Bothering God

This week's sermon is pretty unique in the sense that I give you a pretty good look into my faith and the questions I have concerning the Holy Spirit.  For most of us, this is one of the most difficult aspect of our faith to understand and I hope this sermon helps you better understand this aspect of your faith.

Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. 2 He said: “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. 3 And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’

4 “For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, 5 yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!’”

6 And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. 7 And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? 8 I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”

Lucky for all of you, this time of year offers me a lot of sermon illustrations.  Don’t get me wrong, I would rather not keeping messing things up around the farm and I would much rather have to work a little harder to come up with sermon illustrations.  But I do have another story that happened to me this week and it is not anything like the one I shared with you last week.  But I must give you a little background first.  The Holy Spirit, the third part of the Holy Trinity, has been on my mind for a few weeks now and I know that God has wanted me to talk about it but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.  I did not know how to approach a sermon that talked about the Holy Spirit because this is the aspect of my faith that I probably have the least experience with, or atleast I thought.  The Holy Spirit is just something we do not talk about much except during Pentecost.  When it came to my faith, the Holy Spirit was something that I knew was there but I just didn’t give it credit for being with me, mostly because of the negative connotations I had of the Spirit.  In scripture, we read about people who talk in tongues, who have prophesies, who rid others of demons through the Holy Spirit.  And when I read these things in scripture, I am just a little hesitant to take it all in.  My perception of the Holy Spirit was based on these aspects and these aspects alone but I have learned this week that the Holy Spirit is much more than these things.  The Holy Spirit is not just something reserved for those whose faith is so strong that it causes people to raise their hands during worship nor is it reserved for those who speak in tongues, but the Holy Spirit is for everyone, even those who have no faith at.  We often call the Holy Spirit by other names such as our conscience or our thoughts of morality.  But what I could not understand is if this is the case, that the Holy Spirit is the basis for our conscience then how do people who have no faith at all still have this conscience based on God?  And through conversations over the past couple weeks, it became very obvious: whether or not we have faith in God, He has faith in us and loved every single person enough to give them this gift of the Holy Spirit but as humans we have tried to explain this gift in many different ways so that credit has been taken away from God and the Holy Spirit.  Even those who do very evil acts have an idea of right from wrong.  They may chosen to do the wrong things in the course of their lives but they still know the difference and it is the wisdom and knowledge of knowing right from wrong that comes from the Holy Spirit even if we choose not follow it.  

Remember how I told you that I did not know how to approach preaching about the Holy Spirit?  That was until God provided me with a way to share it with you and this is where my story that I talked about at the very beginning comes from.  I did something so negligent, so stupid that I had no choice but to be like the widow in the parable this morning.  I had no choice but to bother God until I had an answer.  I filled the combine up with fuel Monday morning and I completely forgot to put the fuel cap back on.  After running the combine for awhile, it started running hot because the fuel had spilled all over the fan and plugged up part of the radiators.  I could not believe that I had forgot to do something so simple that could have potentially caused Dan financial and productivity loss that I could never pay him back for.  He rinsed everything off and went back to the field and as I watched the combine, I could not help but to think that it was going to get hot again and I was so mad and upset at myself.  After praying for awhile in the hopes that my mistake was not as bad as it appeared, this calmness came over me and told me that it was going to be ok.  This thought was not mine because by all indications, I had thought the complete opposite, that it was not going to be ok, that the combined was ruined.  So where did this thought come from?  It had to be Holy Spirit telling me that it was going to be ok.  Trust me, I argued and did not believe what the Spirit was telling me.  I had no reason to believe that the Spirit was right yet, there it was, telling me that it was all going to be alright.  And everything has been fine since.  I know it seems weird or strange that Spirit would talk to me about a combine but it was in that moment that God chose to show me that the Spirit is much more than I thought it was.  Not all of my questions or doubts have been answered about the Spirit but in that moment, God showed me that the preconceptions I had about the Spirit were wrong.  You’re right in thinking that God did not miraculously fix the combine, because He didn’t.  Once the screens and radiators were cleaned out the combine was fine but what God did do was show me how the Spirit works.  

In our scripture this morning, we see a widow continuing to ask to judge to grant her justice against her adversary.  She is relentless and keeps asking to the point that she has become bothersome to the judge.  The adversary that I had been battling for a long time was my misunderstanding of the Spirit and for a few weeks I had kept asking God to show me something, to reveal Himself to me and help me understand the Spirit and through my mistake of not putting the fuel cap back on, my prayers were answered.  I tried to explain to myself that it was just my thoughts telling me that it was all going to be ok because I had been doing this for a long time.  I just had always thought the Holy Spirit was not as active in my life as it is others’ but as I look back, the Spirit has been very active in my life, but I was not giving credit where it was due.  It is so easy to do, it is so easy to look at my story that I shared with you and think that it was a simple fix to just clean out the spilled fuel and the combine was going to run fine.  If I hadn’t have had the conversations that took place over the past couple of weeks, then I would have agreed with you.  Maybe this story does not connect with you, maybe you are still questioning the Spirit and I do not blame you, I do not blame you at all because I have been in your shoes.  But whether you believe me or not, I encourage you to listen to how the Spirit may be talking to you and when it does, please give credit to where it is due.  

Even though I have talked at length about the Spirit this morning, the essential aspect of our scripture this morning is prayer.  I had been praying that God would teach me more about the Spirit so I could better understand it.  I was persistent, probably almost bothersome and God led me to answer.  If I hadn’t been praying for an answer, I would not have gotten it last Monday.  I would have kept living oblivious to the Spirit and explaining it away if it weren’t for those prayers.  We must understand that God does not answer all prayers but this is because He understands our needs better than we do.  One commentator puts it this way, “Often a [parent] has to refuse the request of a child, because [they] know that what the child asks would hurt rather than help.  God is like that.  We do not know what is to happen in the next hour, let alone the next week, month or year.  Only God sees time as a whole, and, therefore, only God knows what is good for us in the long run.”  As our faith continues to grow, so does our understanding of God’s will but we first accept God’s mercy and love for each of us.  As we sing our hymn of invitation, I encourage all of you to think about the times God may have been speaking to you and how you may have explained away what He was trying to tell.  If God is speaking to you this morning, have the courage to listen. Amen.   

God Bless,

Clinton

Fairview Christian Church

(The footings have been poured)