{"id":5294,"date":"2013-01-17T01:00:17","date_gmt":"2013-01-17T09:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.doorposts.com\/blog\/?p=5294"},"modified":"2013-01-17T00:20:35","modified_gmt":"2013-01-17T08:20:35","slug":"sticking-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.doorposts.com\/blog\/2013\/01\/17\/sticking-power\/","title":{"rendered":"Sticking Power"},"content":{"rendered":"

We live in a manufactured home — the kind that comes with built-in wallpaper — ugly<\/em> wallpaper. We’ve lived in this house for 17 years now, and it was the day before Thanksgiving (What a day to decide to paint the kitchen! What was I thinking?)\u00a0four years \u00a0ago before I finally got brave enough to paint over that ugly wallpaper. I had visions of the paint sliding right off the paper, or of it chipping off every time one of us bumped anything into the walls.<\/p>\n

\"\"The trick, I had finally learned, was to paint the walls first with an oil-based primer<\/strong>. With a coat of that primer on the wallpaper, the paint stuck fast, covering the worn and unattractive paper with a warm, welcoming golden yellow. I’ve suffered through the fumes of that primer many times since those first kitchen walls were transformed. The only wallpaper in the house that is left uncovered cowers behind the clothes in a couple closets.<\/p>\n

So my walls came to mind immediately when the pastor said we need to be “coated” with the Holy Spirit if the Word of God is going to “stick” when we hear it. I pictured rolling the primer onto our walls, and I remembered my relief and delight when the paint actually stayed put.<\/p>\n

God’s Word is a powerful, life-changing Word. We cannot understand it in our own wisdom, but must humbly rely on the Holy Spirit to give us understanding. The Holy Spirit stirs in our hearts and the hearts of our children, piercing us with the Word, transforming us with its power.<\/p>\n

Much like paint that will slip off of our walls if we neglect to prime them first, God’s Word spoken to our children without the softening work of the Spirit in their hearts, will slide off them without sticking. It is easy, even while we faithfully point our children to God’s Word as the source of all truth, to become proud and self-reliant, trusting in our knowledge, our books, our works, our consistency, and forgetting that it is only through the work of the Holy Spirit that the Word will accomplish its purpose.<\/p>\n

Praying for His work in their hearts acknowledges our helplessness and our utter dependence on God<\/strong> to bring any fruit from our labor.<\/p>\n