Last night I was watching a new show about critical care. It showed a man arriving in hospital with a suspected stroke, going straight to surgery and then the operation to insert a wire up through his groin into his brain to fish out a blood clot. It showed the clot on the end of the needle as it came out of him, and then - amazingly - it showed the live scan of his brain as the blood began to flow into it again : like the roots of a tree suddenly appearing on the screen and spreading out over a white page. Extraordinary. As soon as the chap woke up from the anaesthetic he was able to move the limbs which had been paralysed an hour before. Im not sure that I realised that a blood clot can be physically removed like that. I know people are given medication to thin the blood when they have had a stroke. But I seem to have missed the piece of information about surgery to physically go into someones brain and remove the obstruction. It got me thinking ( you are starting to see how my particular and peculiar brain is wired 😄) about blockages and the removal of same.
We all experience blockages from time to time. And Im not talking about the drains ( although I do have personal experience of blocked drains and know that this can be a deep trauma) But if Im honest I usually think of the blockage as being a road block in front of me. A person being difficult, a situation taking much longer to resolve than anticipated, something in my way impeding my progress. But what about the blockages which are ' behind' me? The ones cutting off the supply of life and air and sustenance leaving me progressively weaker and ultimately killing me. I suspect that these blockages might be more difficult to spot.
I've experienced a long period of ' wilderness' over recent years. I've felt lonely, old, useless, frustrated and frankly despairing at various times. It has felt as though I've been wandering in the desert just waiting for God to show up and tell me something.... anything.... anything at all. But I wonder, even as Im writing this, if Ive been suffering the effects of a 'spiritual stroke'. Maybe the lifeflow of the Spirit of God in me has been restricted so that only a tiny amount of power and hope and joy and peace and patience and goodness has been flowing in me. If this is true then what might have caused that blockage where once there was a full flow? Sin? Maybe. Lack of discipline? Lack of fellowship? Probably both of these. But I think more than anything else I have neglected the person of the Holy Spirit and have not exercised my own spirit by using the spiritual gifts Ive been given. Thus the flow of the Holy Spirit through my life has become sluggish. And Ive become somewhat paralysed.
The Good News is that Jesus knows just how to remove the blockage and restore the flow again. In fact I think He has been doing that for me recently and after years of feeling that nothing is happening, I now feel excited and full of anticipation for the first time in years. I've found myself speaking in tongues again (I have fallen into the trap of being infected by the christian culture here which seems to very much play down speaking in tongues) and I know that I need to pro-actively spend much more time in worship. I want to be a fully functioning, fully communicating, fully active and alive follower of Jesus. I want His life and Spirit flowing through me with no impediment.What's the spiritual equivalent of stopping eating cream cakes ?? 😀🍩🍦🍪🍰
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