Musings

We are in the season of Pentecost.  I have noticed that some songs reflect more of an Old Testament prayer, rather than a New Testament reality.  Songs like “Come, Holy Spirit,” or “Do It Again, Lord” are requests for the Spirit to be poured out on us once again.  If we were living in the times before Jesus, before his Ascension, before his sending of another Comforter (another like himself), before the Day of Pentecost, then such a prayer would make sense.  However, we are living in post-Pentecost times.  What are we to do, how are we to pray, when the Spirit of God has been poured out, the Spirit of God is continuously present?

I know that songs/prayers such as these are attempting to say, “do this again in me Lord,” or “may I be open to the Spirit in my life again (or even the first time).”  We pray such prayers from our perspectives, from within our own experience, rather than from the perspective of what God has already done.  So, from our perspective, with whatever is going on in our lives, it may seem to us that the Spirit has not been poured out and so the Spirit needs to be poured out again so that we might experience the presence of God’s Spirit. 

Yet, when we pray not merely from our perspective, but in light of what God has already done, our prayers can take on a different focus.  When we realize that God has already done what we are asking – we come to realize that the reality is that we are complacent, dulled, to what God has done, is doing – we don’t have the eyes to see or the ears to hear what God is doing all around us.

So much of our Christian life revolves around our experience – we place ourselves at the center, and gauge reality from that center, rather than the reality of God’s action in the world, all around us, even in us.  And so, from our perspective if we are not sensing God, feeling God, we make the mistaken assumption that God has not poured out his Spirit, or God has not acted within us, around us.

Yet, what we need is a perspective change, a repentance if you will.  God has acted, God has poured out his Spirit (Scripture tells us so), but the barrier is within us, not in God’s lack of fulfilling the promise of the coming Spirit to us. 

In a previous post, I noted that when I used to come to reading Scripture I prayed, “Lord, open you Word to me,” as if somehow I was the center and the Word somehow needed to accommodate itself to me.  Years ago I came to realize that I had this mixed up – I was not the center, Christ is the center and what he taught, what he enacted.  So, my prayer changed – “Lord, open me to your Word.”  What this change in how I prayed regarding my engaging Scripture, in essence, altered the focus of my prayer.  My prayer now focused on change that needed to happen in me: “remove the hardness of my own heart, clear the cataracts from my eyes, unblock my ears, remove any barrier in me that hinders your Word touching my heart, my spirit.”

The same is true for our experiencing the Spirit in us and among us.  The Spirit of God is, right now, present and active in the world; if we were to witness all that the Spirit does in every moment of our days, in our lives and the lives of others, we would constantly be in awe.  It is not a matter of the Spirit not being present, it is a matter of our not being cognizant, not being aware of the active presence of the Spirit.

So, rather than singing/praying for the outpouring of the Spirit, our prayers need to be about recognizing the barriers in our lives that need to be removed, our having our hearts and spirits opened to the active presence of the Spirit, to yield ourselves to the leading of the Spirit, and for us to be responsive to what the Spirit is doing in us and all around us.