The Holy Spirit is not reluctant. He is not reluctant in the giving Himself, nor in making Himself known. He is not reluctant in transforming our lives, nor in the giving of His power. He wants to reveal God’s glory. He wants to do it through us.
The reluctance is with us.
The reluctance is in our heart. It’s our resistance to Him, our unwillingness to change, or repent, or be drawn into deeper relationship with Him.
The reluctance is in our dearly loved ways of thinking, where misconceptions and preconceived notions of Who the Holy Spirit is thrive. Men have made doctrines out of this.
The reluctance is in our self-affirming efforts and pride-filled entitlement. We are determined creatures.
The reluctance is in our self-asserting grabs for control. He wants control. Either we give Him all of it, or He will take none of it. There is no bargaining here.
The reluctance is in our fear and doubt of what may happen if we really give the whole of ourselves to Him. What might He start requiring of me?
The reluctance is our lack of trust. It reveals a great lack of trust. We more easily trust in men and the success of their hands, or even our own hands, than we look for direction from the Holy Spirit. Why? Because looking at the visible–the seen–is easier to believe, follow, copy, learn from, than the One Invisible, Ever-present, Ever-powerful, All-knowing-Teacher, the Holy Spirit.
The reluctance is in us. Not the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit wants our highest good, which is to be fully-filled with Him every moment, for every occasion; this is life led by the Spirit.
To fully lay hold of the Holy Spirit we must lay down everything else, surrender everything. The more surrendered we are, the more we are filled with Him, and the more power He makes available. This works with almost mathematical precision. There is no getting around it. It’s just the way He works.
It is not the Holy Spirit who is reluctant in our lives, but the many unsurrendered areas within our heart and thinking that builds resistance to His guiding hand. We too often limit Him and sometimes don’t even know it. We can have the best intentions yet still hold Him at a distance.
The Holy Spirit is a Gentleman and will not speak out of turn. He will not barge into areas of our life uninvited, that is, the areas we haven’t surrendered to Him. He wants to be a vital part of our lives, but He is waiting for our full surrender, where we acknowledge our vital need of Him.
He is not so much the reluctant God, as we are reluctant gods–small “g”–unwilling to surrender and give Him control.
We can have as much or as little of Him as we like. We chose. Daily we chose the level of our surrender. And daily we chose to invite Him in, or not…
