THE MESSIANIC PILGRIMAGE

Growing up I was really very interested in science. So I really struggled to believe in the existence of God. The universe seemed just too big to believe in the God that people talked about. So at school I threw myself into science and ignored God.

Then some people who followed Christ invited me so see a film. The film was made by scientists and demonstrated how science and God were linked. It wasn’t science or God but science and God. It was logical and made sense, so I embraced religion. I started following all the rules; and there seemed to be endless rules. I attended religious meetings; many of them and every day. But I wasn’t really happy, and God seemed a distant and severe person like an angry head teacher at a school.

And try as I might it seemed I never really complied with all the rules and I never really went to enough religious meetings. Because I was convinced in my mind that God was real and demanded these things of me I did them. But I was not fulfilled, and I failed frequently too. Try as I might I still did things wrong. Would God weigh up all these wrongs and send me to Hell because I hadn’t done enough good? I didn’t seem to have the power to live as God demanded. And if I understood correctly God decided everything and I was like a puppet on the earth with him controlling everything.

There was a group of people who came to my senior school. They said that you can know God intimately and become a friend of God like Abraham. This seemed weird to me. How did that fit in with the rules that I thought I had to keep? How can you become a friend of God?

They pointed me to a time when the first followers of Christ were discouraged because he was dead. Then he was restored to life and met with them and promised them that he would send the Holy Spirit to give them power to live their lives for God and to help them have an intimate relationship with God as their friend. In all honesty this seemed crazy to me.

Then they pointed me to a story in the Gospel when the Holy Spirit came upon the followers of Christ and gave them power that they could never have imagined:

On the day of Pentecost all the believers were meeting together in one place. Suddenly, there was a sound from heaven like the roaring of a mighty windstorm, and it filled the house where they were sitting. Then, what looked like flames or tongues of fire appeared and settled on each of them. And everyone present was filled with the Holy Spirit and began speaking in other languages, as the Holy Spirit gave them this ability. (Acts 2:1-4)

They then said to me that the power of the Holy Spirit was available to everyone who follows Christ today. We just needed to ask God and he would give the Holy Spirit to us and receive God’s power to live our lives in friendship with God in exactly the same way that the early followers of Christ experienced him.

So that is what I did. I asked God to send me his Holy Spirit and give me his power. But there was no rushing wind. There were no tongues of fire and I didn’t instantly speak another language. But what did happen was a strange and amazing peace. It was like a rushing wind had blown all my troubles away. It was like God had suddenly joined me for a meal and that he actually liked me and wanted me to be his friend. And a few days later I did find I was talking another language. It was the language of God that he and I understood.

Does that mean that from then on I never did anything wrong? No, sadly that didn’t happen, but what did happen was that my relationship with God changed from being that of an angry and severe head teacher into an intimate relationship with a loving father. In this season of power, please ask God to send his Holy Spirit so that you too can have this intimate relationship with you as his friend, just like Abraham.