The Holy Spirit As an Interpreter

I've been a minister since July of 2001, so I have had plenty of opportunities to see God in action. But, I am only beginning to understand how the Holy Spirit moves in a person's individual life. I have preached many sermons on Sunday mornings and during Wednesday night prayer meetings. Most of the time, I feel like I do a good job expressing what God want me to express. For the record, the word of God always makes a great sermon. It's just that sometimes the preacher (me) doesn't do a great job of translating the scripture. But I discovered a really cool thing about how the Holy Spirit works on people during a sermon. The first time this happened was around 2002 or 2003. I had just preached a really good sermon from the book of Mark chapter 9, where the father of a possessed son stated, "Lord I believe, help thou mine unbelief!". I felt that I preached exactly what God wanted me to say and the Holy Spirit moved on the people to understand every illustration that I presented with clarity. After the church service was over, I was shaking hands with everyone and feeling good about how everything had turned out. But that good feeling turned to a slight bit of confusion. As I spoke to three different people, I received three different reviews of what I had said in my sermon. All three people told me that I spoke to them and that they were blessed by what God had revealed to them through my sermon. But they all had three different interpretations!

I discussed this with my Pastor. I told him how I specifically said one thing in my sermon, and somebody heard a completely different message from what I KNOW I said. He smiled and explained to me that what the people understood from my sermon may not have been what I was trying to say to them. But it was what they needed to hear in order to be encouraged. What I am trying to say is that the Holy Spirit took my words and adjusted them to the individual needs of the congregation. As a very elementary example: I was sure that I said apple. One person heard orange. Another person heard peach. Still another person heard grapes. But no matter what they heard, the fruit was still tasty and filling to them. What happens when you hear a sermon? The Holy Spirit will minister to you where you are. You may be further along in your walk with God than I am. Or, I may be further along than you. But we can listen to the same sermon, and both receive a message that is specific to what we need to hear. And we can both be blessed by it. Here's another way of looking at it. I can read a scripture in the Bible and pull a different meaning from it as a thirty-four year old, married, father of one than I did when I was twenty-four years old and single. At both ages, I was able to get something out of the scripture. But my life experiences have changed a lot over the past ten years. As a result, the scripture has been expanded for me in order to apply to a more expanded life. The Holy Spirit has allowed my eyes to be opened up more now at thirty-four because I need it more. As a result, I can appreciate what God is saying to me right now just as you can appreciate what God is saying to you. My prayer for you is that God will continue to speak to you in the way that you need Him to just as He is speaking to me. May we all continue to hear clearly the voice of God today, tomorrow, and forever!

Peace and Love,

Rev Mike





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