CHASING AFTER THE SPIRIT is the essence of what Jesus said in John 3:8, “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.” There is an “element of surprise” or “air of unpredictability” that is part and parcel of following after the Spirit of God. You actually fly! Oswald Chambers said, “To be certain of God means that we are uncertain in all our ways, we do not know what a day may bring forth.” In other words, we ought to expect the unexpected if we are truly prepared to chase after the Spirit.
Scripture is full of CHASING AFTER THE SPIRIT.. Hebrews 11:8 says, “By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.” Abraham didn’t know where he was going or how to get there. It was a CHASING AFTER THE SPIRIT.
In Acts 10:20 Peter is praying on a rooftop and the Lord says, “Three men are downstairs. Do not hesitate to go with them.” Peter has no idea where or why God wants him to go with them. It was a CHASING AFTER THE SPIRIT.
In Acts 8:26, an angel of the Lord tells Philip to “Go south.” God doesn’t tell him why he’s going, where he’s going, or what he’s going to do when he gets there. He just tells Philip to head south! God was calling him into the unknown.
On the edge of medieval maps, cartographers inscribed the Latin phrase terra incognita or “unknown territory.” The naysayers and doomsdayers said that if you ventured too far you’d fall off the edge of the earth or run into two-headed dragons. That didn’t keep the explorers from venturing into uncharted waters, unmapped lands, or unknown territory. Andre Gide says, “People cannot discover new lands until they have the courage to lose sight of the shore.”
God is always calling us into terra incognita. He wants us to go where we’ve never gone and do what we’ve never done. God’s objective is to get us to go beyond what we know! That’s how we grow. That’s how we fly on the wings of God. Abraham Maslow said, “Growth often means giving up a simpler and easier and less effortful life, in exchange for a more demanding, more responsible, and more difficult life. Each step forward is a step into the unfamiliar.”
Want to discover the adventure of CHASING AFTER THE SPIRIT? Sign up for Agape’s 2009 church camp!
