts, or signals lane changes is entirely up to her. Like traffic laws, God’s laws set the standard for our behavior and help us know right from wrong. But, just as my grand may be tempted to use her cell phone while driving, our belief in Jesus doesn’t mean we’ll never be tempted to sin. Fallible beings that we are, we’re not capable of perfect obedience. Just as we tend to nudge that speedometer a few miles over the limit, we tend to push the limits when it comes to the rest of our behavior. Moreover, just as my grand may choose to ignore her car’s various warnings, we can choose to turn a deaf ear to the Spirit’s voice. That’s the problem with that pesky thing called free will—we know better but we often do it anyway!
Fortunately, unlike some car safety devices, we can’t disable or turn off the Holy Spirit. As our advocate, comforter, guide, and counselor, He always is present—teaching, guiding, encouraging, warning, and convicting us. Rather than sounding an annoying beep or flashing a warning light, He guides us through our conscience, with that still small voice, and in other subtle ways. His guidance is better than the most sophisticated GPS because He’ll never lead us into sin. May we always remember that true safety isn’t found in car technology or even the absence of danger; it is found in the presence of God!
We’d gathered for coffee when the conversation turned to tipping. Several who had been servers at one time or another mentioned what notoriously bad tippers church people seem to be. Rather than a tip, some only leave a religious tract. A barista admitted removing any she finds in the tip jar because her fellow workers find them incredibly offensive. Rather than bringing anyone to Jesus, they serve to further distance non-believers from any church!
Every Friday, I’m emailed a “weekly wisdom” consisting of two pithy sayings like, “Don’t just trust God for things; trust Him in things,” or “You can’t enjoy today if you’re worrying about the past or the future.” Last week’s wisdom really hit home with, “Not every good idea is a God idea!” More than once, I’ve looked back with regret while saying, “It seemed like such a good idea at the time!”
Growing up, one of my favorite hymns was, “I Sing a Song of the Saints of God.” Its author, Lesbia Scott, wrote hymns for her children as expressions of the family’s faith. Not originally intended for publication, she wrote this song to emphasize that saints lived not just in the distant past but also in the present day. My favorite verse was the final one and I recall singing it loudly with childlike enthusiasm: “The world is bright with the joyous saints who love to do Jesus’ will. You can meet them in school, on the street, in the store, In church, by the sea, in the house next door; They are saints of God, whether rich or poor, and I mean to be one too.”
I thought of that great fixed chasm between heaven and hell again after reading C.S. Lewis’ fantasy, The Great Divorce. Lewis clearly warns his readers that the book is a fantasy, what he calls “imaginative supposal,” and should be read that way. He does, however, add that it does have a moral. The book’s unnamed narrator (presumed to be Lewis) describes what seems to be hell as a grey, dingy, and utterly joyless place where quarrelsome souls continually argue with one another and move further and further apart. Finding himself there, the narrator joins others as they take a bus ride from this grey world to a vibrant, beautiful, and substantial place that appears to be heaven.
Shortly after accusing the Pharisees of being more concerned with appearing righteous than being righteous and warning them that God knew what was in their hearts, Jesus told them a story about a rich man (who probably appeared quite righteous) and a beggar named Lazarus. The leprous and destitute Lazarus sat by the rich man’s gate and begged for scraps from the man’s table while mangy dogs licked at his wounds. The rich man ignored the beggar; to him, Lazarus probably was a little more than a piece of trash to step over before entering his home. When Lazarus died, he was carried by angels to a heavenly banquet and seated in a place of honor beside Abraham. When the rich man died, however, he ended up in Hades or Sheol, the realm of the dead. The mention of “torment” and “flames” there indicates that the rich man was in what Jewish tradition called Gehinnom (a place of fire and anguish).
Devotions of the Heart 