'It'

I’ve been meditating on John 16...the Lord’s response to his disciple’s question of ‘Where are you going?’ My aunt had somewhat of that same “?” yesterday…Lord, where are you? I don’t feel you, sense you, see you, etc…

Vs. 6 “Your hearts are filled with sadness because…but I tell you the truth, it is better for you that I go away.” Better that Jesus go away? How could that possibly be true? I guess that’s why the Lord began that sentence with the ‘tell you the truth’ bit. I do that sometimes like when I told the gopher story cuz it seems unimaginable that it actually happened. It’s not that I’m necessarily in the habit of lying. Jesus couldn’t lie so He’s not saying ‘I tell you the truth’ for that reason, either.

I believe Him, but my quandary is what am I missing? If having the Holy Spirit is “better” that having Jesus Christ in the flesh then something is amiss. Now, duh, it stands to reason that one of the ‘betters’ of the Spirit is omnipresence. Jesus was limited by space and time with the whole being in one-place-at-a-time issue…just ask Mary, Martha and Lazarus. But, I’m talkin’ about the one on one—Jesus & me Vs. Holy Spirit & me. Man, I long to see Jesus face to face—but am I missing ‘something’…orrrr…‘Someone’ in the here and now? Yeah, I’m sure of it!

So, I asked Him to show me the better and a few minutes later He did…

Oswald Chambers wrote, “This type of experience,” sounds familiar, I might add, “is not supernatural nor miraculous…not stamped with the hallmark of the Holy Ghost; it has not the mark on it which makes men say, as they look with awe and wonder—‘That is the work of God Almighty’.”

Lord, I want that mark, that print, that impression…that inexplicable, undaunted evidence that you are all over this ‘type of experience’ called my life. How do I get it? Oswald goes on and explains that even though prayer and devotion are necessary they don’t cut ‘it’. A pious pose can be obtained through these practices, but to reach the further still kind-of-stuff is out of MY reach! Only the arms of Christ reach that far and He stretched Himself to the limit. It cost Him everything and me nothing! And yet, I work like a maniac to obtain the proverbial ‘it’. And ‘it’ ain’t gonna happen…

…until…I quit trying and just reach out to His reach and take 'it'! Then and only then, is the ‘it’ mine! I don’t deserve ‘it’! I’ve been slothful, lazy and evil. But, in the same breath, I’m pure, right and blameless because of the Blood. That’s who I am in Him…with or without a ‘quiet-time’, a fast, a size 14, a_______...fill-in-the-blank.

The Holy Spirit does in me what Jesus Christ did for me!

I got ‘it’!