Holston Devotional Series | October 20, 2019

October 20, 2019

by RuthAnne G. Henley

Clergy of Draper Circuit

New River District

The Christian experience of grace is confusing to the natural mind. It is lawful without being legalistic and sacred without being overly religious. How is that possible? It is possible because it is not so much taught, learned and patterned as it is relational. Without offending the spirit of Christian formation, the reason Christians come at life from a perspective the world cannot grasp is less the doctrine we espouse and more the Company we keep.

When the Holy Spirit is our constant Companion, our behavior catches the fragrance of godliness. We develop a holy saltiness that is foreign to the atmosphere around us. Because the Holy Spirit is living within us, that breath of Heaven is always blowing through us, changing the way we think, act and speak.

It’s not about keeping the rules or obeying the laws. It is about refusing to offend the presence of God resident in us. It is about honoring the holiness of the One who moves among us, through us.

This is a fulfilling of the promise given to the people of God by the Prophet Jeremiah in Jeremiah 31:33-34 “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the Lord, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the Lord, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”

My mind is captured by a hymn written in 1749 by Charles Wesley (public domain):

I want a principle within of jealous, godly fear,
A sensibility of sin, a pain to feel it near.
I want the first approach to feel of pride or fond desire,
To catch the wand’ring of my will, and quench the kindling fire.

From Thee that I no more may part, no more Thy goodness grieve,
The filial awe, the fleshly heart, the tender conscience, give.
Quick as the apple of an eye, O God, my conscience make;
Awake my soul when sin is nigh, and keep it still awake.

Almighty God of truth and love, to me Thy pow’r impart;
The mountain from my soul remove, the hardness from my heart.
Oh, may the least omission pain my reawakened soul,
And drive me to that blood again, which makes the wounded whole.

That said, we are not divorced from Christian formation. We cannot simply go off in our own direction to live as we see fit, invoking God’s blessing over our whims and preferences. In coming among us in the Person of Christ Jesus, God did not cease to be the God of fire on Mount Sinai. Or, as I have heard it put, God did not get saved between the Old and New Testaments.

The Holy Bible, all of it, is sacred to us and has authority in our lives. The mandates that have been set aside within the canon of scripture – like the dietary laws – we no longer practice. But the moral law of God is unchanged because it reflects God’s nature. It shows us who God is, how God thinks and how God will eventually judge the world collectively and each of us individually.

As we read, study and meditate upon scripture, the Holy Spirit within us bears witness to the words. We vibrate with that internal witness, and our lives are changed. When we neglect the scripture or, worse, approach it with less than an open, teachable spirit, we offend the Holy Spirit within us, and weaken our connection with divine witness.

God deliver us from blind legalism! God deliver us also from a lawlessness that forgets the beauty of God’s self-revelation through the witness of scripture. Paul issues a strong warning in 2 Timothy 4:3-4 “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.” God grant us grace to live faithful lives, even in times like these.