Pastor’s Corner November 2014

The following was published in our monthly newsletter, the Redeemer Report.

In this season of thanks, I thank God for the ministry of His Holy Spirit.

And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. – John 14:16-17

We need the Holy Spirit’s ministry in our lives. How does the Holy Spirit work?

Sometimes I think we expect the Holy Spirit to “zap us” or provide some wild manifestation to tell us He is present and working. In actuality, the Spirit’s powerful work is usually behind the scenes and subtle in our lives. The power of the Spirit working isn’t usually found in the flashes and explosions of mountain top spiritual experiences but more often quietly and softly as He kills our desires for certain sins and lusts and replaces them with a desire for God.

Growing up just a few miles from Niagara Falls, I’ll bet I have seen the Falls a hundred times or more in my lifetime. I always knew they were a major source of electrical power but never really understood how. I have stood at the brink of the Falls many times thinking the power provided must come from the violently flowing, froth-filled final couple hundred yards of the water before it plunged a few hundred feet. Certainly that’s where the power resided, right? In fact, the power provided by the Falls came from a quiet, almost unnoticeable source a mile or two upstream from the spectacular brink of Niagara.

Well before the water drops over the edge, there are tunnels of conduit that divert water from going over the Falls and down long shafts where it passes through hydroelectric turbines that supply power to nearby areas of Canada and the USA before returning to the river well past the Falls. Up to 375,000 gallons of water per second is diverted from the Niagara River through conduits under the City of Niagara Falls to power plants! When a person stares at Niagara Falls he or she is only seeing half (or less) of the water that could be going over because so much is discreetly and cleverly diverted to make power.

It’s a rough analogy I know, but this is sort of how I see the Holy Spirit doing His powerful work – quietly and carefully, but extremely effectively. It’s not the froth and foam on top that produces the power, it’s the secret tunnels of steady water flow that harness the energy and turn it into something incredibly productive. I like what John Calvin said about the Holy Spirit’s ministry –

“The work of the Spirit, then, is joined to the Word of God. But a distinction is made, that we may know that the external word is of no avail by itself unless animated by the power of the Spirit …All power of action, then, resides in the Spirit himself.” – John Calvin

In the Lamb,
Pastor Tony Felich