Two Wolves in the Context of the Spirit that lives within us

 

Read Acts 2

I am going to start with a story that most of you have heard a few times, if not from me, from someone.

The Story of Two Wolves

An old Cherokee chief was teaching his grandson about life.

“A fight is going on inside me,” he told the young boy, “a terrible fight between two wolves.”

“One is evil, full of anger, sorrow, regret, greed, self-pity and false pride. The other is good, full of joy, peace, love, humility, kindness and faith.”

“This same fight is going on inside of you, grandson… and inside of every other person on this earth.”

The grandson ponders this for a moment and then asks,

“Grandfather, which wolf will win?”

The old man smiled and simply said,

“The One You Feed.”

Today we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. We are not celebrating Pentecost, though some still do. We are not celebrating the end of the Feast of Weeks. In fact, much of the harvest is still in the fields.

Realize that on Pentecost and because of this culmination of these fifty days since Passover, many people from many nations were gathered in Jerusalem when the Spirit came upon the Apostles.

Because of the Spirit, communication was not a problem.  If you don’t know what I am talking about, go read the second chapter of Acts.

Let’s talk present day. When we professed Jesus is Lord, the Spirit came to live within us.

In your genuine profession , you passed from death to life in that very moment, and the Spirit of Holy God lives within you.

Guess what? The Spirit of the world also lives within you. So as in the story of the two wolves, we have a simple dichotomy.

Which spirit has our full attention?

For most people, it’s like watching a tennis match, back and forth again and again.  Spirit of God then the spirit of the world. God, world, God, world, God…

Before I depart this place, we might just have a Proverbs 3:5-6 Boot Camp.  What would that look like?

We would say proverbs 3:5-6 at least 100 times. Then we would take a break and say Hebrews 11:1 a dozen times then back to Proverbs 3:5-6 for another hundred or so repetitions.

It’s indoctrination for sure, but exactly what we need. Why?

Because the world is doing a better job of indoctrinating us than we are taking on the yoke of our Master.

It’s not like we have to walk to the temple chanting psalms along the way to have our encounter with God.

God lives within us. The Spirit of God lives within us!

Why are we still so vested in our own understanding?

The wrong wolf is winning far too often and we are without excuse for we know that the Spirit of God is within us.

We don’t have to feed the Spirit. We are told to fan the flames of the Spirit and if we do that, it feeds us.

Too often we find ourselves throwing water on the flames of the Spirit. What water? Doubt, our own understanding, and little faith.

You are going to hear this again in the next service. It is a Tomism, so chew on it before you accept it. But I’m not saying this because I wanted some filler. I don’t do filler. When I say what I was meant to say, I just stop talking, but take note of this.

The curse of modern Christianity is to acknowledge God, acknowledge Jesus died for our sins, and acknowledge that the Spirit lives within us and then live unchanged lives because we hold our own understanding in such high esteem.

It’s time to fan the flames of God’s Spirit within us. It’s time that our lives were changed by the Spirit of God that lives within us.

Amen.