It continues to amaze me how the Holy Spirit works through us.
When I work in a site like that, I can’t preach or talk about my faith. I work
for an organization that is not a Christian organization or faith based in any
way, though we do work within the faith community all the time. When I am
working in a church, I can be my Christian self, but when I am in a non-faith
based organization, I have to be non-faith based. It’s not hard for me to do –
I worked in corporations and the professional non-faith based world for many
years before I was born again and I know what those environments are like and I’m
comfortable there even now that I am so very much different in my own faith
beliefs. But the thing that never ceases to amaze me is that the Holy Spirit is
with us wherever we go, and His power works through us to let others know that
we are authentic and genuine and that we really care about them, even when we're not talking about God at all.
The other day I was working at a health fair in the Bronx,
and the Minister of Health at the church I was working with sent me a thank you
note afterward, saying how evident it was how much I cared about the people I
worked with and how much of myself I put into my work. All I can do when people
say things like that is to say, “Praise God,” and thank Him for His work
through me because I know that on my own I can do nothing. I don’t say that
because that’s what we’re supposed to say as Christians, I say that because it’s
true. God gives His gifts to us without repentence (Romans 11:29), but it is
the work of the Holy Spirit within us that brings those gifts to another level.
On the day of that health fair it was hot and I was tired – it had been a long
week and I was working on a Saturday. Because of the day of the week, the
subway ride took about two hours, and it takes me an hour to get into the city
from where I live. I kept thinking that I could have been in Massachusetts by
now as I stood on the subway platform and waited for another train. But
something happens when we “let go and let God” – that is a phrase that people
use so often to express the need to release attachment to an outcome in a
situation, but when it came to me just now it seems to mean much more than
that. To me right now, it is about knowing the goodness of God, of trusting in Him
completely, so that when we’re standing on a platform in the Bronx, waiting for
yet another train, we can be at peace and know that what we are doing is
something that pleases Him, because we are doing it with as much of ourselves
and our strength as we can.
God doesn’t ask us to be perfect – He knows we’re not and He
doesn’t expect us to be. He also doesn’t condemn or accuse us for making mistakes
or for not being perfect or for anything else that we may be accused or
condemned of by people around us. It is the devil that is the “accuser of the
brethren” (Revelation 12:10), and though some people may think they have the
right to tell you that you’re doing something wrong or that they’re “ashamed of
you,” or “disappointed in you,” or any of the other many devastating things
that people say when they think they have the right to say them, we always have
to remember that God is never ashamed of or disappointed in us. He may want us to
change something we’re doing, or to do something in a new way, but He will
never come to us with a word to bring us shame or to make us feel condemned or
accused. The Holy Spirit will always help us to know what is right to do, what
is the right way to go, what it is that would please God. I have to admit that
there have been times that I’ve messed up, but it wasn’t because I was
listening to God, it was because I wasn’t – I was listening to people instead.
I was talking to a man the other day, a strong Christian who
it was a joy to meet and spend time with in the Lord. He was sharing with me
his story of how he came to work in ministry after being a professional man
with a high paying job for many years. When he heard the call of God on his
life, he said that a Christian friend of his tried to discourage him, but then
he asked someone else, someone who seemed as far away from God as anyone could
be, and that person told him to do what he felt was the right thing to do. After
he shared his story, I told him that I had come to understand that I can’t go
to anyone for advice any more, and he finished my sentence and said, “We can
only go to God.” It is hard sometimes because people are meant to be sociable,
and it feels good to share our questions and troubles and challenges, our joys
and our successes and blessings, but if we are not careful, a chance word from
someone who we think we can trust could cast doubt into what we know we have
heard from God. Even something as simple as saying, “Wow, that must be really
stressful for you,” can make us feel like we ought to feel stressed when God
has said that we should be at peace. Or the person who keeps asking you about a
promise from God that you shared that has not come to pass yet. I had a
situation like that over the winter, and I finally said, “I’ll tell you when
there’s anything to report.” This person was calling me and calling me and
asking about updates – it was infuriating. Because every time they asked me and
I had to say there was nothing new, a little piece of my hope was chipped away.
My family is a family that always kept secrets. Sometimes
that was because they were hiding some things they didn’t want to share with
anyone because “you don’t talk about your business with the neighbors,” but
sometimes it was good stuff, things about our heritage, things about people’s
businesses and lives that are things to be proud of. I’m starting to
understand that there is value in keeping secrets – as long as God knows what’s
on your heart and you share it with Him openly, everyone else can find out when
they hear it in the news.
I went to a sale in a private house on Saturday. The woman
who was holding it has a business in my area that she buys and sells antiques
and vintage clothing and furniture and other things from people’s homes. I
bought some wonderful books from her that day, several Modern Library classics,
something that I always look for when I see books for sale. I’m one of those
people who still loves to read books – not on a Kindle or any other tablet, but
real books, and I really love them when they’re old. I learned about the
Modern Library editions from my mother, but what I had forgotten until I opened
them up when I got them home, is that my great uncle Howard was the book binder
for them. His name was right on the fly leaf, along with the publishers. It was
something I knew but had forgotten. I never knew him, but I’ve heard the stories
about that side of my father’s family, and I’ve seen photographs with images of very glamorous
looking people doing very glamorous things. They were Jewish, but I don’t think
they were practicing, at least I never heard that they were. But maybe that was
another secret, and it very well could be because at the time when they were
alive it was during the first and second world wars, and it wasn’t popular to
be Jewish then. My father’s father married an Irish Catholic woman, a real
beauty when you see her photographs when she was young. It wasn’t popular to be
Catholic then either, and Irish Catholics were considered to be low class. So
they pretended to be Episcopalian in their posh Westchester town and in their
summer home on Long Island, and my own parents kept their secret from us until
one of my brothers found out somehow and the cat was out of the bag.
I didn’t know what to think at the time when my brother told
me about it – we hadn’t been brought up with any religion at all in my house,
so I didn’t know what it meant. Over the years people had asked me if I was
Jewish and had told me that my name was and that I looked like I was, but I
didn’t know what that meant either. But then after I was born again, I was so
glad. Somewhere back in the very distant past, someone in my family walked
through the wilderness with the pillar of fire and the pillar of cloud and the
glory of the Lord all around them. (Numbers 9:17-23)
When I started to look up the Holy Spirit as I wrote this, I
found a commentary on http://christianbookshelf.org
by R. A. Torrey titled, “The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit.” He used that
passage from Numbers to describe how God will lead us, often one step at a
time, to the place where He wants us to go. In the article, he talks about the
importance of listening, and of allowing the Holy Spirit to speak to us in the
way that He wishes to guide us. Sometimes we want to hear only what we want to
hear, in the way we want to hear it, at the time that we want it. But “God’s
word is not chained.” (2 Timothy 2:9)
When we allow the Holy Spirit to move freely, we can experience a
freedom and a joy and a sense of adventure that at times can seem like a movie.
There was something in R.A. Torrey’s article at the very end
that to me was simply beautiful, “The Holy Spirit is willing and eagerly
desirous of doing for each one of us His whole work, and He will do in each one
of us all that we will let Him do.” I love to read and I love stories, and I was acting and writing plays when I was three. I've been an actress for years, but the greatest story I’ve ever been part of is
the ongoing eternal one that the King of Kings wrote before time began. When I
let Him do the writing and directing and I follow His lead, it becomes
something bigger and more wonderful than I could ever have thought of. I call
it Adventures With Jesus, and it’s the greatest adventure I’ve ever known.
Blessings,Jannie Susan
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