Devotional Thought – The Spirit’s Guarantee

20 Aug Devotional Thought – The Spirit’s Guarantee

“who also has sealed us and given us the Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.” 2 Corinthians 1:22

The Spirit’s guarantee is always found in the heart. It is more than just wanting to be good. It is a God-given desire to be more than what you are apart from Him. You see, the Spirit has great heights that rise before Him – heights of understanding and accomplishment, heights of Golgotha and the Garden Tomb, but its earnest, its down payment is a simple desire of the heart.

Just like Sharon’s Rose springs from the bud of longing, the first gift that God gives my soul is a sense of lacking, the realizing of an empty heart. It is that emptiness that tells me that I am more than some sort of animal. I am the highest, crowning creation of the Creating God. As such I bear His fingerprints on my soul.

The thing that predicts my greatness is not what I have, but the sense of what I don’t have. The first measure of me is the urgency of my heart’s cry. I only realized the Spirit’s coming at first by the sudden hunger of my heart. The only difference I discovered was the sudden change from being satisfied to being dissatisfied. No longer were the bird’s songs lovely, the flower’s fragrance sweet and the day’s light bright with beauty. The Spirit came, and with him Heaven’s clouds. They came and cast a shadow on my heart, but that shadow was the earnest of the light to come.

Why did the bird’s song lose its loveliness? Why did the flower lose its fragrance? Why did the day’s light lose its brilliance? It’s because when the Spirit came there appeared the glimmer of glory brighter than any noonday sun. My heart saw light coming through its prison wall and suddenly longed to be free.

My first thirst for Jesus is the heralding of His coming. The earnest of His coming is a shadow on my soul. The shadow on my soul is His shadow, for only by seeing Him can I realize how much my soul longs for Him.

In this world I must first realize that I’m hungry before I can experience the taste of food. However, in the Spirit’s world I must taste before I can know my soul’s hunger. That’s why it’s my hunger for Christ that is the earnest of His coming. I know by the longing of my heart that He must be near – even at the door.

It is the sound of His footsteps that causes everything else to go silent. It is the melody of His voice that makes everything else sound out of tune. It is the light of His glory that leaves everything else in the shadows. It is the sight of His beauty that has emptied my soul of its treasures and turned it desolate and cold.

What wonderful silence! What beautiful discord! What brilliant shadow! An empty heart is the prophecy of an abounding fullness! I will no longer fear the cloud because I now know that the cloud is the Spirit’s guarantee of the glory to come.