Power to Change
‘I believe, help my unbelief!’ (Mark 9: 24)
Pentecost is all about the transforming power of the Holy Spirit. Pentecost is about the power to change. I need to change: I needed it 35 years ago in the grip of homosexual addiction and I need it now as I consider the pervasive anti-change mindset of our culture toward persons with same-sex attraction.
A malaise broods over the earth today, scrambling moral reality to the degree that even good Christians cede ethnic status to ‘gays’ and laugh like the world at anyone’s effort to change his/her homosexuality. The salt has lost its savor, the Gospel its power, as the church limply lays hands on seriously confused people and confirms them as ‘gay.’
I want to change minds and hearts with the truth that Jesus Christ came to set captives free from homosexuality. Do you too? For that we need nothing less than the power that catapulted Jesus from the tomb. We stand today in direct opposition to the culture; like the earliest receivers of Pentecostal power, ‘we must obey God, not men’ (Acts 5: 29) as we ‘tell the full message of this new life’ (Acts 5:20).
For that is precisely what Christ redeems us for—a new life full of creative possibilities. He breaks the stronghold of any bond that disrupts His fruitful Life as the source of ours. United with Him, we can no longer sustain the gaze of a mere creature in whom we seek completion. We refuse to make a friend something (s)he cannot be before the Consummate Friend. Freed for dependency on Him alone, we rise out of childish ways and become genuinely creative, our whole beings inclined toward the Kingdom of His design.
Last weekend, my wife and I and our eldest son and wife visited an art museum framed by a lush canyon. Much of the art celebrated the beauty of man for woman, woman for man; the flowering grounds encircling the gallery testified also of the glory of God in creation.
At the center was the love shared by Annette and I. Together we have probed what it means to be human. On that weekend, as in the last 35 years, we offered ourselves yet again to this ‘other’ through whom we have most come to know who God is and who we are made in His image.
The Spirit of creation is the Holy Spirit. Filled with the light of life, we testify of the truth: God transforms us according to His image and likeness. Though not easy (and great relationships never are), the Spirit of Pentecost moves mightily to expand the vision and range of God’s human creation.
‘Abraham did not waver through unbelief…being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised.’ (Romans 4: 20, 21)
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