...the promised story
Yesterday, I told you about my visit with the propane repairman. If you are reading this, forgive me for not remembering your name.... kind of goes with this 70 year old brain of mine... :)
It is such fun though, just sharing life like we did and hearing all the stories about how God is so intimately involved in other people's lives...in exactly the same way He is intimately involved in my life. That is serious fun for me.
In hopes that it is fun for you as well, I will tell you my remembered version of his time with the Lord prior to coming over that day to fix our Rinnai heater. It is also important to know that my version of the story is out of what I experienced in hearing it and how the Lord was speaking to me about it. His version was for him...... my version was for me! :)
So.... he is sitting there quietly before the Lord.... then the Lord says "listen". Listen to what Lord?
"just listen" ! So he stops and just listens. "What do you hear?" He thinks about that looking for some unusual sound, a voice, something to respond to. He realizes the only sound is the filter in the fish tank in the next room, making the sound that filters make. The filter, Lord? "Yes...the filter."
All of a sudden he is getting all this stuff about filters and what they do in fish tanks and how the Lord has given us a filter for our lives.... the filter has a name.... His filter is named the Holy Spirit! What a great analogy, I thought..... yet so many of God's people just don't get it! Remember what I said a while back about the lack of discernment in the body of Christ today..... that's because folks have never plugged in their filter! The church has turned the reality of a life with the filter turned on and exchanged it for some doctrine about the Holy Spirit......
I could play with this one for the rest of the day..... but I would prefer that you play with it instead.
"Have you been baptized with the Holy Spirit since you believed?" 40 years ago I met a guy who asked me that question.... same question that Paul asked a bunch of new Christians in Ephesus..(it's recorded in Acts 19)..... Funny...I answered this guy the same way those folks answered Paul.... "No, we have not even heard whether there is a Holy Spirit."
Shortly after that I was Baptized in the Holy Spirit..... had my filter turned on.
:)
It is such fun though, just sharing life like we did and hearing all the stories about how God is so intimately involved in other people's lives...in exactly the same way He is intimately involved in my life. That is serious fun for me.
In hopes that it is fun for you as well, I will tell you my remembered version of his time with the Lord prior to coming over that day to fix our Rinnai heater. It is also important to know that my version of the story is out of what I experienced in hearing it and how the Lord was speaking to me about it. His version was for him...... my version was for me! :)
So.... he is sitting there quietly before the Lord.... then the Lord says "listen". Listen to what Lord?
"just listen" ! So he stops and just listens. "What do you hear?" He thinks about that looking for some unusual sound, a voice, something to respond to. He realizes the only sound is the filter in the fish tank in the next room, making the sound that filters make. The filter, Lord? "Yes...the filter."
All of a sudden he is getting all this stuff about filters and what they do in fish tanks and how the Lord has given us a filter for our lives.... the filter has a name.... His filter is named the Holy Spirit! What a great analogy, I thought..... yet so many of God's people just don't get it! Remember what I said a while back about the lack of discernment in the body of Christ today..... that's because folks have never plugged in their filter! The church has turned the reality of a life with the filter turned on and exchanged it for some doctrine about the Holy Spirit......
I could play with this one for the rest of the day..... but I would prefer that you play with it instead.
"Have you been baptized with the Holy Spirit since you believed?" 40 years ago I met a guy who asked me that question.... same question that Paul asked a bunch of new Christians in Ephesus..(it's recorded in Acts 19)..... Funny...I answered this guy the same way those folks answered Paul.... "No, we have not even heard whether there is a Holy Spirit."
Shortly after that I was Baptized in the Holy Spirit..... had my filter turned on.
:)
