I have no idea how many times I’ve been to Los
Angeles International Airport. All through the ’70s, ’80s and into the ’90s I
was there sometimes once or twice a week, either as a traveler or to pick up or
drop off guests of the ministry I was working with.
One evening when I was there to pick up someone I
saw something very unusual. I had put my car in the parking structure across
the street from the terminal. As I waited to cross the street to the terminal,
an older car slowly went past and I noticed an orange/red glow coming from
under the rear end of the car. As it passed me I was startled to see a thin
ribbon of fire streaming from the underside of the car down to the street.
I ran across the street to one of the airport policemen
and told him what I had seen. He immediately looked and then began running
after the car yelling, “Stop! Stop!” The driver stopped but seemed bewildered
as to why the policeman was ordering him to get out of the car—quickly!
The fire department and other police arrived and it
was all over within a matter of minutes. The car had somehow developed a fuel
leak and something, perhaps a hot muffler or perhaps a spark, had ignited the
gas, but fortunately there had been no explosion.
What still sticks in my mind after all these years
is the bewilderment of the driver as the policeman commanded him to get out of
the car; at that point the driver had no comprehension of the explosive
situation he was in.
In his teaching to the church at Corinth, the
apostle Paul several times reminds them, “Do you not know that you are God’s
temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? God’s temple is holy, and you are
that temple” (see 1 Corinthians 3:16-17 and also 1 Corinthians 6:19).
Apparently the Corinthians were either not paying
attention when Paul initially taught them that the Holy Spirit had taken up
residence in them, or they were deliberately ignoring and negating the
involvement of the Holy Spirit in their lives.
So it is with much of the contemporary Church. On
one side we have those who suggest that the Holy Spirit’s work today is over
and it has been since the end of the first century. They put flowers on the
Holy Spirit’s grave every Easter as they celebrate the resurrection of Jesus
Christ. And then we have those who tacitly agree that the Holy Spirit comes to
the believer at salvation but then they quickly ignore Him except in their
rather infrequent references to the Triune Godhead.
I have a question for all the Church: What does Acts
1:8 mean to you and how are you cooperating with the message that it conveys?
“But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit
has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all
Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8, NKJV).
Much of today’s Church is living with
the same level of bewilderment that I saw on the face of the driver of the car
dripping fire at LAX. We are living in and around a Church that has lost its
understanding of the explosive power of the Holy Spirit who dwells in them.
To those who are willfully ignoring the indwelling
of the Holy Spirit and the gifts and power He brings to you, all I can say is
that you do so at your own risk.
There are some who suggest that today’s
believers are much more enlightened and have so much more of the Word than the
early Church did. They then use that as an argument against the present-day
activities of the Holy Spirit. All I can say to those who ramp up that kind of
argument is, “Take a look around you; take a look at the complex and evil world
we live in; take a look at a powerless Church and then tell me that we don’t
need everything the Holy Spirit has to offer.” If He is dead to you then may
the Lord have mercy on you and your error-filled pathway.
We need the Holy Spirit’s comfort in
these difficult days; we need His leading; we need His help in prayer; and
today’s powerless Church needs His power to face the challenges ahead.
If you are a believer, whether you like
it or not, you are God’s temple and God’s Spirit dwells in you. Your body is a
temple of the Holy Spirit.
A.B. Simpson, founder of The Christian
and Missionary Alliance denomination, made the following statement: “So many
have the Holy Spirit confined in a little pot of oil and hidden away on the
shelf of a cabinet. God wants us to go out into all the needs of life, and pour
that divine fullness into every vessel that comes to us, until our whole life
shall be a living embodiment and illustration of the all-sufficiency of
Christ.” [1]
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