A very interesting and exciting spiritual journey, adventure, discovery awaits us, if we try to slowly, gradually get out of a pandemic quarantine situation, not to focus on relaxation, but to reprogram ourselves in an innovative way, approaching the new situation in a different way. One way to do this may be to not only open and expand our narrowed fellow human beings, but not, of course, in the manner of a fidelity. We so liberated now, to the extent where we are trying to make up for the endured hardship by messing up all the missed appointments at once. No! Caution is useful and important in this regard.
Now, with an unusual notation, I denote a gap that needs to be filled at least as much, if not much more than to fill in the gaps in relationships. INTERIOR GOD’s space is what I mean. The narrowing of this inner goddess is inevitably manifested. The level of patience decreases, our emotional room for maneuver narrows. Uncertainty, anxiety, sits on souls and it also degrades the quality of human relationships.
We can come to a special connection: the more our inner God’s space opens, so much more can we receive God, His speech, gospel, etc.; the better, more stable we feel in our skin and this inner security affects our relationships, words, feelings, mood.
You can also re-tune our thoughts towards our whole outlook on life, our evaluation of life, and the future. The secret of increasing the inner God's space, and its driving force, is how much of the Holy Spirit we will be able to receive, how much we will consciously, faithfully claim and follow His guidance. The fundamental quality and marker of the expansion of the inner God's space, and thus of the future, is the Holy Spirit, the life according to the Spirit. And this is a fruitful life, not a dried-up existence. Its fruit: love, joy, peace, patience, favor, goodness, faithfulness, meekness… (Galatians 5:22).
What values, what treasures! However, there is direct proportionality in this as well: The more Souls, the more life, as the creation of the earth was the work of the Holy Spirit. For the 2nd sentence of the Bible is already a mini-hymn to the Spirit: the Spirit of God hovered over the waters, the shaper of the primordial matter He was by the will of the Creator (Genesis 1:2). And if the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, is such a force that, with spiritual influence, He forms a tremendous mass of matter into a life-bearing, human-receiving beautiful and suitable place, how could he do this with our lives? How could He transform fear, the darkness and the wilderness of insecurity, its insolence, into a life-affirmative, serenity-positive, positive goddess to its presence, and help us out of all our dark phobias? We are preparing for a celebration that expands the inner space of God, opens the Spirit horizon and perspectives, because this is what all Pentecostal is all about throughout history.
The creator of the inner God's space in us is the Holy Spirit
Jesus, as a caretaker, prepares his restless disciples with foresight for the time when he will have to go to the Father, not to be orphans, not to feel their desolation. He promises the Patron, the Spirit of truth, who “dwelleth in you, shall be in you” (John 14:17).
The Holy Spirit, who dwells in the disciples and in the believing people today, is the one who prevents or even eliminates and heals the narrowing.
After all, not only the narrowing of the blood vessels can be dangerous, but also the “narrowing of the gods”, the narrowing of the faith, the narrowing of love, which then goes through everything, our whole human existence. Away to the narrowing of humanity, to the twilight of humanity. This is what the Holy Spirit intends to counteract, heal in a preventive or therapeutic way - not just at Pentecost.
After the first Pentecost (following the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, approximately 33-34 A.D.), the expansion, occupation and shaping of the inner God’s space by the especially pneumatic Holy Spirit, began. As early as the beginning of the 2nd century, in the years 100-110, a non-biblical early Christian document was born, authored by Hermas, identified by Origenes, with Hermas mentioned in Romans 16:14.
In his work, Shepherd, he points out that the Holy Spirit dwelling in the human heart is the One who shapes our behavior, He is our moral teaching master, and thus the creator, caretaker, maintainer of the inner God’s space. In his book, Hermas puts it this way: “If you are patient, the Holy Spirit who dwells within you will remain pure, no other evil spirit can overshadow Him. If you find a clean home with you, living in you cheerfully and joyfully, you will serve God in you with great joy, for He alone carries His happiness. However, if sudden anger nestles in your soul, it will be a scarce place for the Holy Spirit at the same time, and since the accommodation will not remain clean in you, it will soon leave you”.
The laws of movement and the internal laws of the human soul do not work very differently today. He who receives the Holy Spirit of God takes into him the pure joy of God's service. And if anger strikes or is nestled permanently in the human soul, the joy space, the God’s space, narrows, and there may be such a scarcity that even the Spirit will leave it urgently. How angry, irritated, full of hatred, full of emotion! There is a psyche in people today. The anger is not in many, as it was in Jesus Christ, who was able to humble himself voluntarily, and therefore God exalted him, as we read in the beautiful Pauline hymn to Christ (Philippians 2:5-11).
Here we read of the existence and life-expanding effects of the good disposition of Christ.
Piety, unlovingness, evil tempers, cynicism, narrow the human interior. Sometimes so much that they exile not only God from within, but even themselves and life itself. How many such self-destructive God-exile are we witnessing after reading the number of suicides, the number of lives destroyed. What is the great call of the Holy Spirit, the reception of the Spirit of truth, the making of internal accommodation, for this self-destructive loss of space, the loss of life, to finally slow down and stop? Above all, we should ask: Come, Creator Holy Spirit, Fill our hearts with yourself!
Today’s counterpoints - creating a culture of oikodome, homeliness
Christian psychologist, Robert J. Lifton, wrote decades ago about internal dehydration, spiritual desertification. Psychic numbing is actually the internal narrowing of the human soul, during which the ability to experience and feel, the sensitivity, the receptivity, decreases to such an extent that human survival is endangered. This can appear in moral indifference, burnout.
Research has shown such phenomena among researchers, politicians, and developers of modern military technologies, who deal with the techniques of destruction on a daily basis, and their development, who move in a closed circle, in a narrowed outer and inner circle, and lose even more space is secrecy. Today, it can take many forms in everyday life, and mental dehydration can occur in an almost pathological, sickly way. For example, in cynical behavior or in sick narcissistic self-centeredness, in indulgence, in a very simplified feeling of life deprived of an emotional culture, in a way of life.
Too much money earned too easily can also narrow down the power imagined to be more than the positioned people have, either in business or at some level of political power, but somehow they have not grown up to their potential. Or too much information can cause an increase in insensitivity. Geiko Müller-Fahrenholz, a Protestant writer and theologian, wrote a fascinating and true book called Awaken the World years ago in Brazil, which was still very poor and had just begun to develop. Before the subtitle, Faith in the Spirit of God in the threatened world, he outlined, in a word, the real condition of life-saving inner expansion, the creation, expansion and operation of the inner God's space. He found this word: oikodomé - ecodomia - building a house, preserving the homeliness of the created world. Oikodomia with the family, homeliness to the flats, the congregation, the city, the nation. However, in his view, the creation of an emotional, relational, intellectual, ethical culture of oikodomé, ecodomy, home-making does not go any different unless the pneumatic precondition is first met.
And the premise is, "Ye are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwelleth in you" (1 Cor 3:16). Our body is the temple of the Spirit of God, and it is our daily great opportunity to be built as a spiritual house (1 Peter 2: 5).
If this inner building is not realized, if the inner temple, the spiritual temple, the temple of faith, is not built, then the inner loss of space is followed by the loss of outer space.
If the external moral space is lost, the internal aggression, the hatred, spreads like a tsunami, there will be no more barriers. If the negative flood cannot be stopped inside and outside with the God’s space, there will be a dam rupture in external relations as well. The creation of the inner God’s space, the oikodomia, the creation of homeliness in and around us, the working of a renewable and renewing quality culture of coexistence, are prerequisites for life.
That is why Pentecost is our most realistic quality-of-life-improving holiday.
The inner leadership of the Holy Spirit is the most necessary government that will prevent us, individually, communally, ecclesiastically, nationally, from running into the ever-looming crisis of a collision with a wall or a fatal chasm.
Therefore, let us pray before, during, and after the Feast of Pentecost:
Come, Creator Holy Spirit, Fill our hearts with yourself!
