Professors’ teaching styles range from fall-asleep, deathly boring to edge-of-seat riveting (with all variations in between). I once had an evening class – from 7-10 PM! The professor was one of the most gentle, kind, intelligent men one could ever meet. However, his soft, soothing, monotone vocals made wakefulness a head-bobbing, arduous assignment. I’ve also had professors whose style, combined with the subject matter, caused class time to evaporate and subjected you to writer’s cramp from jotting down nearly every pearl! That’s where the expression, ‘drinking from a fire hose’ came from, I think. Such pertinent, fascinating information, transmitted with passion and zeal, as well as clarity, was a special gift, indeed!
But that’s an external source being fed into you, near drowning you with its intensity. The Holy Spirit, on the other hand, is our internal ‘fire hose’ desiring release (our permission?) to ‘power wash’ us, those around us, and our world! And to think, he is always champing at the bit to get on with Kingdom ventures but needing to enlist our cooperation! Somehow, in most mysterious fashion, the Holy Spirit has invaded the new creation we have now become and has super-saturated us with gifts and abilities and callings, all installed without our prior knowledge, without our effort, without our meriting. These inherited, inner characteristics of our redeemed souls are dynamic, ever percolating, ever fermenting, ever agitating, in response to the appeals from the dying world around us: “The entire universe is standing on tiptoe, yearning to see the unveiling of God’s glorious son and daughters (that us, can you believe it?)! For against its will the universe itself has had to endure the empty futility resulting from the consequences of human sin. But now, with eager anticipation, all creature longs for freedom from its slavery to decay and to experience with us the wonderful freedom coming to God’s children.” Romans 8:19-21 VOICE. These 2,000-year-old words are hauntingly current, don’t you think? Maybe the world truly is waiting – for us!?! Maybe all our hesitations and misgivings, all our fears and thoughts of unworthiness, all our pre-occupation with disqualifying pasts, are stoppages to the Holy Spirit, glitches preventing that much anticipated ‘unveiling’ Paul wrote about. Maybe it’s time to come out of hiding. Maybe we should lay all those things aside and give free rein to the Spirit to do with us as he chooses. Maybe our ‘words’ to one another will spur us on to that very thing! Maybe that’s what the Spirit’s been waiting for all along! Do you feel that? Maybe it’s the pressure building up in the hose. See y’all tomorrow, 10 AM, 4 PM, 6 PM. PD
