Since I've been working at ORU, I haven't had to go to chapel on Wednesday and Friday, I can just watch it from my office. Last week though, after a great tragedy in the ORU community, we were all encouraged to attend chapel. Don't get me wrong, I really do like chapel, especially when Dr. Rutland speaks. On this particular day though, we had a guest speaker. I was a little upset that I had to sit through a message with a speaker who I never heard of and who I probably wasn't going to like, and to make it worse, his message was on the Holy Spirit. Now I know I'm supposed to be some holy rolling charismatic pentecostal, but to be truthful, I've been really frustrated with that lately.
Anyway, this speaker gets up to talk. And I'm not lying, it may have been the best chapel I've ever been to. It was just a really good message at just the right time for me. As I was leaving, they were passing out free books in the lobby, so I grabbed one. End of story (for a few days.)
A couple days later, I was sitting at my desk with almost nothing to do. So I picked up the free chapel book and started to read it. It's called "The God I Never Knew" by Robert Morris. After I was a chapter or two into the book, I realized it would probably benefit me to take some notes and write in the book myself. So I started over and skimmed through, underlining important passages and writing little notes to myself. There's a study guide in the back, so I decided to read through those questions as well after each chapter.
To kind of summarize the book so far, it's about the Holy Spirit: who He is, what He's here for, and how He fits in my life. Robert Morris grew up in a church that didn't really talk about the Holy Spirit. He thought that if you were a 'Holy Spirit' fanatic, you either wore too much make-up or none at all, and you were weird. Many people are afraid to associate with the Holy Spirit because they think He is weird. There are so many weird stereotypes associated with the Holy Spirit, that people are often turned off immediately when there is even a mention of His name. Anyway, this book uncovers these myths and stereotypes to reveal the true Holy Spirit, not what weird people claim is the Holy Spirit.
Up to this point, I completely agreed and everything was good. Then Robert Morris told a personal story. When he was first married, Robert and his wife went to a Christmas party. He always hated Christmas parties because his wife would leave him. Not really, but she would walk to the other side of the room to talk to her friends. He was stuck alone to ...gasp... talk to strangers who walked up to him. He really hated confronting people and having even a simple little conversation. (Just like me.) Then he shared his testimony: with the help of the Holy Spirit, Robert completely overcame that fear.
That just made me even more frustrated. I have the Holy Spirit and I EVEN speak in tongues, shouldn't I be able to overcome my fear and talk to people too? In my attempt to journal every thought, I wrote down a little frustration note in the back of my book. I flipped back to the front and continued to read, although I couldn't get that thought out of my head. As I sat there reading, (it couldn't have been more than two minutes), something amazing happened. The Holy Spirit talked to me! There is no doubt in my mind that it was Him. It was clear, it was loud, and it was absolutely God. And He told me, "You don't understand what you have." He's here, He's with me, He lives inside of me, but I don't know Him. I don't know the help and the comfort that I have. I don't understand the power and the boldness that He wants to give me to live a better Christian life. It was breakthrough moment in my life and in my relationship with God. And I'm so excited for what's in store and God helps me understand what I have.
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