We can grow up learning about the good news of Jesus Christ in the Bible and have read and heard it many times. Yet it can still seem distant from us, like it’s out of reach, “floating above our heads”, or somehow unreal and separate from our experience. Or it may once have been very real in our lives, but has since drifted away from us, or we have made decisions to distance ourselves from it – “hold it at arm’s length”!
Then it can happen one day that the Christian message touches us like an electric shock! We know in our gut that its message of forgiveness, a changed life now, and eternal life in a new heaven and earth is the best, most wonderful thing we could ever have, and at the very same moment know that it is the most terrifying thing to ever lose this. With fear and great joy together, we take hold of that message and what it gives us with all our strength and will never let it go. This truth surges through us like an electric current, and makes us twitch with excitement, wariness and joy in turns.
This is when the Holy Spirit fills us; God Himself leaps inside our skin. Which is scary (it will turn our lives upside down!), but at the same time is the best thing that can happen, since He is our good, good Father, revealed in His Son, Jesus Christ, our merciful Redeemer. Then, what had seemed above our heads and unreal, is all of a sudden coursing through our veins, inside our bones, affecting how we think, what we say, and how we live our lives.
All we have to do is pray, trust Him, and stop resisting Him; He will do all the rest.
Grace and peace, Jonathan.