(this is a cool analogy that I got from my cousins John and MaryLou Block) Romans 8:13 Gravity might be a good picture of the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives. By definition, gravity is the force of attraction between two physical bodies. The magnitude of the force is directly proportional to the mass of either or both attracting bodies. The greater the mass, the greater the attraction or force of gravity which draws the objects together. Objects such as the sun and other stars are so massive that their gravitational fields bend the light from other stars that passes by them. A black hole is thought to be so dense and massive that the infinitesimal energy particles of light (photons) are not able to escape its gravitational field and are pulled into the black hole. Like gravity, our relationship with God, as indicated by the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives, is proportional to the mass of God and the mass of God in our lives. In many ways, God is as big as our concept of him. A large god can do miracles, while a small god might sit on the shelf accumulating dust as our Bibles sometimes do. As for the mass of God in our lives, I'm not talking about the mass we think we gain when we do things for God. Instead, I mean the percent of my life that is committed and depending on God. I mean the God-mass I accumulate by daily and sincerely studying his word and thereby placing it in my heart and mind, the letting go of the mass of my own selfish desires and the freely taking on the mass of his will for me, the shouldering of the burden of prayer for others. The greater the mass of God and the mass of God in our lives, the greater the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Gravity also varies inversely by the square of the distance between the two objects. In other words, the force of attraction between them is divided (or weakened) by the distance squared between them! Think of having several choices of how far you will move away from your dearest loved ones; but because of physical problems (say, highway construction) and emotional factors, each distance becomes much greater, actually squared. Five miles becomes equivalent to 25 miles, 30 miles becomes 900 miles, and 100 miles becomes 10,000 miles. Likewise with the power of the Holy Spirit, the farther we distance ourselves from the person of Jesus Christ, the more difficult it is to hear God's promptings. But the closer we are, the more dependent we are upon Christ, the greater the force of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Interestingly enough, with gravity, if the distance between the objects is very small, the force of attraction is actually multiplied! Can we be so close to God that the power of God in our lives is actually multiplied? Through Jesus Christ we can! I don't know how far we can extend such analogies, but it seems that the laws which hold the physical world together often parallel the ideas that govern spiritual reality as taught in basic Christianity. Surely if we increase our own God-mass by depending on him through the person of Jesus Christ, and if God's mass relative to our lives increases through our faith in and understanding of his character, and if we reduce our distance from God by coming close to him through Christ; then we will know the power of the Holy Spirit as we habitually put to death the [evil] deeds prompted by the body, and live forever in his presence. |