Tag Archive: times


Wind and Fire

Upon reflection, I must disagree with you.
The Spirit still comes with wind and fire
To those who need His mighty touch,
Whether we are babes or long in the faith.
He is the I AM after all is said and done…
Great in power, mighty in deed,
Overwhelmingly here when He is manifestly present.
I will not dispute that He comes,
Quietly whispering peace to the soul’s distress,
But all of us need His unmistakable touch at some point,
To a degree that we cannot contain our reaction
Within some meekly restrained outward appearance of calm.
To rigidly constrain the Spirit as He flows through us
Is to quench the work that He is doing in us.

More times than not these days,
I find myself sitting still beneath His weightiness,
His unmoving, “I-AM-doing-something� presence.
I weep with the outpouring of His healing oil on me.
Even so, on occasion the sense of HIM, here,
Causes me to let go of my physical restraints
Till I am drunk with divine wine, and
He graces my soul with the joy of easy laughter.
Sometimes, the electrical shock of Spirit meeting flesh
Shakes me all over until my flesh submits and
The Spirit has His healing, life-changing way with me.

When He is done, I am more myself than before…
Just a little more light of heart, a little more rich with Him,
A little more deeply rooted in His all-sufficient grace.
There is no more refreshing experience
Than to be overcome by the Holy Spirit’s power,
But it is not the experience itself that is refreshment.
It is His explicit manifest presence and
My submission of self with all its flaws
So that I may know Him in the power of His resurrection,
As well as I am coming to know Him
In the fellowship of His suffering.

Threshing Floor

You sift the wheat from the chaff,
Separate the barley from the hull,
Till all that remains is Your harvest.
You call us all to let go of the stuff, the fluff,
The unnecessary things and habits we cling to
Till all that remains is Your perfect work
Forming us to Your character
So that others can see real substance in us.
You also separate those who turn away
From those who choose to follow…
Those whose hearts are not truly committed
From those who will never look back.
These are difficult times but
The winnowing process is meant to be hard.
The winds of trouble are blowing
Through the threshing floor now…
O Lord Jesus, let me be of the substance that matters,
Not of the stuff that You are blowing away.