Glowing Coals

Christian believers are like power lines. Power and quickening life come through them! (1 Cor 4:20) That is what Christianity is - we are in the power business. Evangelism is not about pushing ideas, or even about pushing doctrines.Doctrines are good, but like lumps of coal in the coal shed, they are dead. When put in the furnace they become glowing coals, releasing their energy, producing heat. The gospel is truth on fire! The Holy Spirit is not theology, but a person. It wasn't great thoughts which the disciples gave us, but their experience. People preach about the Spirit and analyse doctrines about him as if he were a specimen on the laboratory table. We have a lot of dead Holy Spirit analysis.Some so-called Christian teaching astonishes me. It suggests that the Holy Spirit went back to glory 1,700 years ago and retired from active service. But the Spirit is that person in the Holy Trinity who works on earth. If he no longer works on earth, what is he doing? Is the Holy Spirit just a memory?I don't 'remember' the Holy Spirit, just as I don't 'remember' my wife. I have no need to do so. She is alive and with me, and so is the Holy Spirit. We are in touch. We don't keep the Holy Spirit alive in our memory. He keeps us alive. He is our life.The Spirit of God is alive and active. Without him, the gospel would be an empty gospel. Our preaching would be no better than rattling a collection of empty Coca-Cola cans. But the Holy Spirit puts power into the gospel. He fills it with fire and love so that far from being empty, it overflows with the power of God. He makes the gospel full to overflowing.

The above exhortation is from the writings of Reinhard Bonnke. What do you think? Is that coal glowing in you?