One of the ways the Holy Spirit wants to work nowadays is through the gifts of the Spirit in the church to build us up (see 1 Cor 12:7-11).

Paul summarises his teaching in 1 Cor 14:1: ‘Follow the way of love and eagerly desire gifts of the Spirit, especially prophecy.’ We need to have an attitude which longs for a better connection to the Holy Spirit and to see these spiritual gifts at work in our church. It’s all too easy to be wary of these gifts, for they can be misused and we can feel afraid of the unfamiliar, but God is the giver of all good gifts and can be trusted to lead us in ways that are ‘naturally supernatural’, as Garry put it last week.

We can feel afraid of the miraculous and supernatural because it’s outside of our control and outside of our ordinary experience, but actually, we don’t need to be afraid. God will not do anything that is harmful to us; He is good and all He does is good. (Ps 119:68) Listen to some of the very ‘ordinary’ ways the apostles spoke about the Holy Spirit:

• The first missionaries were sent out by the Holy Spirit in quite understated tones: ‘While they were worshipping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.”’ (Acts 13:2) And that’s what happened!

• James said, when discussing what to do about Gentiles who were turning to Christ, ‘It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements.’ (Acts 15:28)

• ^‘Paul and his companions travelled throughout the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been ‘kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia. ⁷ When they came to the border of Mysia, they tried to enter Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to.’ (Acts 16:6-7) We don’t know how the Holy Spirit kept them from preaching the word in the province of Asia or how the Spirit of Jesus stopped them from entering Bithynia, but the whole tone of this passage is very matter-of-fact. Even when Paul talks about a vision of a man from Macedonia, which he takes to be the way God’s Spirit shows him where to go next, there is no sense of weirdness or anything to fear. God the Spirit is there to help us, build us up and guide us, not there to terrify us or keep us cowed.

We need a hunger for God’s Spirit, a dependence on Him that means we are not relying on ourselves and a desire for more of God’s Spirit if we are to see God move in power in our area and in our church.

Rom 8:11 tells us ‘if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.’ This is a tremendous promise, but we need to ask ourselves why we do not see more of the miraculous and supernatural in our everyday lives and in our church services. Perhaps the answer is connected to our view of the Holy Spirit and whether we see Him as a lodger or Lord of every area of our lives.

A lodger is someone who lives in your house, but who is not treated as part of the family. They are a paying guest and the owner still has authority over what goes on in the house. We often treat the Holy Spirit like this. He is an honoured guest, but if He oversteps the mark – invading our lounge, our kitchen, our dining-room and telling us how to live – we very quickly can become offended and resentful.

The Holy Spirit, however, isn’t meant to be a lodger. He’s not someone to whom we have graciously given access to our lives; He is God Himself. He’s the Advocate Jesus promised His disciples (John 14:15); the One who searches all things, even the deep things of God (1 Cor 2:10) ‘so that we may understand what God has freely given us.’ (1 Cor 2:12) So rather than being confined to one room, His role is to invade our whole lives, to have access to all we have and all we are so that we may be conformed into the image of Christ. His function is to guide us into all truth (John 16:13) and to produce in us the fruit of the Spirit – love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. (Gal 5:22-23)

If we continue with the house analogy, we can only make room for ‘more stuff’ in our homes if we clear out some of the ‘old stuff.’ In the same way, we can only experience more of the Holy Spirit if we deal with all that is at war with Him. ‘The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. ⁸ Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God.’ (Rom 8:7-8)

Just as we know that we have to eat the right things if we are to live healthily and lose weight, just as we know we need to do physical exercise if we want to be physically fit, so we have to understand the conflict that goes on between our independent ‘I’m-the-owner-of-this-house’ mentality and the fact that our bodies are actually meant to be temples of the Holy Spirit. (1 Cor 6:19) If we want to have a better connection to God the Holy Spirit, we have to listen to Him when He tells us to get rid of something or do something and we have to be prepared to obey. The more we do this, the more we will grow spiritually. I truly believe we can have as much of God as we are prepared to receive… but that will mean de-cluttering our lives and letting Him be Lord. It will mean doing what He says, however weird or illogical that may seem to us. God so very often doesn’t make sense to us and we have to be prepared to step out in faith, rather than only doing what makes sense, and learn to obey the whispers of the Spirit, whether that is in rebuke or encouragement.

In our series ‘Connections’, we looked this morning at our relationship with the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Godhead (and probably the least understood!) Fatherhood is a concept we can relate to (even if God redefines our understanding of fatherhood) and the humanity of Jesus puts a ‘human’ face on what it means to have a relationship with God, but the invisible, spiritual life of the Holy Spirit can often seem mysterious and even a little scary. One child described the Holy Spirit as being ‘the woo-woo’ of God, and there is no doubt that the miraculous signs and gifts of the Spirit can cause us to feel we are not in control… which is an inevitable part of our connection to God!

The Holy Spirit is a person, not a ‘force’ or an impersonal ‘it’. He knows the thoughts of God (1 Cor 2:11), shares the love of God (Rom 15:30) and distributes the gifts of the Spirit as He sees fit. (1 Cor 12:11) Eph 1:11-23 shows us the Godhead working together and reminds us that the Holy Spirit is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance. He is ‘a pledge of the ultimate reception of redeemed souls into eternal fellowship with the Father in heaven’; He is the ‘first instalment’ to assure us that our full inheritance as children of God will be delivered. He is given to us to confirm that we belong to God; Paul says the Spirit testifies to us that we are children of God. (Rom 8:16)

The Holy Spirit is here, living in us, to make a difference to the here and now. God has poured out His Spirit on all people so that we can live in connection with Him, knowing our connection to God is secure for all eternity and therefore giving us confidence to live life positively and realise we can have an impact and influence on the world around us. John puts it like this: ‘the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.’ (1 John 4:4) If God’s Spirit is the power of God, the same power which raised Christ from the dead, and if His Spirit lives in us, then we have all that we need to be overcomers. We don’t have to live the same way we used to live before we came to know Christ. All things are possible in God, Jesus reminded us. We are given access to the spiritual realm, to the very life of God Himself. He’s given to believers to enable us to live as Jesus did, in connection with the Father, and He is the means by which we are to do the ‘greater things’ Jesus spoke about to His disciples: ‘whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.’ (John 14:12) As He dwells in us, He grows His fruit in us (Gal 5:22-23) and we are conformed into the image of Christ. (Rom 8:29)

It has been rather a tumultuous week in our area, especially regarding the weather, with floods affecting many parts of South Yorkshire. Many affected by the floods in 2007 have faced anxious times wondering if their homes will again be flooded and pictures from Sheffield, Doncaster, Rotherham and parts of Barnsley have shown that it will be some time before any kind of normality will be seen. It has been very strange hearing such familiar names as Bentley, Fishlake, Meadowhall and Parkgate on national news and understanding something of the devastation caused first-hand, rather than being detached from such news because it is happening ‘somewhere else.’

In addition, some church members are facing difficult times regarding job situations and others are facing health problems. It can be easy to feel overwhelmed when such things happen and particularly when more than one situation hits us with force. We are often left reeling, wondering how to adjust and how to cope.

God’s word reminds us, however, that God is an ever-present help in times of trouble. (Ps 46:1) Ps 121 is a particular comfort at times of bewilderment and confusion, reminding us that ‘my help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth’ (Ps 121:2, see also Ps 124:8) and that the Lord watches over us and guards us (Ps 121:5-8). We may well feel battered and anxious, but we are not left alone in any difficulty. God has promised to help us, deliver us and save us (see Ps 37:40, Ps 40:13, 17; Ps 60:5). As we call out to God for help, we can be sure He will provide it!

Back in May, I took my granddaughter to an event at Phoenix Park in Thurnscoe which involved learning about nature and outdoor life. We got to hunt bugs (which neither of us particularly liked, interesting and informative though this was!) and learn about different trees, and then at the end, the rangers in charge showed us how to toast marshmallows and make popcorn. (It’s a sad reflection of our interests that we found this much more interesting than the bug-hunting!)

I had never made popcorn before, probably because I’m not that fond of it. I know it’s the staple diet of many at the cinema, but I find popcorn chewy and tasteless, so I had never really bothered with it before. I was surprised to see the size of the kernels before we roasted them; they looked so small and insignificant.

Once heated, however, the kernels expanded to become the more familiar size:

All that was needed to transform the kernels into edible popcorn was heat. And that reminds me that sometimes our faith gets heated up from the fires of life, from the troubles and traumas which the Bible describes as ‘refining’ our faith (1 Pet 1:3-7), and what seems so small and insignificant becomes something sturdy and solid. I don’t really think faith is like popcorn, but I do think that the ‘heat’ of life has the potential to build our faith rather than destroy it, if we will accept God’s refining trials.

Today (9th November) is the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The wall was built in Berlin in 1961 to mark the division of Germany into the German Democratic Republic (East Germany, under Communist rule) and The Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany, part of Western Europe) and was a symbol of the ‘Cold War’ which raged throughout my childhood. As late as 1986, I travelled to work in Bad Harzburg, near the East German border, and travelled there from Hanover on a train which continued into East Germany; I remember being terrified that I got on the right carriage or I might end up in East Germany!

(By Noir, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1402275)

The Berlin Wall was called the ‘Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart’ by East Germany, while the West Germans called it ‘the Wall of Shame’, a vivid reminder that perspectives matter enormously in life. A fear of communism and nuclear war overshadowed my childhood and the wall seemed utterly impregnable. When I became a Christian in 1983, I discovered that the charity Open Doors had just instituted a prayer campaign, ‘Seven Years of Prayer’, for the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe to fall and for the church to be allowed freedom from persecution. I too began to pray that God would do something amazing and overturn what seemed to be an implacable force against Christianity.

In 1989, a series of revolutions in Poland and Hungary (hugely influenced by Christians) ultimately led to the demise of the Berlin Wall. After several weeks of civil unrest, the East German government announced on 9 November 1989 that all GDR citizens could visit West Germany and West Berlin. Crowds of East Germans crossed and climbed onto the Wall, joined by West Germans on the other side in a celebratory atmosphere. Over the next few weeks, euphoric people and souvenir hunters chipped away parts of the Wall. The Brandenburg Gate in the Berlin Wall was opened on 22 December 1989. The demolition of the Wall officially began on 13 June 1990 and was completed in November 1991. The “fall of the Berlin Wall” paved the way for German reunification, which formally took place on 3 October 1990.

It’s perhaps difficult for anyone aged 30 or under to grasp the enormity of what happened that day thirty years ago. I can remember being transfixed as I watched the news and saw answers to prayer visibly happen before my very eyes. I firmly believe that it was as a result of the prayers of so many people that God moved in the hearts of those in authority. Radio 4 has run a series of news bulletins this week interviewing people directly involved in the momentous happenings at that time, and I was struck by one East German woman who said in effect, ‘I did not believe our government would ever take notice of what was happening elsewhere; I was dumbfounded when the edict came through.’ For decades, East Germans had risked being shot if they tried to cross the wall; on that day, they could go freely.

God is able ‘to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us.’ (Eph 3:20) That applies on a national and international level, as well as on a personal level. There are different political challenges facing us today, but the same level of despair abounds in many of us. We need to remember that God can do ‘so much more’ and believe Him for great and marvellous deeds. History reminds us of many such miraculous interventions. We have a God who can do anything!