Jump Starts

I don't know about you but sometimes I am blessed with what I call "jump starts." The Holy Spirit resides within every Believer empowering us to live the life God has called us to and provided for us. Unfortunately, our old spirit, "the flesh" resides right along side, making our every action a choice as to who we're going to listen to. There are times when I am certain I have been helped to choose the choice of the Spirit. Sometimes doing the right thing is so far from my current maturity that it seems impossible to grab hold of the promised power of the Holy spirit within me and thereby enable myself to do the Spirit thing. Sometimes I can see the right move - trusting God, for example - but the powers of fear, stubbornness, selfishness, or rebellion are cresting so high at that moment or period of my life that how to actually make that choice is just plain off my radar.

A handful of times in my life, I feel like I've been given a "jump start" by the Holy Spirit. Let me expound. In the midst of my years of God's longstanding call for me to trust Him, I was clutching onto my fear so much that I just could not figure out how to let go and how to trust God. What is it supposed to feel like? How do I know I've let go and how do I know I've trusted Him?  How do I do it?  Just saying the words didn't do it. What is the experience like? How do I actually do it? I didn't know what the target was experientially.

Then one day, my jaw started to hurt. It got so bad I had to leave work. Then the other side started in. I was in deep, deep pain. I missed several days of work.  I parked myself on the couch and was in misery.  I took my pain to God.  By now I had come a little closer to accepting the fact that God sometimes allows "bad" things in our lives.  I struggled with His sovereignty in such matters, wondering how to pray.  Do I pray for Him to take away what He has obviously allowed?  I didn't know how to pray. I wanted the pain to go away but when I began to pray I heard  my inner voice saying, "Let it have it's perfect work in me, Lord."

What? Where did that come from? That definitely didn't well up from within my own self. But because I said it, and mysteriously meant it, now I had something to go on in the trusting God arena. I felt it. I felt the letting go of my control and my fearful resistance in the matter. I felt a giving of myself over to God in the situation, whether or not He changed it.  So this is what it is to trust Him! I now had an inner target for future acts of trust.

The Bible says that the Holy Spirit intercedes for us and He is God's power within us. We all have areas where our spiritual capacity seems blocked by scar tissue or sin. I believe the Holy Spirit can and does sometimes give us a "jump start" to cross over a threshold that requires us to move spiritual muscles in ways we haven't yet learned to move them. In having them moved for us, we learn how to participate in that same movement the next time. I now sometimes find myself praying for God to overcome the spiritual barriers in people by giving them a jump start so they can experience what it is He has for them, so they can taste it, feel it, and savor it. So they can long for it again and run to choose it again later on,  thereby learning to live it.  When I sense a blind spot in my heart, a place where I know something is wrong but don't have a grasp on what it is, I ask for a jump start.  God may choose to give me one or He may choose to open my eyes in another more gradual way.  It's up to Him and I trust Him with it.
Whatever your threshold, whatever your barrier, your "off radar" challenge, I pray that God will give you a jump start so you can know and enjoy the spiritual place He is calling you to.  However He chooses to enlarge your steps, I pray that you will trust Him in the process.