Sermon: Giving Up Control; Letting the Spirit Lead - Empowerment through the Spirit: The Charismatic Tradition

John 14.15-17, 25-26, 15.26-27, 16.7-15

Giving Up Control; Letting the Spirit Lead

Empowerment through the Spirit: The Charismatic Tradition

James Sledge                                                                                       August 24, 2014

The Christian faith has its share of pithy sayings and proverbs that people can pull out in particular situations. They are a mixed bag. Some are helpful, and some are not. Some do a reasonably good job of capturing some facet of the Christian faith and life. Some distort it terribly. Some of these take on quasi-biblical status.  Many people think the saying “God helps those who help themselves,” is in the Bible. It’s not, of course. It is in Poor Richard’s Almanac by Benjamin Franklin, but the saying itself predates him. And it’s contradicted by many biblical teachings.

One of my least favorite of such sayings is one you’ve surely heard. “God never gives you any more than you can handle.” I suppose that some find this helpful, but I also know that it can inflict a great deal of pain to people who are already suffering, telling them that the experience that is leaving them broken and shattered is no more than they can handle. I wonder what Jesus on the cross would have said to someone who “comforted” him with this after he cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Another of these little sayings gets trotted out when church people are in recruiting mode. When someone is asked to coordinate Vacation Bible School, teach a class, or take some leadership role but responds, “Oh I don’t think I have the gifts or abilities for that,” the recruiter may come back with, “God doesn’t call the equipped; God equips the called.”

If you’re not familiar with that one, you may want to write it down. “God doesn’t call the equipped; God equips the called.” It can come in quite handy when someone is on the fence, interested in helping but not certain she has what it takes. And while it can certainly be misused, unlike the previously mentioned sayings, this one is not only true but also biblical.

Our gospel reading this morning says as much. The Advocate, the Spirit will come and abide in Jesus’ followers. The Spirit will “teach  you everything,” says Jesus. “(The Spirit) will guide you into all truth.” As wonderful as it must have been to have been taught directly by Jesus, he says that it is to his followers’ advantage that he leaves them. They will be better off with God’s presence dwelling within them via the Spirit than they were having Jesus with them. And if Jesus is to be believed, those first disciples have no advantage at all over us. We can know all they knew, experience all they experienced, through the Spirit.

It’s only hinted at in our scripture this morning, but other places in the New Testament make clear that the Spirit empowers Jesus’ followers to do all sorts of things they could never have done on their own. Writing to the church in Corinth, the Apostle Paul says, “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” Everyone is given some spiritual gift that is an essential part of the body of Christ. And these are totally distinct from natural talents or abilities. They are, if you will, supernatural abilities.

I’m guessing that this term makes some people a bit nervous. Supernatural is not a word you hear bandied about very often in Presbyterian churches. For a variety of reasons, the Spirit has been the neglected member of the Trinity in Mainline churches over the years. We talk about God and Jesus, but we’re not quite sure what to do with the Spirit. Recent years have seen a big uptick in talk and interest in spirituality and so the Spirit. But even here, it is sometimes relegated to a very private, personal sphere, about my spirituality but not so much about the body of Christ and the work and ministry of the Church.

I recall a conversation I once had with a church leader about my wanting the Session, our Presbyterian governing council, to become a become a more spiritual body, one that spent less time discussing and debating what to do and spent more time seeking God’s will and guidance, discovering what God was calling us to do and so would bless and empower us to do. The person I was talking to looked very befuddled as I said this. She simply could not conceive of any way that church leaders could make a decision other than discuss it and do our very best to figure out what the right decision was. “God gave us minds and our reasoning ability,” she said. “We’re supposed to use those.”

I can certainly agree with that, but I can’t agree that there’s not more. God did not simply give us minds and some information in the Bible for us to do our best with. Jesus promises the Spirit, a presence who will be with us, teach us, guide us, and empower us.

When I was first called to be pastor here at FCPC, Shawn and I were having a lunch with the pastor nomination committee. Bitsy, a member of the committee, offered that one great thing about the process coming to a close was that should would no longer have to hear anyone talk about “discerning” who God was calling here. She thought she would scream if she even heard the word “discern” one more time.

If you’ve never been around the Presbyterian call process, you may not be able to appreciate Bitsy’s frustration with this bit of church-speak. Discernment actually has a very specific meaning that is appropriate to questions such as “Who is called to be our pastor?” But all too often, discern has simply become a churchy way of saying “decide.” Discernment is about figuring out how to let the Spirit guide us rather than us deciding, but very often, churches are so Spirit averse that discernment is little more than annoying, churchy jargon.

I get some of our nervousness about the Spirit. “Spirit-filled” churches are sometimes associated with over-the-top practices such as speaking in tongues and other ecstatic displays, things that we staid Presbyterians may find unappealing. But this is not the heart of the charismatic tradition. In fact, the words I quoted a moment ago from Paul were written to correct Christians at Corinth who thought speaking in tongues and such were the spiritual gifts par excellence that any genuine Christian should have. Paul demotes tongues to the bottom of the list and says that Christ-like love is the greatest gift.

But being turned off by Pentecostal excesses is not the only thing that causes us to hold the Spirit at arm’s length. I, and many other Christians, get nervous about giving up control, even to God. Trouble is, I can’t really be a follower of Jesus without doing precisely that.

I don’t know that it’s a foolproof formula, but a helpful gauge in measuring our openness to the Spirit is to ask ourselves about things we have done because of God that we would never have done on our own. Where have you said “Yes” to Jesus when your own intuition and logic said “No”? When have we as a church or a committee or governing council done something that our own discussions and rationality did not recommend but that we felt God calling us to do anyway? Where have we given control over to God, to the Spirit’s guidance?

When Jesus calls us he says, “Follow me.” And he blazes a trail that goes straight to the lost and hurting of the world. He shares God’s love with those on the margins. He suffers and is willing to die for others, even for enemies. And Jesus insists that the Advocate, the Spirit, will continue to lead us to those same places. Naturally that sometimes means going places we would never have gone on our own. But Jesus says that it is in such acts, in giving our lives over, that we discover true life. “Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

We are not on our own. That is both the wonderful promise that God is with us as abiding presence that fills us and makes us whole, and it is a call to entrust ourselves to the divine presence that leads us into full and abundant life. Trusting ourselves to the Spirit is not something we’re likely to learn from our culture which is so big on self-reliance and independence, and so we’ll need to work on opening ourselves to the Spirit, to the possibility of being transformed and led in new directions. We may need to learn some new spiritual practices such as lectio divina or particular methods of discernment. Some of you may want to talk with Diane, our pastor for spiritual growth, about opportunities at FCPC to learn openness to the work of the Spirit.

But of this I’m certain, the Spirit is eager to guide, equip, and empower you, and us as a congregation, to be and do what God is calling us to be and do in the world.

And that reminds me of one more pithy saying that I think right on point. “Stop asking God to bless what you’re doing. Get involved in what God is doing. It is already blessed.”


This summer sermon series is a six-part exploration of various facets of Christian spiritual formation. Today’s sermon focuses on discovering a life of empowerment through the Spirit and “The Charismatic Tradition.” Upcoming sermons will delve into the Social Justice and Evangelical traditions that add distinctive elements to a balanced spiritual life.