The Wind of the Spirit
October 5, 2022
The Wind of the Spirit
John 3:8
The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
There are many things in life that we can’t see or don’t fully understand: the wind, electricity, love, spiritual influences of good and evil. There are many mysteries in life and yet often we accept things by faith that we don’t understand and use them accordingly. We know that they yield expected results when we do. We may not understand heating and air conditioning, but we believe they exist and adjust a thermostat in faith that they will. We flip a light switch and expect electricity to power a light bulb and produce light. We expect that when we turn the key in our car it will start, run and take us where we want to go. How some huge chunk of metal can fly may well be above our understanding of the aerodynamics and yet we buy a ticket, take a seat and expect it to fly us where we have destined to go. The Holy Spirit is no less real, but more so, the difference is we don’t harness and control Him. He is the one that desires to control us. God chose to give man a will to choose and make decisions for himself. Sometimes that is probably more of a curse than a blessing, because we often don’t make wise choices. Nevertheless, God has given us some power over our destiny through the freedom of choice.
Many of us have the illusion that we are fully in control of our lives. The truth is we only have the power to choose whose control and dominion we want to be under. As the Holy Spirit is the one controlling force that leads us in the ways of truth, life and godliness, there is another spirit that blows and an atmosphere we have become so accustomed too that we often take it for granted. It is the spirit of this world, the prince of the air as he is described in Ephesians 2:2, “Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.” Just as we breathe air, spiritual forces influence us, forces that are unseen, yet nevertheless real and influential in our lives. We are born into a world of sin and from the time of our birth are under its influence. While we are free in regards to righteousness, we are under the bondage of sin whose end is death. Romans 6:16-18 reveals our state of being before and then after we come into the saving knowledge and acceptance of Christ: “Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness. But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you. Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness.” We came to the understanding that there are two primary spiritual forces at work in our lives. The spirit of darkness, that operates under the law of sin and death, leaves us free to live according to the dictates of our flesh and in that place many of us have lived for a time. What we came to realize was that in that place of supposed freedom to live as our lust and desires dictated we were missing key elements in life. We were missing peace, true joy, and unconditional love, hope and purpose for living and existing beyond this current life. We were missing comfort, guidance, direction and the help from something or someone greater than ourselves. While we momentarily enjoyed our pleasures, they left us empty, unfulfilled, feeling unclean, lonely and alienated from life and hope and peace. Somewhere along our path we felt the breeze of a different wind blow upon us. It was in total contrast to all we had ever known or embraced in our past. When we breathed it in, somehow, we sensed that this was what had been missing out of our lives. This was the hope, the peace and the destiny to which we were born for. This was the way that would lead us to a life that had meaning and purpose, not just in this life, but in the life to come. The wind of the Holy Spirit had blown upon our spirit and carried us up by faith through His grace into the atmosphere of heaven. In the face of Jesus we saw a Savior and Redeemer who laid down His life that through His death we might have life eternal, not just mortal life, but God life. And while our feet still walk in an atmosphere of sin and death, we have the assurance that this is no longer our home. We are simply travelers in a foreign country, sharing with others in this place the wonderful benefits and the good news of the kingdom and city to which we now belong. As the Holy Spirit blew someone across our path that shared that good news with us, we in turn, are the influences of God. As the Holy Spirit blows through us to touch someone else’s life with the truth of the life and hope that God has for all of us through Christ.
Romans 6:20-23 tells us of the fruit of the decision that we have made to follow Christ and give our lives to Him, through the will and choice that He gave us, “For when ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness. What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? For the end of those things [is] death But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life. For the wages of sin [is] death; but the gift of God [is] eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Blessings,
#kent
The Garden of God
June 20, 2022
Song of Solomon 4:16
Awake, O north wind; and come, thou south; blow upon my garden, [that] the spices thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits.
The Garden of God
The garden in the Word is often seen as place where we come to have communion and fellowship with God. Many of us remember the old hymn, “I Come to the Garden Alone”. We see Adam and Eve first communing with God in the cool of the day in the Garden of Eden and then we see them cast out of the Garden in their disobedience and losing that place of fellowship and communion that they once enjoyed. We know that Jesus liked to go to the garden of Gethsemane and fellowship and commune with the Father. Perhaps the garden is a good analogy of our communion and fellowship with the Lord, because it is a place of fruitfulness and a place where we smell the sweet fragrance of His presence as we come there to worship and abide with Him.
A garden is a wonderful and beautiful place. In the Song of Solomon the Lord likens His bride as unto a garden. He calls the north and the south wind to come up and blow upon His garden that the spices may flow out. Often the directions of winds are used in scripture to denote judgements and testing. The south wind was often a hot wind that could bring drought and unpleasant temperatures. Why would the Lord call these winds upon His garden? It says so that the spices thereof may flow out. Fruit and spices that are never pruned, gleaned and harvested will rot upon the tree and the vine. Their sweetness and fragrance are only seen, smelled and enjoyed when they are released and partaken of.
We often wonder, as the people of God, why we must endure suffering, persecution, hardship, trials and tribulation. These are the winds that must blow upon your garden to bring you to the fullness of your fruitfulness. Only when the grapes are crushed can they make fine wine. God is working the fruit of the Spirit in your heart and lives, but that fruit has to be exercised to be fruitful. The thing about fruit is it must be picked and partaken of to be enjoyed. The world around you has the privilege of partaking of God’s garden; overtime your fruit is released in the nature and character of Christ. They get to taste and partake of something they don’t find very often in the world.
Think about the last place Jesus was before He was taken to be crucified. They came to the garden. It was from the garden that Jesus was picked, broken, crushed and poured out for all of humanity to have access to partake of the new wine that He had become. There the wind of adversity, judgement, trial and tribulation blew hard against Him. There the precious spices of His God life were poured out and released for all who would to partake of and share in. If God spared not His own Son from these sufferings, will He spare us as His sons and daughters? Romans 8:16-18 tells us, “The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. 17Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory. 18I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.” Grapes must be crushed to make a great wine. Gold has to crushed, smelted, fired, melted, beaten and formed to become a beautiful vessel of honor. You are God’s garden and what He is picking, pruning and blowing upon you is not for your destruction, but for your perfection. Often, we lose sight of the end result through all of the processing that brings us there.
Spend much time in the garden of His communion and presence for that is a place of fruitfulness and growth, but don’t despair when He picks the fruit and prunes the branches. Romans 8: 28-30 reminds us, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. 29For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.” Become that sweet smelling fragrance of His character and likeness and do not grow weary and discouraged in the process.
Blessings,
#kent
As the Spirit Moves
April 15, 2015
John 3:5-8
Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. 6Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. 7You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ 8The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”
As the Spirit Moves
We live in a world of natural and spiritual. The natural things we perceive and understand through our senses. They are based on taste, touch, seeing, hearing and smell. We have experienced a natural birth. The water broke and we came forth from the womb. Just as we have a natural birth we must have a spiritual birth because they are not one in the same. Jesus is making a comparison. Natural begets natural, but Spirit begets spiritual. Our natural birth brings us into this world, but our spiritual birth brings us into the heavenlies and the dimension of the kingdom of God. We have been born from beneath and now we must be born from above if we are to enter the kingdom of God.
Jesus compares it to the wind. It is often hard for us as natural beings to quantify, analyze and rationalize the spirit realm and that part of us. Jesus says it is much like the wind. It doesn’t move under our control, but it blows where it will and wherever it pleases. We can’t see air or wind, but the wind shows itself as it is manifested through natural things. The wind will pick up dirt and leaves and give a visible sense of its presence as these are moved, not through there own initiative, but through the power and the force of the wind. It is much as the Sprit moves in and through us. Sometimes He is very still and we don’t feel his presence at all and yet we know He is there because He is the spiritual air we breathe.
I think of how the Lord came to Elijah when he had fled to Horeb, the mountain of God, discouraged, fearful and ready to give up. There, in 1 Kings 19:11-13, the Lord showed Elijah how to discern between the natural and the spiritual. “The LORD said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by.”
Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. 12 After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. 13 When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.
Then a voice said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”
You see Elijah, like most of us, had allowed his eyes to view things in the natural and not in the Spirit. God was not in all of those natural calamities and forces of nature, He was in the still small voice that spoke to the inner man. Be careful about judging things from the outward circumstances. It is God who rules and is upon the throne. Here, God showed the wind of His presence was in the still small voice that spoke to him in his spirit. We may see God move as a gentle breeze, blowing across His people with His presence and anointing. Sometimes He is a forceful wind to be reckoned with. However the Lord is blowing upon our lives we want to bend in His direction and be sensitive to His movement. We are the manifestation of His presence. We are the natural elements that are moved by Him as He blows upon our lives. Just as you can never tell about the wind, where it will blow or where it will go, so we never know when we will be moved by the Spirit of God in this direction or that situation. We do want to hear His still small voice within us assuring us that His work is not finished, but that this is the way of the Lord now be faithful to walk in it.
The Lord may be asking us what we are doing before Him in our fears, doubts and unbelief. We must remember whom we have been birthed into, who we are in Christ Jesus and that we are called according to His purpose and design. Now allow His still small voice and His breeze, not the natural elements of circumstance to move you wheresoever He will.
Blessings,
#kent
Whose Fan is in His Hand
May 6, 2013
Whose Fan is in His Hand
Matthew 3:11-12
I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance: but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and [with] fire:
Whose fan [is] in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.
The Church, in its present state, is a mixture of flesh and spirit. It is composed of the true grain, which contains the life of God and the power within them to reproduce that life in multiplication of that same nature and substance. The chaff is seen in two dimensions. First, we see the chaff in regards to the impurity in the individual’s life as a believer. While the blood of the lamb has redeemed us we know that we who are walking in this life are constantly struggling and warring against impurity and the flesh. None of us are yet walking in the fullness and sinlessness of Christ, except by faith. We as believers groan within ourselves for the completeness of that redemption that sees the fullness of deliverance and overcoming of sin in our lives. So there is a mixture of that which is still being redeemed in soul and body and that which is already redeemed in our spirit that God is dealing with even now as salvation continues to work in us, spirit, soul and body (1 Thessalonians 5:23).
The second dimension of this chaff is seen in those who are identified with the church, but aren’t true believers. They may put on a good religious front, know how to say all the right theology, and have all the wrapping of a Christian; yet, they are in fact, none of His. They may not even truly recognize and discern their state. They think that because they wear the label and have the outward appearance of religious ones, they are saved and are going to heaven. Sadly the Lord makes plain through many parables that the present Church is not made up wholly of believers, but there are a lot of church goers and bench warmers that really don’t have a personal, saving relationship with Christ. The Lord says, “by their fruits you shall know them.” We have all had occasions in our lives to see those who spoke in the name of God, but in no way represented His character and nature in their lives. Do we? Are we of the true household of God, having come in by true repentance in our hearts, whereby it is our desire to forsake sin and unrighteousness because we have asked the Lord Jesus to be the Lord and master of our hearts and lives?
When the world looks at the church, they don’t even realize that they are looking at a mixed bag of sheep and goats. When those who present themselves as Christians, but live a life of hypocrisy, are seen by the world, then all of the Church and God are judged accordingly. Realistically it is not just the unbelievers that are guilty of this, even as true believers we can dishonor the name of the Lord through our behavior and lifestyle that is contrary to the will and purpose of God.
If the Church is the thrashing floor, then it is a place where the Lord Jesus comes in with a fan in His hand. What does a fan do? It creates a wind that blows. John baptized with water, but he said that Christ would come to baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire. In Matthew 3:10 he says, “And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.” The true test of everyone one that confesses to be a believer is the fruit that they bear. The way that fruit is tested is when the fan blows the wind of the Spirit and fire across our lives. When adversity and trials come upon us, what is coming out of our lives? Are we murmuring and complaining? Are we cursing and angry with God? Are we forsaking our confession of Christ to go back into the world? What happened to the children of Israel when they were tested in the wilderness? It brought out the true nature of who they were and many were judged accordingly. The Lord’s fan is even now blowing across many of our lives. What it brings up in us is not always a very pretty sight. Often we even see things in ourselves we didn’t know were there. How we deal with these revelations of ourselves is paramount to our relationship with Christ. When the Lord fans our lives it will do one of two things, it will drive us deeper and more committed into Him or it will drive us away from Him. It is separating the wheat and the chaff both in our individual lives and corporately in the Church as a whole. The last thing any of us would ever want to hear is the Lord say, “Depart from me, I never knew you.”
Church, we must know Him, intimately and personally in this hour. We must pursue and press into Him as never before. Allow the baptism of the Holy Spirit and Fire to only blow you further and more completely into Him and fan away from you all that isn’t of His nature and Spirit. All the fire can do is consume the dross and impurities that still want to cling to all of us who are believers. All that we want to remain is a pure faith and a pure nature flowing out of a heart filled with the love of God. We want to be sure we are the real thing and not a cheap imitation, that we are indeed the wheat and not the chaff.
Blessings,
kent
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