Mysteries of the Holy Spirit

"And I don’t for the life of me know how I got saved or how I ‘knew’ that Jesus Christ was God, after having doubts my entire life. And my ignorance here gives me peace. Because this is a mystery, I have to be content with never finding it out, and yet it should excite me to share the Gospel with all those who are willing to hear, with the hope that the God who directs fish into a net will one day drive a soul into His kingdom using me as a servant."

Today was one whopper of a morning.

I started by trying to begin my daily devotion reading, only to be plagued by a series of distractive thoughts that prevented me from focusing. As I put down my book and sighed with weariness at how much I hated my mind’s lack of ability to focus; I began to daydream. And since I wasn’t likely to focus on anything else for the next 30 minutes given my current mental equilibrium, I gave in to this daydream, and closed my eyes, as I drifted away into the powerful tide that my imagination has always been.

This wasn’t a regular daydream. This was a wrestling match with God, leaving me excited at its end, at having learnt something in the depth of the imaginary world I thought I was alone in.

I dreamt of being at some point in the future where it appears I was already married and had moved into a new apartment. But my future wife wasn’t the focus of my dream, much to my surprise. It was a criminal that tried to rob us.

I dreamt that this masked man tried to rob us as we were walking down this one alley. When he asked for my wallet, I willingly gave it to him, only to his dismay when he saw less cash in it than he had in his own pocket. Realising that he caught someone that was not loaded, he apologised, turned around and began to run, until I stopped him from doing so.

I asked him to take what I had because he looked like he needed it more than me, which made him look at me confused. I even offered to go to a nearby ATM and withdraw more so he could have something more. I think this was all he could take and he began to cry and turned away so we couldn’t see him.

Being so deeply moved by this man and how much love I felt for him, I asked him to come home for dinner. Nodding miserably, he threw his mask and crude knife in a nearby bin and followed us. We got him a fresh haircut, and some new clothes, post which, I was shocked to realise how young he looked, only to find out that he was a boy on the run from his parents who were trying to hurt him.

After bringing him home, letting him shower and feeding him a warm meal, my heart yearned deeply to share Christ with him, after he asked why I did this for him. Instead of answering immediately, we called it quits for the day and I got him a place where he could stay and work nearby and in the months that followed, took him through the redemptive story of the Bible.

He asked. I answered. I asked. He answered.

Weeks after weeks were the days leading up to this one night when this boy asked me how he could speak to Jesus. So I prayed with him and asked God to speak to him or touch his heart, but nothing happened. He looked confused, but eager to try again. So we prayed together and that’s all my mind could take before ending the dream.

Angry that this boy hadn’t given his life to Christ, I wrestled my way back into MY DREAM, and tried to imagine the process of him giving his life to God and experiencing Him, but I could not even begin to fathom how it happened.

So I got up from bed and went out for breakfast.

But I wasn’t eating alone. I passionately told God that this was something that He always did to me. It was Him who put these desires in me to share the Gospel, and I have begged countless people to give their lives to Christ. But I have received scorn, disappointment and derision for my efforts. People I thought were genuinely searching said that despite their prayers, God never spoke.

That was why my mind could not fathom how people are saved. That was when the truth of what Jesus said to a confused Nicodemus dawned on me; “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit."

And then it was crystal clear. I’ve been placing the incredibly heavy burden of a person’s salvation on my own efforts to lead them to God. It has crushed me and discouraged me to no end. And from the depths of the awe I was in, in light of what I had just learnt, came a voice that sounded like my own asking me why I had carried these burdens for so long on my own. It asked me whether it was I who was bearing the yoke of Christ or Christ who was bearing my yoke. It asked me if I truly understood the mystery of the fisherman. When Christ said that He wanted to teach His disciples to become fishers of men, it was I who misunderstood this. For us to become effective fishermen, we trust not in the strength of our net but in Him who controls the sea and the feeding patterns of fish. And then it hit me like a brick. I had no clue how fishing worked. He who can calm the storm with a word also controls the strength and direction of the tide and the movement patterns and feeding spot of aquatic life.

This made me reflect on my own salvation. How the heck did I even choose God? I couldn’t choose Him even if I wanted to, just as much as every unbeliever who says they prayed but heard nothing back is not responsible for this. God chooses people in light of their hearts and His sovereign will. We cannot understand this because we lack His wisdom on a person’s inner character. If this burden was on us, then it would be a personal loss every time someone denied God after we shared the Gospel, and then the fault of their disobedience and unwillingness to receive Christ is placed on our lack of skill. This is why the murderer, prostitute, thief and other sinners can sit together in church and worship the same God, because they would not be our inevitable choice of who we pick to evangelise to in the first place, and even more so because ONLY a God who made them could convince them to give up the ways they had known all their lives and embark on a life of suffering and sacrifice of their fleshly desires.

However, those of us who know we are saved know this because, after one point in our life, we choose to stay under Him even if we never hear from Him again. Like ‘strange’ beggars, we are content with one morsel from God at the time of our salvation and not another bite till death, rather than a fat meal every day from those who reject and mock God. It’s this persistence in my heart that drives me back into the arms of Christ every time I sin, fuels the revulsion I have at the mere thought of rejecting Him, the feeling of joy I get when I think of what He would look like when I get to meet Him, and the trust I have in Him when I have little to no earthly resources to support me; that proves to me that my heart is bonded eternally to His, unable and unwilling to ever be apart until I breathe my last.

And I don’t for the life of me know how I got saved or how I ‘knew’ that Jesus Christ was God, after having doubts my entire life. And my ignorance here gives me peace. Because this is a mystery that I have to be content with never finding out, it should excite me to share the Gospel with all those who are willing to hear, in the hope that the God who directs fish into a net will one day drive a soul into His kingdom using me as a servant.