God owns a threshing machine

While I am not old enough to remember my farming family using threshing machines, we did have one of these monsters rusting away in our yard. Large and covered with wheels and gears, it was respected and considered dangerous. Mother warned that even though it was at rest and no longer working, we could be hurt if we fell inside a threshing machine.

Today’s devotional is about the baptism of the Holy Spirit. This is a controversial topic in Christian circles and I don’t want to get into all the views about what this means. However, I am certain that when Jesus came into my life, His Spirit came also. This is His promise to all believers. I also know that I cannot live or walk with Jesus apart from the grace and power that the Holy Spirit provides.

Scripture speaks much about life in the Spirit and how God’s people must walk in the Spirit and be filled with the Spirit. I am aware that God generously gives His Spirit to me, but if I sin, I become filled with that instead of Him. Each day I must repent of any sinful attitudes and actions so the Spirit can again fill me and use me.

That makes being Spirit-filled a daily event. Some think this is also a crisis event. That is, there comes a time when a Christian is brought to the end of their own effort. Then the Holy Spirit fills them for service and their life is never the same after that crisis. It is not about having the Spirit but about the Spirit taking charge in a new and fuller way. Those who do not agree with this idea say that all of us wish that God would “zap” us and we didn’t have to fight sin, but this event is not a biblical promise.

Today I notice that all four gospels quote John the Baptist promising that Jesus will fill His people with His Spirit. This is called a baptism, but it is not about water.

I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire. (Matthew 3:11–12)

I included verse 12 because it speaks of another work that the Holy Spirit does, a work of separating the wheat from the chaff. In this context, it seems to be mostly about judgment and how God will gather those who believe into His care and send those who do not believe into eternal punishment. However, there is an experience in the lives of God’s people where He works to rid us of the useless chaff in our lives. Does this purifying process have anything to do with this supposed work of Holy Spirit baptism?

John hinted at growing deeper in Christ when he said, “He must increase, but I must decrease.” (John 3:30). Paul also spoke of a change of priorities where he lost the sense of what was once important. He said,

But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith . . . (Philippians 3:7–9)

Today’s devotional reading also points to this end of self and of what Christians depend on to serve God. It asks if I have ever come to a place in my experience where I can say “not I but Christ”? The author suggests that I will never know what the baptism of the Holy Spirit means until I am at an end of my own resources and helpless, unable to do anything.

I’ve been working through a separate Bible study on repentance. God is showing me all sorts of things that are not right in my life. Today’s devotional touches the way this study is affecting me. It says repentance does not bring a sense of sin, but a sense of unutterable unworthiness. While helplessness is necessary for the fullness of the Holy Spirit, this realization of not being worthy even to carry His shoes leaves me feeling as if I am empty, without ambition, even as if I fell into a threshing machine. It is not a glorious thing and makes me want to run and hide. 

Yet even as I say that, the devotional author says this: “He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and fire.” John does not speak of the baptism of the Holy Ghost as an experience (i.e., a new power that I will feel), but as a work performed by Jesus Christ, “He shall baptize you.”

Then he adds, “The only conscious experience those who are baptized with the Holy Ghost ever have is a sense of absolute unworthiness.”

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Lord, I’ve known this sense of “Your power perfected in weakness” that Paul describes in 2 Corinthians. I’ve even taught others that when this happens, we ourselves feel our weakness, but others see Your strength in us. Even with feeling weak, this has been a good experience for me, up to now.

This week it seems that my words only scratched the surface. You are doing something in my life that is bringing that weakness to deeper helplessness. But I, in my flesh, don’t want to be helpless or feel as chaff being winnowed like wheat through a threshing machine. I know that You know what You are doing, and that this is for my good and Your glory, but there is no deep joy in my heart. Instead, I feel heaviness as in a spiritual war. I’m also feeling resistance and anger — and do not want to be unable to stand on my feet.

Some say that this could be about unconfessed sin or simply fatigue, but it seems more as if You are leading me through what some have called “the dark night of the soul” — a time when my longing for You will deepen and my faith is eventually strengthened. In regard to this testing, someone said, “Growing up in the Christian life, just like growing as a human person, is not all fun and games” — reminding me of that warning not to play on a threshing machine. 

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