Advent 8 Are You Fluent?

[HKHaugan]

Advent 8 Are You Fluent?

 Recently we went to a symphony concert where prior to the performance there was a wine tasting session with about 25 people. It was a presentation of five wines chosen to complement the five different concert selections. Three whites and two reds of varying flavors were chosen. The concert director gave a brief explanation of each composer’s intention after which was an explanation by the wine connoisseur for the wine complementing each musical selection. Both the director and wine connoisseur were fluent in their expertise.

 When someone asks you if you are fluent in a language, they mean do you know the language well enough to think in it and act in it. Real fluency is the ability to feel the inner meaning of a word, phrase and its emotion in the context of any situation needing a response. Fluency is when you have picked up an impression, felt its intention and responded. We do that with our native language. I know a few words and phrases in a couple of other languages, but I am not fluent in them.

 There are other kinds of fluencies if you think about it. There is emotional fluency. The kind that is able to read emotional expressions and responses in others as in psychology and psychiatry. There’s mental fluency like mathematical fluency. You have ability to think mathematically. Of course, this is true of any field in which you have a skill. If it’s literature, just a nod is required to show you understand a theme or know an author. You hope the doctor you go to has fluency in medical diagnosis and treatment. People who build businesses have a ‘business-mind.’ Take any field of endeavor and the experts in that field think, feel and speak in the language of the field. You are fluent when you know the dialects, idioms, connotations, the nuances and the tones with which they are given. There is religious fluency where you know all the rules, regulations, observances, theology, liturgical forms, denominational agendas and their hierarchical figures including everything from atheism, Buddhism, Islam, Catholicism, Hinduism, Protestantism and all the ‘isms.’ But all that is religion…….

 My question to all of us who are believers in Jesus…Are we spiritually fluent in Jesus? That is, are we fluent in and for our relationship with Him?

 I certainly can’t answer that question about others. If I tried, I would reveal my hypocrisy by judging. Only each of us can answer that question. The question is a legitimate one. The answer is not determined by how much of the Bible I know and understand but on the reality of my intimacy with the God the Bible presents. And further, on what experiences I have had that I know only God could have made clear was behind the ‘life-support’ He has kept me on.  That ‘life-support’ is called grace. Is it really ‘amazing’ to me?

 But can we look deeper into our ‘God-fluency?’ Do we go to the Father through His Son Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit? Where is Jesus in my every next moment experience? Do I let His Word open the caverns of my mind and heart to let His light draw me closer to Him? Now here is a question I ask frequently of myself, do I embrace His words with the personal touch He intends for me to take personally whether it is correction or direction? Do I reach out to Him when I am not troubled, in distress and happy and thank Him? Do I rationalize, excuse myself, for thinking I fail because “I am only human?’ Do we see His Cross and our eternity together? Can we couple them? His life for my eternity? His Resurrection in my cross of faith?

 My spiritual fluency in Jesus never stops expanding if I am open to the gift of the Holy Spirit who takes my mind and heart into the nuances, the connotations and the dialects of His Scripture.

 Now here is the most important thing about fluency. His Word is a gift for each of us to help us be fluent in Jesus, more relational with Him, more relationally fluent with others and more special because of Him. Scripture is meant to be personal for each of us. Teachers can only teach but what we allow the Spirit to raise in our unique mind and heart is special for us. What it means for one person’s day and night will work out differently for others in their days and nights. We not only have a personal Savior in Jesus, we have a personal Holy Spirit to guide us on the way.

 We have a personal Father in whom we are covered by grace and love. Just like brothers and sisters in a human family differentiate as they grow, all of us do the same spiritually under the same Father, His Son, our Lord, and the Holy Spirit urging us on. Jesus is the ultimate example of what a spiritually fluent human being is like. We are made in His likeness to have an intimately fluent and unique relationship with Him. Every relationship therefore that seeks fluency is influenced by the fluency that come from the spiritual affluency of the Holy Spirit. It’s always uniquely personal and increases moment by moment in the willingness to let the Spirit move us in the newness of each hour and minute we have.

 The effluence of spiritual opulence is the influence of Jesus’ fluency canceling sin’s truancy, giving us the Spirit’s affluency to excel in relational confluency.

 In other words, the riches of Jesus come through the fluency we have in the Spirit. King David laid it out for all to see in Psalm 16…….

“Keep me safe, my God, for in you I take refuge. I say to the Lord, “You are my Lord; apart from you I have no good thing.”  I say of the holy people who are in the land, “They are the noble ones in whom is all my delight.” Those who run after other gods will suffer more and more.   I will not pour out libations of blood to such gods or take up their names on my lips.⁵ Lord, you alone are my portion and my cup; you make my lot secure. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance.   I will praise the Lord, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me. I keep my eyes always on the Lord. With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken. Therefore, my heart is glad, and my tongue rejoices; my body also will rest secure, because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead, nor will you let your faithful one see decay. You make known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.”