Error 501. “No ignition.”
The code flashed at me from our broken-down gas boiler on Monday night. The coldest night of the year, so far: no heat and no hot water!
Thankfully, we have a great boiler maintenance guy who had the issue fixed by lunchtime Tuesday (I can give you his number!).
The problem? No flame. This meant no heat and no action from our central heating system. We had gas, water, radiators and pipes but all were worthless without the flame.
We are diving into our series on the Holy Spirit and my newly repaired boiler begs the question:
Are we in Error 501?
The Holy Spirit is the wonderful gift of God given to ignite our relationship with him, to activate all that Jesus has won for us on the cross and to power up our whole system to bring the light and heat of God into the world. Am I settling for salvation to be installed but not ignited, for accepting the truth but not living the life? Christian faith is a God empowered adventure in which the presence of God becomes a lived reality in our lives. We are intended in Christ to be normally and naturally supernatural. The Holy Spirit is God’s active agent in bringing heaven’s life into my life and his world.
Gordon Fee in his book about the Holy Spirit, “God’s Empowering Presence” says:
Salvation in Christ is not simply a theological truth, predicated on God’s prior action and the historical work of Christ. Salvation is an experienced reality, made so by the person of the Spirit coming into our lives.
Every believer in Jesus has the Holy Spirit installed but as Paul says to Timothy – we need to be fanned into flame. Ignited!
That’s not about extreme spiritual pyrotechnics or warm fuzzy feelings but about the Holy Spirit supporting us to know and live in the lordship of Christ and the love of the Father: to live and move and have our being in the realm of the Spirit.
That’s the wonderful life we are invited into in Romans 8:
The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” (v15-16)
“Abba”, is the heart-cry of the believer, given and nurtured by the Spirit. Human beings are deeply affected by our sense of belonging, of assurance that we are secure in love. To be adopted into God’s family is to find our hearts true home, to belong, in God. Brennan Manning has famously invited Christians to see ourselves as “Abba’s child”, the “beloved”. In other words, our identity is not ultimately determined by the losses and gifts of our human parentage but by deep spiritual attachment to God as Father. We can live as children, not as insecure orphans frantically seeking affirmation, competing for approval, jostling for significance and driven by anxiety and fear of rejection. The Holy Spirit bears witness with our spirits assuring and confirming through thick and thin that we are graciously welcomed by our Father in heaven.
This secure grounding sends us confidently into the world to share in the Father’s business of calling others to become his children and know his new life. The language of adoption was known by the Romans as the way a Caesar would appoint a successor, conferring upon them all the resources and authority to rule the empire and spread the reign of Rome. So too Paul’s language of adoption and inheritance tells us that we are called into the family of God to serve the purposes of God and to share the good news of the gospel as we go.
O Lord reignite us with the flame of your love!
Iain