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Many things that the Spirit does. Confidence. Power. Understanding for your situation. Breaking boundaries.
Spirit is a gift.
Today’s passage, another image: Spirit is like living water that gushes up to eternal life. Endless source of vitality.
Life with the Spirit and without the Spirit is so different.
But how do we access this gift?
Simple: there has to be a hunger for it.
A thirst for the Spirit. A yearning for it. A sense that I NEED the Spirit.
When Jesus told the woman that he could give the gift of living water, she said:
Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty. (John 4:15)
Lord, give me this water so that I may never be thirsty.
We learned that the Spirit is always working. When you look back, you realize that the Spirit was always there.
The journey of faith takes you from a life in which passive to presence of Spirit, to one in which it’s actively and consciously led by the Spirit.
It’s a realization and recognition that I NEED to live with the power of this Spirit.
That is the beginning of the letting the power of the Spirit work fully in your life. A realization of need for change. That is repentance.
Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him. (Acts 2:37-39)
The Spirit is always working. But the Spirit seeks to work actively in your life. From passive in the background to active.
What unlocks this activation? It is a HUNGER for God.
We reflected on the wilderness. The woman had been living for a long time in the wilderness. She had five husbands – meaning powerless. Coming to the well at noon when it’s hottest – to avoid people.
Living in wilderness. Just mere survival. Coming with the bucket each day just to live and survive another day. No meaning. No joy.
But when she met Jesus, something in her was awakened.
He spoke of living water. She was focused on literally water. But Jesus offered living water.
His words awakened her soul to what she had always needed: God. God’s mercy and grace. The realization that she was a beloved child of God.
Spiritual hunger is the key to unlocking the power of the Spirit in your life. Without that hunger, you will be driven by other passions and desires. They will be driving your life.
So a very important question is: what is driving your life? What in your heart is propelling you forward?
For the woman, it was a lot of things. But probably, it was fear. Fear of shame. Fear of judgment.
That fear turned to hardness of her heart. That fear and hardness became barriers to seeking God.
We reflected last night on barriers to the Holy Spirit.
The greatest barrier is when your heart is pulled away from seeking God.
What pulls your heart from seeking God? Is it your busy life? Is it your desire for money? Is it your fears and worries and trying to take control of things?
Coming to the retreat is such a blessing because all other things in life are stripped away. We are stripped away from the busy routines of our life. We get to reflect on what’s most important.
It’s often where our hunger for God is rediscovered.
When everything else is stripped away, we realize that our souls need God. That there is no meaning, no joy, no fullness without the Spirit of God living in us like gushing water.
It’s a time to renew that desire for God. So that the Spirit of God may be unleashed in your life once again.
But what will we do when we go back home? When all the other demands of life come upon us again?
At this retreat, I hope that you have rediscovered or renewed your desire for God. But I also pray now that you may keep this desire and hunger for God when you’re back home.
Hunger and desire for God are the necessary ingredients to allowing the Spirit to work fully in your lives. Our souls hunger for God.
But often, that hunger is masked by the busyness of life. By the worries and fears of everyday life. By all the fun and other things we need to attend to.
The important thing is to maintain our hunger for God.
One of the praise songs we sang at this retreat is Abide.
For my waking breath
For my daily bread
I depend on you
For the sun to rise
For my sleep at night
I depend on you
For everything, I depend on you. Reinstilling that dependence on God needs to be a daily part of your life. It’s something you need to do every day.
You won’t always feel that dependence emotionally like at this retreat. But there needs to be a lifestyle and rhythm that cultivates a basic dependence on God.
Prayer: making space for God (reflected in morning devotions). Hunger: not always or necessarily about emotions. But spiritual awareness of need for God.
That’s what prayer does. Recenters your life around God and your need for God.
Reading Bible – nourishes your soul with God’s Word. That becomes your daily bread. You become used to the necessary food for life.
This is important for you as an individual. I pray and hope that you can develop this spiritual discipline everyday.
But also: as church, as a spiritual community. Reflected on how we can be a spiritual community. To me that is simple: it needs to be a community that desires God.
Everything else is complementary to that.
A community that does not desire God is not a spiritual community. It is a social community that window dresses itself as a spiritual community.
I want our church to be a church that desires God. I want our worship to be alive with hearts yearning for God, to connect with God.
I want to see fervent prayers seeking God’s will for their lives and this world. I want to see hearts cut to the heart with God’s Word just like the early church was.
I want to see lives transformed by the Spirit. I want to see people living boldly with the power of the Spirit.
We have experienced many great things here at this retreat. The Spirit has been truly present among us.
I want the Spirit to be a vital, active part of your life and the life of this church when we go back home. I want to see hearts burning and yearning for God.
As a community of faith, let us renew our desire for God, and our commitment to seek God in all of our ways.
The Spirit will continue to do great things in your life and in and through this church.
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