Brothers loved by God, we know that he has chosen you,
because our gospel came to you not simply with words,
but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and with deep conviction...
in spite of severe suffering, you welcomed the message with the joy given by the Holy Spirit....
The Lord's message rang out from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia---
your faith in God has become known everywhere....
They tell how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God (I Thess. 1:4-9).
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September 11, 1981: The Lord spoke to me as I was reading these words from the Letter to the Thessalonians: Stay before Me until this is granted to you.
As we are growing up in our respective churches, we hear the words of the Gospel, but where, when, and how do we experience the words coming to us with "power, the Holy Spirit, and with deep conviction"? When do we experience "welcoming the message with the joy given by the Holy Spirit"?
This was the experience given to prophets in the Old Testament. In the 8th chapter of Isaiah, he says,
The Lord spoke to me with his strong hand upon me, warning me not to follow the way of this people...when men tell you to consult mediums and spiritists, who whisper and mutter, should not a people inquire of their God? Why consult the dead on behalf of the living? To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, they have no light of dawn. Distressed and hungry, they will roam through the land; when they are famished, they will become enraged and looking upward, they will curse their king and their God. Then they will look toward the earth and see only distress and darkness and fearful gloom, and they will be thrust into utter darkness (11-22).
The experience of Jeremiah was this: The word of the Lord came to me, saying, "Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, before you were born I set you apart. I appointed you as a prophet to the nations (I:4-5).
And Ezekiel: On the fifth day of the month -- it was the fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiachin--the word of the Lord came to Ezekiel, the priest, the son of Buzi, by the Kebar River in the land of the Babylonians. There the hand of the Lord was upon him (I: 2-3).
We have all 'heard' the words of Scripture, but when, where, and how has the Word of the Lord come to us? Where, when, and how have we actually experienced "the strong hand of the Lord" upon us?
When have we "welcomed the word of the Lord with "power, the Holy Spirit, and with deep conviction"? Do we have the hunger for this experience? Is it something we yearn for, we want with everything in us?
Psalm 32 says, "I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go; I will counsel you and watch over you" (v.8). This is a promise given to those who "pray to you while you may be found."
Do not these words promise that the "word of the Lord" will come to us "with power and with the joy given by the Holy Spirit"? This should be the normal Christian life, the normal experience of those who are in Christ. We should all be experiencing what Paul describes as happening to the Thessalonians.
I have to wonder why this is not the normal experience of Christians today? Is it because they have not been taught to experience the living word of God? Is it because they believe that this experience is only for the 'holy' ones, not for the normal ones? But all through the OT and through the Gospels and Epistles, we find that the word of the Lord comes to the "little ones," the anawim in Hebrew -- those excluded, cast out, not worthy, the poor, the desolate, the cast down.
When we are poor enough, little enough, desperate enough to cry out to the Lord, when we are hungry enough to pray to the only God who can rescue us, we may then begin to experience "the Word of the Lord coming to us with power and with the Holy Spirit, and with deep conviction." Until then, we may find ourselves roaming the land, distressed and hungry, in the words of Isaiah.
The Lord promises that all who hunger and thirst for the Lord will have their fill. I claim that word and ask for more. Were not our hearts restless until they rest in Him. We were made for Him and once we have that personal relationship we have a longing to experience it again and again.
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