Pentecost 1a The Moments We're Made For Are The Moments We Live For

[HKHaugan]

The Moments We're Made For Are the Moments We Live For

“That got my attention” “That really spoke to me” “That hit me where I live” are all expressions describing when the heart has been touched. Perhaps it was a song, an article you read, a talk given or a person to person encounter. Could it have been an insight or a feeling of oneness or the awareness of something beautiful, heart moving and yearning? It's more than the mind understanding. It's an inner recognition that what was just experienced was non-verbal. It goes beyond words. Every human being has these kinds of experiences but it is Jesus who reveals the source, the way to live into it, to sort out and dismiss the bad from the good, the right from the wrong and the power to continue the experience. When that happens we are in a zone, a spiritual zone, the zone for which we were made, a relational zone, the Jesus zone.
Note the source.

It could have been the way something was expressed or it rung a bell with something in the past. Perhaps it pictured what you had been trying to put into words but now, whatever it was, 'spoke' to the moment. Imagine that happening every time someone you knew caused it to occur. It was real because the moment became a heart picture. So we have to ask, 'Who controls that unseen moment, the whole unseen dimension?' This must have been the question the first disciples of Jesus had. They were drawn to Him because He constantly rang that bell in their hearts. You can only imagine what it must have been like when the disciples were around Jesus. He got their attention. Every moment with Jesus was a heart moment. He touched each of them personally. This is true especially when you consider how each Gospel presents Jesus from each of their unique perspectives. Each of the writers had their own personal experience of Him. That is a message to us and how each of us knows Jesus in a personal way and that's the way it's supposed to be. Our unique individuality comes alive. We react according to what our personal circumstance was at the time we received Him and the effects of His presence in all the next moments He brought us out of the darkness we had been living in and gave our every next moment a fresh feeling.

Let's unpack that kind of occurrence. It is first perceived personally, it is read spiritually and then reacted to relationally. This is the way the Lord designed us. It's like when we open Scripture and that invisible reality breaks through to us. We can react with confidence because we know He is present and moving His Spirit within us in that particular situation at that moment.
This is what Pentecost is all about.

Each of us has been gifted with the Holy Spirit to react at the moment of challenge which is what every moment really is. Every next moment is a faith or sin moment. A moment alone or with others. Either we let the Lord Jesus direct it or we let sin dominate it. It's a faith or fear moment. Real freedom, bottom line freedom, is the choice to follow Jesus or self, the Holy Spirit or sin. It's our cross moment. It's a life moment or a death moment. It's an eternal life moment or a selfish moment. It's a light or night moment. This moment is why Jesus went to His Cross where His life and death hung in the balance with a six hour window in which every moment was a choice of escaping or accepting each moment of suffering with His Father in mind. But it wasn't only His life and death moments but ours as well, all of ours. He died for each of our every next moments where and when choice is dependent on us.

It's a moment to exercise the gift of our uniqueness with the Lord in mind because we were individually made for that moment. Every next moment is a self conscious moment where no one comes into these moments like anyone else. The Cross of Christ was the moment of moments where His choice was not just for Himself but for all of us. The way Jesus processed every one of His next moments before He went to the Cross was choosing His Father's will over the will of the temptations of His lonely human self consciousness. His daily life was full of Cross moments. The final Cross on Calvary was the summation of all His life's next moments each of which was lived and made perfect through faith. The Resurrection was the proof. He saved every next moment for us to experience Him and the gift of being in a unique relationship with Him. He is not only the Savior of every next moment He is the Lord over the moment, the Redeemer of the moment when we fall on our faces and the Forgiver who makes our every next moment a second chance moment. This is what salvation is all about, our every next moment lived by faith in Him.

That moment can occur anywhere any time. Anywhere any time is our location every moment we live in this world. We can tell immediately when we hit that moment because we will process it either with fear of faith. We are a Pentecost people filled with God the Holy Spirit who is the Spirit of Jesus. He is the Spirit giving us confidence, Resurrection confidence.

"For if, while we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to Him through the death of His Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through His life (Rom.5:10)!"