wind thing

Friday March 21^st, John 3: 5 Jesus answered, "I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. 6 Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. 7 You should not be surprised at my saying, 'You must be born again.' 8 The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit."  You can gather some strength from the wind with a windmill.  The wind can refresh and cool you.  You can even put your keel in the water and let the wind fill your sails and move you through the troubled waters of life.  But you cannot harness the wind and bring it under your control.  The church can be refreshed by the spirit, it can gather strength from the spirit, the church can even let the spirit fill it and move it through trouble and chaos, but it cannot control who else and where else and to whom else the Spirit may go.  There is a tendency for the church to look at John 3 in a limited way, thinking God gave his only son for me and not thee for thee.  There is the assumption that if the spirit does not act in a certain prescribed way (which varies from church to church) then it is not really the spirit.  Good luck with that harnessing the wind thing, but take it from me, it doesn’t work.  Rather we are called to catch the wind that is already here, blowing and waiting for us to go where God is calling.