What does inspiration feel like? How do you know you're receiving it? Jesus described what he experienced as inspiration as seeing the Father act and hearing the Father speak. We may be at a loss to understand exactly what that meant, but we would have to say he was sensing something in real-time. So much for the teaching that experiencing spiritual "feelings" has no place in trying to be like Jesus.
The evangelists occasionally describe Jesus as being moved in the bowels (i.e. with compassion) just before he began miraculous ministrations. I know there is a scholarly assumption that sees that as nothing more than an idiomatic expression basically equated with "he felt their pain." I think there was more to it than that, I think Jesus was "feeling" inspiration. He certainly felt virtue go out from him when the woman with the issue of blood touched him.
Speaking of what would be our experience in the Holy Spirit after the crucifixion and resurrection, Jesus said rivers of living water would flow out from our bellies. A metaphor, or more? How about a physical analog for a spiritual experience: the action of the Spirit causing sensible repercussions in our corporeal beings. I'm not saying every bit of indigestion is God speaking, but I am most certainly saying that God speaks to those that believe and that his voice reverberates in the soul of man.
There are those who would naysay this interpretation of things, but I ask, where are their greater works, their miracles, their anything that Jesus modeled, the Apostles emulated, and that the early church reproduced? Jesus never implied that the church following him, regardless of the passage of time, would do lesser works, see fewer miracles or have a more distant relationship with the Father than he did. In nothing less than unbelief, naysayers say those things passed away, yet charismatic folks daring to believe produce those things even today.
The evangelists occasionally describe Jesus as being moved in the bowels (i.e. with compassion) just before he began miraculous ministrations. I know there is a scholarly assumption that sees that as nothing more than an idiomatic expression basically equated with "he felt their pain." I think there was more to it than that, I think Jesus was "feeling" inspiration. He certainly felt virtue go out from him when the woman with the issue of blood touched him.
Speaking of what would be our experience in the Holy Spirit after the crucifixion and resurrection, Jesus said rivers of living water would flow out from our bellies. A metaphor, or more? How about a physical analog for a spiritual experience: the action of the Spirit causing sensible repercussions in our corporeal beings. I'm not saying every bit of indigestion is God speaking, but I am most certainly saying that God speaks to those that believe and that his voice reverberates in the soul of man.
There are those who would naysay this interpretation of things, but I ask, where are their greater works, their miracles, their anything that Jesus modeled, the Apostles emulated, and that the early church reproduced? Jesus never implied that the church following him, regardless of the passage of time, would do lesser works, see fewer miracles or have a more distant relationship with the Father than he did. In nothing less than unbelief, naysayers say those things passed away, yet charismatic folks daring to believe produce those things even today.
When one has faith and is open to the inspiration of God, the Holy Spirit, even today, flutters within the soul and stirs up a recognition that something supernatural is about to happen. Hardly ever does such an awareness come on the heels of bomb blast or lightning bolt, but somewhere in the consciousness of the willing the dove flutters and the believing experience a "holy hunch." In that moment, the believing and sensitive have the opportunity, if they will grasp it, to step into the supernatural and perform the miraculous.
2 comments:
More good things. Sometimes I think the cessationist bunch get let off the hook pretty easily. We as charismatics can be too much on the defense when coming under their intellectual attacks. It saddens me to witness charismatics kind of turning on themselves in their eagerness to be viewed as legitimate by those who don't believe in God's power for today.
Jul,
Welcome to the Sound. I agree, some cessationist throws a historical figure, say Augustine or some such like, at us and/or muddies the water with some dubious takes on Greek or Hebrew and we fold like a Christmas card. If their interpretations were so grand why don't they produce people who do what the people in scripture did? They're experts at making folk less than what Jesus made folk! You can judge a tree by its fruit. Instead of imposing on the Word a justification for dead, spiritless tradition, (twisting scripture in order to do so) we ought to let the Word rule over us as it beckons us to a supernatural life in Christ. If we don't measure up to it's promises, our goal should be to grow into them, not to arrogantly find ways to exclude them.
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