June 24 - Romans 8:15-16

For you did not receive a spirit of slavery

to fall back into fear, but you have received

a spirit of adoption. When we cry, "Abba! Father!"

it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit

that we are children of God

Romans 8:15-16

1. The Holy Spirit
2. Bears witness
3. To our spirit

I broke those phrases apart for a reason.

1. The Spirit is alive and active.
2. The Spirit also speaks – “bears witness.”
3. And we receive this communication inside of us. It doesn’t say that the Spirit speaks to our ears – though he sometimes does and though that would often be easier and clearer. Rather the Spirit speaks to our spirit, our heart, our soul, our innermost being 

Today, I’m not going to focus on “HOW” he does it. Today, I’m going to focus on “THAT” he does it. And I’m going to lament – with the famous old preacher, A.W. Tozer – that most of us 1) don’t really, honestly, truthfully, expect God to speak, 2) don’t know how to listen for it even if we did, and therefore, 3) don’t hear much of anything within our spirit.

Tozer once said, “The greatest fact of the tabernacle was that Jehovah was there; a Presence was waiting within the veil. Similarly the Presence of God is the central fact of Christianity.”

Wait! Do you remember what happened to the veil at the dawning of the era of the church? When Jesus drew his last breath upon the cross, the veil of the temple was torn in two from the top (God’s end, God’s action) to the bottom – see Mt 27:51.

With that in mind, Tozer continues, “At the heart of the Christian message is God Himself wanting for His redeemed children to push in to conscious awareness of His Presence … The world is perishing for lack of the knowledge of God and the Church is famishing for want of His Presence.”

Have you “abandoned,” as David Chotka says, “the presence of God for a mere theory of our position in Christ”? In your faith and mind, has “mental assent [been] given priority in place of knowing God in all his fullness”? Are you “famishing for want of His Presence”? Are you concerned that “the world is perishing” and convinced like Tozer that it’s “for lack of the knowledge of God.”

I said earlier that most of us 1) don’t really, honestly, truthfully, expect God to speak, 2) don’t know how to listen for it even if we did, and therefore, 3) don’t hear much of anything within our spirit.

Is that true for you? Where’s your sticking point? I expect God to speak (1). But I’m too often too busy to listen and life is too noisy to hear (2). When I don’t get (3), it’s my fault. How about you?

In Christ’s Love,

a guy who wants more 3

so he needs to do more 2