Ignoring the Spirit
““And you continue, so bullheaded! Calluses on your hearts, flaps on your ears! Deliberately ignoring the Holy Spirit, you’re just like your ancestors. Was there ever a prophet who didn’t get the same treatment? Your ancestors killed anyone who dared talk about the coming of the Just One. And you’ve kept up the family tradition – traitors and murderers, all of you. You had God’s Law handed to you by angels – gift-wrapped! – and you squandered it!”” Acts 7:51–53 MSG
Jesus had assured his disciples that when they were brought before people in that moment they’d have words from the Spirit for that moment. Peter & John had them in Acts 4 and here in this magnificent impromptu sermon from Stephen we see the flow of the Spirit as words tumble out of his mouth.
These are difficult words because they end with the indictment that just as the fathers of the nation in Moses’ day had ignored the law of God, a gift given as it were through angels so they were now ignoring the supreme Word, Jesus Christ of whom the prophets had spoken. over and over again.
It would be easy to stand in Stephen’s sandals and think of the many people in our community or circle of friends and acquaintances who may similarly ignore the Spirit. It would be so easy to point those people with ‘callused hearts’ and ‘flaps on their ears’. But have we looked in the mirror lately? Did we notice that growing callus in the area of finance, lacking generosity? That flapped ear that ignores the quiet and persistent voice of the Spirit calling us to solitude and prayer? We can be so busy about the work of the church even that these calls and calluses are ignored.
Initially it may be an ignorance that is justified by procrastination, the promise to yourself and God that as soon as things get a bit easier you’d take that time off to be with God. Procrastination if not remedied leads to the justification of sufficiency, that God sufficiently loves and will always accept us. A twist as it were on the grace of God. And soon this slips into what we have here, ‘a deliberate, wilful ignorance of the Spirit’.
This is a non-profit road. We ignore the voice of the Spirit at our peril. His voice can be heard in our hearts, through the Scriptures, through. His people and sometimes even donkeys or the belly of a stinky fish as Balaam and Jonah the ignoring prophets would respectively discover. God loves us so much that He will make every effort to communicate with us, to encourage and warn us as needed. Developing an alertness and obedience to His voice is by far one of the, if not the greatest habit that we can develop.
As a young boy I never saw the point of brushing my teeth. A few visits to the dentist sorted that out. They were as I shared earlier not very memorable visits. But those visits were very important to help me develop the necessary habit of cleaning my teeth. Why wait till you are down on God’s chair with your mouth forced open and a painful extraction about to commence? The Scriptures warn us that in His love God will discipline us. But why wait for that painful time? Let’s learn now not to ignore the Spirit. Let’s be alert and obedient. Let’s be like Stephen.
