Some musings about the Spirit.

The other day, my wife and I had a wonderful conversation.

Here's how it all started.

I was thinking about my faith and Christianity and how I for my whole life had been brought up in the church. But others haven't, or they have been brought up in a different faith. When we talk about our faith to each other and especially those who don't share the same beliefs, we need to think more about where they are coming from.
So, here it is again, where the conversation stemmed from.

In my ADD mind, I was thinking about Christ and how God perfectly orchestrated his coming to earth at the exact moment that he did. I wondered about how things might have been different if Christ came into the world say... today.
Think about his story, think about if word about him traveled via social networks and word of mouth. My thought was, we would instantly rationalize it, and come up with a logical explanation for this Jesus guy. We would explain away his miracles and teachings.
So, my thinking.

When we share the gospel with someone who is a complete atheist, this is what we are asking them to do. Shed all of your rationalized thought and believe in something supernatural. Honestly, we probably would have better luck asking them to believe in aliens. Now stay with me. We, are nothing but a mouth piece, a tool, a part of the instrument. Have you ever taken the mouth piece off of a trumpet and tried to play it? It makes a horrible farting/quaking noise and that's about it. We are like that. When we run around town, slamming people in the head and yelling at them to "believe", we do nothing more that make a horrible farting/quacking noise.

Discernment and the Spirit. These are the game changers. Discernment as in , "Lord, show me who it is you would have me speak to, prepare in their heart a place for your message, not mine, to be nurtured and fanned into flame."

And the Spirit. Without the Spirit, our words are just that. Words, or a horrible quacking/farting noise. The Spirit is what takes those words and molds them into something beautiful, something that even the most concrete atheist will hear. Something of beauty. The Spirit tears down false rationalization, false teachings, false beliefs and prepares a small bed of tender for the spark of God to grow.

So, the moral, yes yes, go into the world and make disciples, spread the word of God into all corners of the earth. But do so with a prayer for discernment and knowing that you are nothing but a vessel for the Spirit of God.