Explainable

I don't want my life to be explainable without the Holy Spirit.

These words leapt out of the page as I was reading one of Francis Chan's books.  My impression of the story of the Christian faith is that it is, in very many respects, explainable only be the Holy Spirit.  From the dramatic transformed boldness of Simon Peter after Pentecost to countless more mundane instances in, say, even my own experience of ministry there are lots of unexplainables that make perfect sense with the Holy Spirit of God factored in.

 

Nevertheless, there is an alarming number of things in British church life that are too easily explainable.  How often the trend away from volunteering in Society is reflected in local churches of all persuasions; how much of the work of Jesus has been cut back like a Government department during the economic times we are in; how the moral outlook of Christians seems to be as umblically attached to the trends of the age as those of the politicians.

 

May God grant us to see the day when we use the word amazing not because it is projected on the screen at the front of the meeting but because the life of the Church in 21st Century England is . . .  amazing.