Running with Horses, Moving Like Wind

(Introduction to a book I am writing).

I believe that the spiritual supersedes the natural yet I have often wondered why it is that the natural seems to rule our experience here on earth. In fact, most of the time, most of us are totally unaware of the spiritual dimension of life. Not only that but the few who seem to be in touch with the spiritual realm seem out of touch with reality to the rest of us. On the few occasions where someone has an experience that could be rated supernatural it’s near impossible to know really why or how it happened. Are these experiences what it means to “be in the Spirit” (Revelation 1:10), a passing statement made by the Apostle John and followed by his account of an incredible vision?

As I read Scripture about the Holy Spirit, his transformation and empowerment of the early church and some of the more mystical passages regarding his ministry, I know that there is something more I am to be experiencing in my Christian life. I know that what I and so many of us have come to know as normal Christianity is not what the Lord intended when he filled us with His Spirit. What is the Christian life really supposed to be like?

There are two passages in Scripture that have captured my attention regarding this question. One is in Jeremiah 12 where the prophet Jeremiah voices his complaint to God about the prosperity of the wicked and God’s apparent lack of justice. As He does so many times God does not directly answer Jeremiah’s question but responds to a bigger issue by saying, “If you have raced with men on foot and they have wore you out, how can you compete with horses? If you stumble in safe country, how will you manage in the thickets by the Jordan?” God goes on to tell Jeremiah that he should not even trust the members of his own household and then describes His own broken heart over the spiritual condition of His beloved Israel. What is amazing to me in this passage is God’s expectation that despite even the betrayal of his own family Jeremiah will rise above what is normal humanity to some supernatural level described as “competing with horses.” How could God expect this from a man living before the New Covenant went into effect and still bound to the sinful nature and the Jewish law? More importantly, what does this mean for me, living under the grace of the New Covenant, filled with the Holy Spirit and no longer in bondage to a sinful nature or religious law?

The second passage holds the most well-known verse in the Bible, and surrounding it some of the most mystical verses in the Bible. In John chapter 3 Nicodemus, a religious leader, has come to Jesus in secret to inquire about the Kingdom of God. Jesus starts by telling him,

“Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again… Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit” (John 3:3-8).

Even though I grew up reading this passage and learning about it in Sunday School somehow I missed what Jesus was saying. Somehow I read this verse as saying that the Holy Spirit is like the wind, you don’t know where He is coming from or going to. Then several years ago I was awaken out of a dream in the middle of the night and the Lord spoke verse 6 to me as an interpretation of the dream; “Flesh gives birth to flesh, but Spirit gives birth to spirit.” In the past I had tied a nice little bow on John chapter 3 entitled “the Salvation experience” however, God was speaking a right now word to me through this passage. It caused me to go back and read the passage with new eyes and for the first time I realized that when Jesus described the wind in John 3 he was describing human beings, born of the Spirit, who, like the wind, “blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going.” I began to realize that these verses are describing so much more than our one time experience of being born again. There is an expectation of continual birthing in the life of the believer as they stop depending on their own flesh, that which is natural (human strength and strategies) and learn to let the Holy Spirit give greater life and awareness to their own spirit.

My neat bow suddenly unraveled and I was left with a passage where every verse held depths unfathomable to my human brain, much less my experience. I no longer judged Nicodemuses response so harshly, after all I as a Pastor’s kid and a Pastor had missed this passages meaning my entire life. Jesus’ response to Nicodemus in the next verse took on an entirely more personal meaning to me:

“You are Israel’s teacher and do you not understand these things? Very truly I tell you, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man. Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (italics mine).

For many of us our Christian tradition has equated eternal life to the “sweet by and by” when we go to live with Jesus after we die. This misunderstanding allows us to neatly organize our lives so that Scripture passages that seem to have high expectations can be relegated to the afterlife. Yet Jesus’ definition of eternal life is clear, “that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John 17:3). This is the desire of our Lord’s heart; not that we would barely make it through until he returns, but that we would understand in the here and now what it is to know God, to be one with Him (John 17:21-23), even “filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:19). Not when we die and no longer have to deal with the vices of this world and our own human nature, but right now in this moment. It’s why he left heaven and was born as a man. It’s what he died for; so that we could transcend our human nature and become “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). Able to supernaturally run a race with horses and keep up. Able to move like wind.

I want to live in the abundance of life Jesus came to give me, yet I struggle to live above my mere human experience. This book is an attempt to reconcile my normal life with the expectation that God has for my life as laid out in Scripture. I am asking the Holy Spirit to be my teacher and reveal to me what a normal Christian life should look like, born again and empowered by the Holy Spirit. I am glad you are along for the adventure.