Monday, November 28, 2011

How Do You Explain?

But people who aren’t Christians can’t understand these truths from God’s Spirit. It all sounds foolish to them because only those who have the Spirit can understand what the Spirit means. -- 1 Corinthians 2:14-15

How do you explain the Holy Spirit to someone who has never felt His Presence? I don’t know the answer even though I’ve tried numerous times to explain it. All I know is that when the Holy Spirit enters your body, your soul, your heart, there is a difference in how you live your life and view the world.

Recently I learned that someone I knew all my life only became a Christian shortly before his death. And I do mean shortly. He was literally days from death when he finally prayed to receive Christ as his Lord and Savior. It took him more than 70 years to understand what he’d been hearing all his life.

I wish I could say I was surprised by the news. I wasn’t. I loved him, I guess, in that way of a child faced with an emotionally distant adult. We were not close. I don’t know that he was really that close to anyone. Even his wife kept her distance at times.

The reason? He was mean. Hateful. Hurtful with his words. I was always told that in his younger years he was physically abusive. I never witnessed that, though I never doubted it either.

It wasn’t that he was all bad. He wasn’t. He could be kind and generous, caring and jovial. But he was a hard man. He’d known poverty and long hours in the fields. And he took his power where he could get it.

Yet this man rarely missed a Sunday morning church service. He’d attended many revivals. He called himself a Christian. He went through the motions, convincing others by his words that he was what he claimed to be. He just never could change his heart or his actions.

Those who knew him best, saw his secret. Denial was pointless though he did it anyway. How dare anyone challenge what he knew about himself? But as death gets closer, it becomes harder and harder to pretend. God sees our hearts and He knows our darkest secrets. He knows when we believe. And He knows when we don’t.

So on that night, shortly before he died, his son spoke again of Jesus. This time he heard. He asked questions. They talked on and on, until at last the man understood. He and his son prayed and, finally, the man found peace deep in his soul. The torment was gone. He was ready to go home.

I don’t know how to explain the saving grace that comes from salvation. I don’t know how to express the feeling of security and love that comes from knowing that God loves me no matter what. I don’t know how to tell others what they’re missing by not knowing our Father and our Lord. I don’t know how to explain the Presence of the Holy Spirit.

But I do know what I believe. I am God’s child. Jesus came to this earth as a man, died on a cross as He took my sins on Him, then Jesus rose three days later. He defeated death and now sits at the right hand of God. In Heaven. That place I’m going someday. That place I call home.