By Zac Poonen.
The ministry of the Holy Spirit is the most invisible of all the ministries in the Godhead. He encourages and helps in a silent, invisible way, without even wanting recognition or credit for His work. He is quite content for people to praise the Father and Jesus alone, and to be left out of the picture altogether. What a beautiful ministry. What does it mean then to be filled with such a Spirit? It must mean that we will be like Him, content to have a ministry like His – silent, invisible, receiving no credit, and content for the credit to go to others. Are we indeed filled with this Spirit? Many who claim to be “filled with the Holy Spirit” today however seek such prominence for themselves through the exercise of their gifts on Christian platforms, promote themselves, and seek for money for themselves. All this is anything but the work of the Holy Spirit. All this is the work of some other spirit counterfeiting the Holy Spirit, and it is our duty in the church to expose such counterfeit and deception.
One of the aspects of heaven is seen in Revelation 4:10. There we read that the elders “cast their crowns down before God”. No-one but Jesus will have a crown on His head in heaven. All the rest of us will be ordinary brothers and sisters there. There are no special brothers or sisters in heaven. Those who seek to be special brothers or sisters in the church bring the atmosphere of hell into the church. We will also never boast of anything when we stand before the Father. Everything that we have, we will cast down before Him. In heaven, no-one will ever say “This is mine”, concerning anything he may have (not even concerning the crown that he received).
When the atmosphere of heaven begins to pervade our churches, we too will never again say concerning anything that we may have, “This is mine”. Everything will be considered as God’s and therefore as available freely for the spread of God’s kingdom on earth.
Every miser and every selfish person who lives for himself and his own gain is under the control of Satan. It is a great grief to God’s heart that there is no fellowship between millions of His children on earth. So many have bitterness against others. Others are self-righteous Pharisees who imagine that God has chosen only them and not the others. God is distressed with both these groups of His children – for they are all frustrating His purpose for the church.
The most valuable brother and sister in any church is the one who can bring the atmosphere of heaven into a church and who can build fellowship between the brothers and sisters in that church. And this need not necessarily be the elder brother. All of us have the opportunity to become such valuable brothers and sisters.
Think if there is a brother or a sister in a church, who whenever he/she comes into a meeting or into a home, is like a pure breeze from heaven blowing through the room. What a precious brother/sister such a person is! Even if he stops by and visits you for just five minutes, you feel refreshed. You feel as if heaven came into your home for five minutes! He may not have given you a sermon or even a word of revelation from the Scriptures. But he was so pure. He was not moody or gloomy and had no complaints against anyone. Such a brother may never speak first in a meeting (as many have the lust to do). He may speak fifteenth in every meeting perhaps, and that too for just three minutes. But those will be three minutes of heaven in the meeting!
Since the world is full of complainers and murmurers, it is so refreshing to meet a brother like that. It is just like having a bath, on a hot, sticky day! That is the type of brother/sister that we all should long to be like. Jesus was like that and He wants to make us like that too.