A hospital delivery room is not for the fainthearted. I blacked out when one of our five children was being born (not quintuplets; it would have been far worse!). I was seated and didn’t fall over or pass out, but for a few seconds it was like someone had turned out all the lights, like one of the times I donated blood. Many are those who will bear witness that these venues are regularly characterized by a lot of yelling, blood, and gore. Until the process is complete, “birthing babies” can be very stressful, in particular for the mom giving birth and sometimes for the dads in attendance, who have been known on occasion to literally pass out during this miraculous phenomenon.
Spiritual birth can also be a painful experience. It is true that there are those who come to Christ at an early age in life and never look back. But even these must have their own “mini-Gethsemane” in the act of surrendering their (perhaps pliable, yet) still independent wills to Jesus, and the process doesn’t stop there. But for a large percentage of us, getting to, upon (“I am crucified with Christ”), and beyond the Cross of Jesus Christ can be a real life-and-death struggle because our own wills have been in in the ascendancy for so long.
There is a very real danger in the church when well-meaning (or at times self-serving) clergy and others try to inject their own “epidural” into those struggling to find God by providing misguided and human-inspired words of comfort and enablement instead of interceding and trusting God to save them, no matter how difficult and painful the “delivery.” I sat in a church “stuck in the breach” for a full year knowing that I was in a lost spiritual condition, but was absolutely unable to do anything about it. There was a hindrance and I was helpless to do anything except to ask for prayer and to hold on to hope as if my life depended upon it, which it did.
You may lose your grip on faith for a time, but you can never, ever abandon hope!
People who give up all hope are the ones who take their own lives, or are overpowered by Satan and consciously reject the claims of Christ for eternity. I could have prayed a thousand “sinner’s prayers” during my time of crisis and nothing would have changed, because God had a perfect plan for redeeming my soul, and that plan would unfold only in His timing and through His means. But when it was fulfilled, it would be real. It would be, not by reason, but by revelation. My pitiable portion of faith would become alive.
Our flesh, even without Satan’s added prompting and deception, can be the biggest deterrent to a genuine salvation experience. There are many things that can hinder salvation and then being filled with the Holy Spirit. It is often said, “Jesus doesn’t clean His fish before He catches them.” Much more accurately, Jesus doesn’t catch His fish until they “come clean.” Jesus doesn’t deliberately go around looking for rocky ground to sow His seed. There may be many obstacles in my heart that prevent me from seeing the true Gospel. Perhaps it is a root of bitterness or unforgiveness against someone that I, in reality, have no intention of surrendering. Perhaps it is a private addiction or some other sin that I consciously try to conceal from the piercing, convicting laser-light of the Holy Spirit. Perhaps I am expecting to come to Christ, but only as long as that doesn’t mean giving up any of my idols in the process.
As a friend of mine often says, “We need to let GOD save people!” That is not to say that God does not want to use us to sow, water, feed, and cultivate. That is a huge part of our mission during our stay here; to make disciples for Christ. But if a person doesn’t recognize they are lost and are in danger of eternal judgment, what are they going to be saved from? In the scriptures, repentance always precedes salvation. It is the job of the Holy Spirit to reveal our lost state, and then to bring us safely and methodically through the delivery process.
That process will inevitably involve a Gethsemane of our own will, but one of God’s making, with the loving objective of our eternal adoption as His children!
“Then he said to me, ‘This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel saying, “Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,” says the Lord of hosts.’” (Zechariah 4:6 NASB)
Fracas In The Family :) 