An Exhortation

[DeanZF]

We had a word of exhortation this morning in our service. An interesting word. It came after singing Robin Mark’s “Revival”. Part of the chorus was the illustration for the word.

I can hear that thunder in the distance,

like a train on the edge of the town,

I can feel the brooding of Your Spirit…

Our congregation meets in a town where there is LOTS of train traffic, Olathe, Kansas. If we don’t hear a couple of train horns during the service, we usually are treated to several right after the service, in the parking lot and pulling away from church. We’re familiar with hearing the train on the edge of town.



The word was partially a confession about being sad to say that too often we don’t feel the brooding of the Holy Spirit and that lack of feeling the strong sense of His presence is a sad thing. We want and need to feel Him brooding over us. Do we even know what that means?



Brooding is what a hen does with her chicks. A hen lays eggs, one or two per day, until she has a clutch of them. She sits or sets on the clutch, keeping them warm, tending them, turning them, and arranging them so they all fit under her feathers. The eggs hatch one by one until the clutch turns into a brood of chicks. Remember Jesus’ words about Jerusalem, how He would have gathered Jerusalem as a hen gathers her chicks, her brood? It’s interesting about hens and chicks. Part of the reason for brooding over them is protection, but it is also to impart warmth, to keep the chicks at a healthy temperature until their little fires can burn adequately on their own. And one of the things that God did in His design of hens is to create their feathers in such a way that if the chicks try to escape, the feathers are going the wrong way and it’s hard for them to push past those feathers. They’re in there for their own protection, too, since they really do not know enough about the dangers “out there”.



How many of us long to feel that kind of presence, or feel it again? To be protected, to have our temperature regulated to match that of our God.



As with so many things about our God, this is about fire and passion. Robin Mark’s song also has a bridge that says, “Revive us with Your fire.” That’s it! YOUR fire, O God, is what I long for. I don’t want to whump it up on my own. That’s sin and really wrong. I want my passions for You to burn because of pressing in to Your heart, under Your pinions, under Your brooding Spirit. Kind of like the seraphim, the “fire guys” of Scripture, who blazed before the throne. Why did they blaze? I think it was because they’re described as going toward and fro-ward (away from, not forward, but froward), coming near to God and then having to back away because of the heat! I long to have Holy Spirit fire burning within me, burning in my bones, waiting to affect and infect my world, not just on Sunday within the four relatively safe walls of the church building, but on Monday in my work place, in the market, in the street, in my neighborhood.



Ignite me, O Lord, that I may burn with pure and holy zeal for You!