July 16, 2009
Assignment
The old Mission Impossible TV series of the mid-1960’s started out each week by giving the operatives a mission. A portion of the pre-recorded instructions to IMF leader Phelps had the caveat, "Your mission, should you decide to accept it..." Believers are often given assignments by the Holy Spirit, but many of us think that we too should have the option of refusing the mission. Jonah refused his assignment, but it only took three days and three nights in the belly of a fish for him to reconsider and become “a sign to the Ninevites”. (Luke 11:30 NIV)
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Gail;
-----I wish that the Holy Spirit would give me assignments as clearly as He gave Jonah. My life of commitment to the Lord started in a Pentecostal church in 1972. Those guys were really big on the Holy Spirit. They were always saying the Holy Spirit told them to do this, or to do that, or that He had spoken one thing or another to them. I marveled at the inconsistencies happening among them. The Holy Spirit even “directed” a group of them to go do a Jericho march around a “dead” Baptist church. I thought within myself, “What’s up with that? Don’t these Baptists also call on the name of Jesus? So why do we have to go march against them as if God wants their walls to fall down?” I just didn’t think the Holy Spirit drove His people like a drunk.
-----I feel more like a Balaam, than a Jonah. Not that my ambitions are to profit first by however I can weasel it, but that the Spirit’s messages seem confusing. Jonah flat ran from his assignment to go. But Balaam’s run from his assignment to not go was with much more nuance. First God tells Balaam to not go, then He tells him to go. When he goes, God gets mad and sends an angel to turn him back. But when Balaam offers to go back, the angel says to go ahead! (Numbers 22:7-35) Whoa! And what’s up with all that? I thought God did not drive His people like a drunk.
-----But it wasn’t God Who was drunken. His first word to Balaam was clear: I’ve blessed them; don’t curse them; don’t go. It was in his own nuances that Balaam was drunken. As Proverbs indicates, Balaam chose his own path to walk. That God allows man to choose his paths does not mean they are right. Yet He tells Balaam to go ahead and walk it because he chose it, also warning him to step only upon it where He would direct his feet, “DON’T CURSE MY PEOPLE.”
-----Even the shortest study of church history indicates we are the drunken ones. What fighting and strife and turmoil amongst multitudes of factions which God said to avoid! Each faction is sure the Holy Spirit has led them to their viewpoint, not being aware of the muddle their own nuances make of His inspirations. Yet throughout history He does not abandon His church. Rather, he directs her steps upon her confused paths, ultimately leading her to safety, because He faithfully loves her.
-----God gave His Word in black and white to check what we think is His Spirit's directions. But again, like Balaam, we read the Word through our own nuances saying, “Does this verse really mean what it sounds like? Nah, it couldn’t be simply that! There’s more to it!” So, even our understanding of the Bible gets averted from the specific meaning God intended it to convey. Truly, Paul wrote that we all now see dimly as in a mirror. Then why should I think I see more clearly than dimly, or even more clearly than thou, simply because I can claim the Spirit, too? And we hope that amidst all the nuances of our personal thoughts and feelings and Bible study we will recognize one idea as coming from the Holy Spirit in crystal clarity? But with sufficient clarity He leads our steps upon our own paths. Amidst the myriads of our thoughts and feelings, the impressions we receive as from the Spirit tend to self destruct in thirty seconds, so I am glad His Word does not. At least, when we are confused, we have a chance to study it again. And hopefully we study more to resolve one nuance than to reexamine Scripture by the light of another.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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