Ordinary to Extraordinary

Let’s face it. Life in the Spirit can feel ordinary at times. And yet, my friends, take note, this really is one of Satan’s greatest feats used to destroy us. If Satan cannot keep God from breaking in and saving our soul, he will do what he can to downplay what has happened. He’ll seed thorns that disrupt our sense of safety and rest (2 Cor.12:7). He’ll try to veil the glory of God in and around us (2 Cor. 4:4). He’ll flood us with riches and pleasures to distract us from spiritual reality (Luke 8:14). He’ll seize on any glimpse of sin: “See, you’re exactly who you were before, you haven’t changed at all.” (Rev. 12:10). Satan can convince us that a life invaded by the presence of the Holy Spirit, isn’t really all that different from any other life. He convinces us to perceive and define our lives by the past, rather than by the new creation the Holy Spirit is fashioning us to be. Yes, life in the Spirit can often feel ordinary. We eat and drink, work and sleep, and then do it all again. But none of now is the same as it was, not even our morning coffee or our afternoon snack. “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor.10:31). This glory doesn’t skip meals; it invades them. And who empowers us to eat, drink and do everything for the glory of God? The Spirit does. Now, we eat with the Spirit. Now, we drink with the Spirit. We work, play and sleep in the Spirit. Now, we walk by the Spirit. A normal day may feel ordinary, but below the surface of our perceptions, God is knitting together a new, miraculous, unfinished life in us…by His Spirit.

The Word of God says that if you belong to Christ, the Spirit of God lives in you. But His Spirit doesn’t hover above you waiting to help. He’s not waiting at a desk in heaven for you to call.  No, when God delivered you from sin and death, he not only invited you into his presence and family, but he came to live in you. He made a home for himself in your forgiven soul.

“Do you not know that you are God’s temple,” Paul asks, “and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” (1 Cor. 3:16). Do you know? Has the ordinariness of life made you forget? God is living in the ordinary, in your ordinary. Even if many aspects of your life stayed the same after you came to Christ, your family, your job, your neighborhood…something fundamental changed. Someone fundamental. God flooded every familiar and unremarkable corner of your life with Himself, with his Spirit. Feel the force of Paul’s wonder as he repeats himself three times in just a few verses:

You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. . . If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you (Rom.8:9–11). Here Paul is captivated by a reality we often miss or take for granted. God does not just love you, protect you, provide for you, and draw near to you; he dwells in you. 

If we could see all that the Holy Spirit is working in us and through us, we would not yawn or groan over “ordinary” like we’re prone to do. One day, we’ll have eyes and ears tuned to these miracles, but for now, we have to search for them…for Him. “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”(Jer.29:13) Whenever we reach out in faith to God as our Father, we do so by the Spirit. Do you have an impulse to pray when you feel tempted, weak, confused or discouraged? That impulse is not ordinary or natural; it’s a work of God.

Anything you truly understand about God, his Word, and his will are gifts of the Holy Spirit. Anyone can read God’s words and perhaps even make sense of the vocabulary and grammar and logic, but no one grasps the realities unless the Spirit moves. “Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God” (1 Cor. 2:12). We will never fully comprehend all God has done for us in Christ, but what we do understand now, we understand because of what God has done for us in the Holy Spirit.

“If you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live” (Rom. 8:13). Humans die in a thousand different ways, but sin dies in just one: by the Spirit. We may miss the power of these deaths because we assume, somewhere deep down, that we could overcome sin on our own…but we can’t and we don’t. If sin dies by our hand, it is only because our hand has become a mighty weapon in the hands of God himself. The Holy Spirit doesn’t only weed out the remaining wickedness in us; he also plants and nurtures a garden of righteousness. The clearest evidence that he dwells in us is not the ugliness he removes, but the beauty he creates. “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Gal. 5:22–23). In other words, he makes us more like Christ. “We all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image” (his image) “from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:18). 

Everyone in whom the Spirit lives has been given abilities for the good of other believers. Paul says of the church, “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good” (1 Cor.12:4–7). To each…not just some or many.  So how has God recently met a specific need through you? And do you realize, that when he does, he’s reminding you that he lives in you, by his Spirit.

Sustained love for Jesus only happens where the Spirit lives. Paul describes the same miracle in 2 Cor. 4:6: “He (God) has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” If we still love what we see when we look at Jesus, we see something only the Spirit could do in us. Do you see any gifting from Him, any victory over sin, any Christlike love, peace or joy? Do you still love what you see of Jesus? Then your ordinary isn’t as ordinary as you might think, because the Holy Spirit is alive and at work in you.

Yes, as believers you have the Holy Spirit now, but what you experience now is only a taste of what’s to come. The Spirit, Paul says, “is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it” (Eph. 1:14). Guarantee, meaning there’s more.

Whatever good the Spirit does in each of us now is merely an appetizer of what he will do in all of us forever. The Spirit living in us in this world is a taste of what it will be like for us to live in His coming world. Life in the Spirit feels mundane when we grow dull to miracles and we are not alert to the move of the Spirit in our lives. Yes, we live and work and love among thorns and thistles for now, but we do so by the strength and wisdom of God…until the day when He makes glory our ordinary.