The Strengthener

Scripture: Acts 11.1-18; John 13.31-35; John 14.25-26

In the movie, Hoosiers, a young basketball player regularly prays for his teammates and their performance on the court. There is some implication in the story that his prayers work.. In one playoff game, the prayer warrior himself, who regularly sits the bench most games, gets in and quickly becomes a scoring machine. This is so out of character for the player that his coach asks him, in disbelief, “What’s gotten into you?”

“It’s the Lord,” the boy responds. “I can feel his strength.”

The scene is both inspiring and amusing. Pray to the Lord and he will give you a better jump shot? That’s funny. I mean, sure, on some theoretical level, I guess, God is able to help you play basketball better. But is God really that involved with our lives? Is God with us all the time, even at basketball games?

Jesus says yes. Peter would agree as well. In fact, Peter was an eyewitness to God’s unusual activity in the lives of some very ordinary people.

You may recall several weeks ago we talked about how Peter’s whole belief system and ministry was radically changed by a vision that he had of a big sheet full of animals falling down out of heaven. In the vision, God tells Peter that it’s okay to eat everything he sees. Peter then begins to understand in his ministry that the Gospel is for all people. You don’t have to be a good kosher Jew to receive God’s salvation through Jesus.

But it wasn’t the vision alone that convinced Peter. It was Peter seeing with his own eyes God’s Spirit falling upon irreligious Gentiles. Acts 11 records this event. Peter remembers the words of Jesus, “John baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” And he saw this promise come to reality in the home of a Gentile named Cornelius. God’s presence filled that house.

“Who was I to stand in the way of God?” Peter concluded.

It is crucial for us always to remember that God wants to be with people. In fact, God has always been near. The creation is one of the heavens being not only some distant place, but the very air and space immediately around us as we walk into the grocery store.

“In him we live and move and have our being.” Eternity is happening right now. So God has always been present, but Jesus have given us access to the reality of God’s presence and Kingdom in an unprecedented way.

In John 13 we see Jesus teaching the disciples how he is with them now in body but that presence will soon be at an end. The great promise comes in the very next chapter,

“These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all thing, and help you remember all that I have said to you.” John 14.25-26

The Holy Spirit is a Counselor. Maybe even a better translation here is the Holy Spirit is our Strengthener. By the Holy Spirit we are “dressed with power from on the heavens.” God continually gives us the strength to live with Him and live our lives like Jesus would live them if he were us.

This is what it means to be a disciple of Jesus – live our lives, not someone else’s, not even the life Jesus lived in Palestine years ago, but our lives the way Jesus would live them if he were us.

Do you see any implications here?

For one, the Holy Spirit is not reserved for religious occasions in which we pursue an experience or a feeling. The gift of the Holy Spirit is a daily possibility for those who decide they want to be a disciple of Jesus.

So if my job takes me to a factory 40-50 hours a week. God goes there with me. And if that is not something I am opening myself up to, then essentially I am closing myself off to the influence of God most of my waking hours. Conversely, to be baptized into the Spirit of Christ is to be “engulfed with his presence.” It is to do everything “in the name of Jesus.”

What does that mean at your school or your place of work? It doesn’t mean, in Dallas Willard’s fine phrase, that you are to be “the Christian nag-in-residence, the rigorous upholder of all propriety, and the dead-eye critic of everyone else’s behavior.”

If any of you watch the TV show, The Office, Angela is the perfect example of this negative “Christian.” She loves to judge other people. She disapproves of her coworkers on a daily basis. She frowns a lot.

It’s sad. Because this is what many people think a Christian is like who tries live their faith outside the church building. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

To live in the Kingdom at work is to do your job the way Jesus would do it if he had that job. What does that look like? Jesus works gracefully, not obsequiously. He does relatiate to wrongdoing nor does he participate in it. He prays for those around him. He listens to others a lot. He speaks fitting words in appropriate times with beauty and power. Above all he works hard, sweats, tries to make the best pipe fittings, or tacos, or students, as he can.

This is the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. He is the paracletus, the One who comes alongside of us and does the lifting with us. Even the One who helps us play our best game of basketball. He is Strengthener.

Notice again, this has very little to do with what we consider “religious activities.” Nor is it exclusively concerned with belief and doctrine. As important as our beliefs are, the prompting of the Holy Spirit is very much “just do it!”

Most of our adult lives we express ourselves religiously by talking in our holy huddles to each other about doctrine and opinion.

Jesus said, “Why do you call Lord, Lord, and do not do what I say?” Luke 6.36

Routine obedience is the fruit of intentional discipleship, the choice of apprenticing ourselves to the Master of Life. When Jesus talks about entering the Kingdom by the narrow gate or the narrow road, he isn’t talking about doctrinal correctness. The narrow gate is obedience.

We obey God as we choose to be engulfed by His presence and move with his tutelage and understanding.

“By this all people will know that you’re my disciples, if you love one another.”