As I have pointed out repeatedly, there is a pattern visible when it comes to the fact that so many times, we, who - according to scripture and from what we have been learning at the earlier stages of our walk with God - should be passionately pursuing a continuous conjoining with our Father, yet instead we're feeling estranged from that very same person. And to top it off, we have actually become accustomed to that feeling, often times experiencing it in ways that recalls the well-known "boiling frog syndrom".
What is so important to understand is that there is something so fundamentally missing that should actually be bridging the gap between intentionality and implementability.
When I was going through one of those later rough patches that had "accompanied" me in waves in the course of these past twenty years, I had come face to face with the fact that I had actually been well aware of that discrepancy that so many others had also been experiencing for so many years, but never dared to challenge for a minute; namely, that the solution that was "framed-up" for us in church theology (as Chris Blackeby coined it), concluded that everything that happened, or did not happen in our lives was entirely, or for the most part, due to OUR level of faith, or rather the lack of display of a certain (required) level of faith. While faith is unquestionably THE engine in scripture that leads to all those 'God experiences' apparent through signs and wonders that we read and heard about, and desperately desire to see play out in our (immediate) surrounding and our own lives just as much as it did back then in ancient history, it actually whirls up just the opposite of what it promises; namely anger, bitterness and resignation.
So why does the 'faith-formula' not lead to the desired results with a considerable number of Christians? Why has it become a burden rather than something that we can't wait to implement as much as possible in our everyday lives?
Here's the answer.......are you ready?
Because it's not faith that is the driving force, but rather FREE WILL.
Whilst I might be running the risk of possibly offending some readers out there right now (although probably not on this platform :-)), this is not made-up stuff, but rather a drawing from my own experience. When I say "my own experience", I need to give great credit to my most recent spiritual mentor (a great and humble "thank you" to her at this point!). And although the four meltdowns had their "fair share" of me being forced to come to a place of full surrender, she was the one who signposted, in many different layers, what I will be highlighting in these next couple of sentences, that ultimately contributed to my being able to put into practice, what I had been hinted at over and over again in our sessions (and they were long ones!). So one of those layers that she pointed out, and that immediately stuck with me, was:
"Spirit is subordinate to will."
- Say what?!
As a 'mature' Christian you were/ are taught that (Holy) Spirit is the most powerful tool when it comes to executing spiritual matters in our lives as believers (most significantly when being raised within the Charismatic movement) . And just as many others within the church, I had tried to act upon just that, yet somehow it never ended up working, and instead, it usually resulted in complete mental and physical exhaustion episodes, at least in my case.
So how then is free will more powerful than (Holy) Spirit?
Well our will is housed by our heart. Or, in other words, our will resides in our heart.
So where's the evidence for that? Well, if you want to find out more, you can, in my next blog, where I will offer some basic, but solid (and scripture-based) insight on the synergy between the will and the heart, and how this relates to the will initially being more influential than (Hl) Spirit.
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