Haunted

 "In Him we live, move, and have our being." Acts 17:28...."Our lives are to be haunted by the presence of God."

Oswald Chambers

The meaning of the word "haunted" is, "To come to the mind continually....To be continually present in. To pervade" I think this is the sense of the meaning of both Acts 17:28 and Oswald Chambers words. This is the kind of presence the Father wants to have with His people. He wants to haunt our lives. If we can get past the negative connotation we give that word, we can begin to grasp the handle of the door to His deeper life that He invites us into.

When we think of the word "haunted" we usually think of a house or place believed to be permeated with a supernatural presence. Now, I don't believe in ghosts, but I do believe in His supernatural presence, and I believe He means for us to live immersed in His presence. In a haunted house story, there is no place within it that the haunting presence cannot manifest itself. More, people who inhabit that house in the story are very much aware of that presence. All that makes for a good "ghost story," but how does it relate to us, to we who are His?

Someone once said that we're to live in "the atmosphere of His Holy Spirit." That means that our atmosphere is permeated with the presence of His Spirit, that the atmosphere is His Holy Spirit. Every part of it. There is no place we can go or be where His presence is not real. Our minds and our spirits are sensitive to this and aware, both consciously and unconsciously, that He is present. Just as a man or woman in love with their mate may still carry out their day to day functions, they do so with the sense of the other always present in some manner. They are never forgotten or put aside. The two have become one, and so the sense of the other will always be there for both. This is why divorce is such a traumatic experience, as the oneness that is meant to be permanent is literally ripped apart. There is not just emotional and mental pain, but deep spiritual pain as well. The oneness that we are to have with and in Him is even deeper than that of a man and wife. We are to be so intertwined with His life and being that as Jesus said, we are in Him and He is in us. This is what our relationship with Him is meant to be, yet so many of us never enter into that kind of depth with Him. Perhaps the reasons are not all that different from why so many marriages never become what God had intended for them to be. We don't give ourselves to each other, nor do we give all of ourselves to Him.

In a marriage, many find it quite easy to live throughout each day giving little thought to the one they were made one with in marriage. They can do so because they have allowed so many other things and people to draw their hearts away from the one they were to have fully given themselves to. They allowed other loves to enter into their hearts. These other loves soon crowded out the awareness of their beloved to the degree that they were now on the fringe, and easily put aside, even forgotten. The image of the other fades. Soon, we have to make a conscious decision to think of them, because otherwise, we most likely won't. This is very much the same pattern with those who profess to be His. We have entertained so many other "loves" that He has been crowded to the fringe, and soon, He is more an afterthought, if He is any thought at all. We don't live in the atmosphere of His life, but in the life we've embraced in His place. From time to time (Sunday morning?) He comes to mind, but most of the time we have little awareness of Him. The sense of His presence becomes sporadic, and continues to fade until finally, we have no sense of Him at all.

Acts 17:28 says that "in Him we live, move, and have our being." The meaning is that we have no life outside of Him. We breathe in and out in the atmosphere of His Spirit. Just as there is no life apart from the oxygen in our physical atmosphere, there is none apart from our breathing in and out of His Spirit as we live in the atmosphere of His life. We may not consciously think of the oxygen we breathe with each breath, but we are never unaware that without that oxygen, we will die. We live fully aware of its life giving power. So too must we live in the moment reality of His life giving Spirit. Haunted by His presence, empowered by it, facing and overcoming all things in it. We simply carry out all that is our life with the knowledge that God is on the throne, breathe in, breathe out.....in the atmosphere of His Spirit.

Blessings,

Pastor O