What Has the Holy Spirit Done? (The Spirit Makes Me Weak)

I have been writing about the Holy Spirit, about the Spirit’s transformative power, so it would be fitting to describe how the Spirit has transformed me. I sought to do that—writing about the love I find, about the guidance I receive, about giving, about dying to self, about faith. But my draft of that essay rang false. It sketched a picture of a man grown stronger by God. I threw that draft away because I see that the truth is this: Rather than making me stronger, the Holy Spirit has made me weak. We are “strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man” (Ephesians 3:16), but that qualification—in the inner man—is stark. The outer man is where we usually seek our strength.

In the story of Moses, we see God actually hardening the heart of Moses’ oppressor, Pharaoh (Exodus 7:3). God himself increases the villain’s tolerance for villainy. That God would do this seems strange. Yet out of my own life, I can well understand the meaning of this. God allows each of us to choose, and God accepts the choice—loving us all the while. A man who chooses against God will need a hard heart and will need human strength. So God blesses the man with these paltry things, since the man won’t accept any better. I can understand, because I was a tiny pharaoh myself at one time, swaggering within a minuscule zone of comfort which I rarely left.

Now, my heart is more often fractured and more often soft. Paul said (in 1 Corinthians 9:16), “Woe to me if I don’t preach the gospel”—meaning he had to do the work God put in front of him to do. I can relate. The imperative to “seek first the kingdom of God” (Matthew 6:33) is no longer just good advice, but a requirement. The day is frazzled and the week descends into misery when I do not give time to this seeking. Yet when I do set my pride and worries aside, when I do lay my energies and attention before God, then joy, rest, and peace all ripen from within.

This personal imperative to submit marks the most apparent change I have seen in myself since turning toward God. Simply put, I have become more fully and obviously dependent upon him.

The world is bigger now. It is more rich with adventure, and with mysteries that lead to understanding. But I am small. More, I am incomplete. The heart I bring with me on the adventure is lacking—it is practically nothing, in fact—unless I allow it to be filled with him.