Heart Tracks - Talking Points

  "Just as you can hear the wind but can't tell where it comes from or where it is going, so you can't explain how people are born of the Spirit." John 3:8....Or led of it either......"Then He said to me, 'Speak to these bones and say, Dry bones, listen to the word of the Lord....Look I am going to breathe into you and make you live again....I will put breath into you and you will come to life."......"There are too many preachers today who are standing in their boats, blowing on its sails.  We need to have our sails filled with the wind of the Spirit."  James Robison

Talking points.  Most anyone who watches any of the news channels knows what these are.  They're the beliefs and viewpoints, particularly in the political realm, of those who speak them.  Listeners never feel they are really hearing the hearts of the speakers near so much as the "company line" they've been sent out to speak.  They don't seem real, and so, they don't really have power. Much as we may hate to admit it, the Church can be just as guilty of doing the same.

I heard a woman named Jenn Hatmaker say the other day that when she and her husband entered the ministry they both knew all the "rules and talking points."  They had them down pat, and so, from their perspective, their lives and ministries were carried out in a manner that they could feel secure in, and have a certain amount of control over.  A lot of control over.  Then the Holy Spirit invaded that "security" and turned their lives and ministry upside down.  They began to live, move, and minister far outside their comfort zone, and they no longer spoke talking points, but life.  His Life.  Real Life.  How much like the before picture of Hatmaker and her husband are you and I?  Not just in ministry, but in our day to day living?  You don't have to be a "professional Christian" to live your life and carry out your witness depending on talking points.  We know all the right things to do and say.  We just don't do or say any of it in the power of His Holy Spirit.  So, like the political spokespeople we hear so often, we don't sound real, and the Christ we proclaim doesn't sound real either.  And He doesn't look real because we don't.

The quote from James Robison hits home in my heart.  Does it in yours?  I've spent too many ministry years blowing on my boat's sail, trying to manufacture movement that only the Holy Spirit can bring about.  I've tried to make dry bones live by blowing my breath into them, rather than seeking, praying, and believing for a move of His Spirit.  A move that only He can bring about, breathing breath that only He can breathe.  And making alive what has been dead.  We tend to think "I've got to do something," but so long as we think that, and act on the thinking, we limit, if not downright stop all that He can and will do.

Will we renounce and turn away from our talking points?  Will we repent of trying to make the ship sail under the power of our "breath?"  Will we yield, surrender to the mystery that is God, His Spirit, and believe Him to move?  In His time and way?  Those who've been listening, if they've listened at all, are beyond weary of the talking points.  We who have been blowing on our sails are beyond weary of that.  Are we ready for the power of His Word and Spirit to come together in and through His Church?  His people?  At the conclusion of the movie, "The Return of the King, Bilbo Baggins upon leaving Middle Earth proclaims, "I think I'm quite ready for another adventure."  Are we?  He invites us to go with Him in ways we can't explain, but ways that bring Life.  I'm ready.  How about you?

Blessings,
Pastor O