Directed and Empowered

After His resurrection, Jesus promised the power of the Holy Spirit to be made available to those who would believe in Him - but this was not a new concept; in fact, in John 14, He said:
16 And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever--
17 the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you.

We have a mighty Helper who goes with us, but the pull of the flesh is strong, attempting to lure us to reject that help and to try to navigate this life on our own.  He has given us His Spirit to empower and equip us to walk in His way, a way that is shown to us by the "Spirit of truth."  So, the Holy Spirit directs us and He gives us the ability to fulfill what He has directed.  We can be bold and brave because Christ lives in us by His Spirit.

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It was highlighted recently on The Meeting House that the same power that resurrected the Lord Jesus 
dwells in the hearts of those who believe in Him. In the face of opposition, we can allow the Spirit to govern our responses...Romans 8 says:
11 But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.
12 Therefore, brethren, we are debtors--not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh.
13 For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.

The tension over COVID restrictions on churches in Canada, specifically the province of Alberta, has had several flashpoints.  Just this past weekend, authorities entered the Street Church in Calgary, and according to the Christian Post website, "Pastor Artur Pawłowski...shared a video of an encounter he had with local police and government officials who entered the church during a Passover celebration on Saturday."

According to the article:

Pawlowski told the officials that he would refuse to speak with them “until you came back with a warrant.” He called them “Nazis,” repeatedly telling them, “Gestapo is not allowed here.” When they refused to leave the church, he asked them, “Do you understand English?”

Other instances of Canadian enforcement of coronavirus rules on churches were outlined in the article, which stated: 

A church in the eastern province of Ontario was fined $83,000 for holding a worship service with more than 10 people.

Canadian Pastor James Coates of Edmonton, Alberta, was arrested in February for holding worship services in violation of his province’s public health guidelines. He spent about a month in jail before his release last month. He is currently awaiting his trial set to begin in May.

This incident prompted Franklin Graham to write on his Facebook page, "...I appreciate his boldness and tenacity in standing up for the rights of his church when police showed up without a search warrant...This is a reminder that, if we’re not careful, the coronavirus pandemic could turn the entire world into a police state. I am not saying that we should break the law, but I am saying that we must be careful to defend our rights and our freedoms—or we will lose them. We have seen this happen throughout history, so let’s be on guard against it happening to us."

Pastor James Coates of GraceLife Church in Edmonton, spent a month in prison for his church's COVID violations and awaits a May trial - his wife, Erin, went on Tucker Carlson's show on Fox News, and the FoxNews.com website quoted her:

"This is definitely not the nation that I grew up in," she told "Tucker Carlson Tonight" Thursday. "For a while, I think our freedoms have just been slowly stripped from us, and so slowly over time that we didn’t even realize it."

Coates said that her husband, a pastor who’s "given his life to sacrifice and love other people," being behind bars is not shocking to anyone, illustrating how Canadians are becoming desensitized to their stripped freedoms.

Faithwire shared that Pastor Coates used his prison experience as an opportunity to share the gospel; he recounted to a reporter: “Just to kind of show the affection that we had for each other, in the moment I was leaving, I turned around … and I lifted up my hand to wave,” he recalled, “and the doors of the pod began to shake as the men in their cells just banged on their doors as a sign of support, love, [and] affection.” Coates said, "I would have guys often come to my door and want to speak with me and would share difficulties in their life with me, and I would share the Gospel with them,” he said. “We’d be talking through a door to each other, but I would share the Gospel with them. That happened often, where guys would just come to me.”

The subject of restrictions during the coronavirus has certainly been a controversial one, and there are certainly concerns about authorities who are hostile to or ignorant of the practice of Christianity using their latitude to harass, persecute, and prosecute Christians.  Religious freedom and public health have to be balanced, and there is certainly the sentiment that the Church has been kept apart for far too long.  This has prompted legislation that was signed last week in North Dakota to keep that from happening, and even the Alabama Legislature has sought to limit emergency powers of the governor's office. 

We know that power corrupts, and sometimes that forces people to make poor decisions.  Mix in partisan politics and the desire to punish ideological enemies and you have the toxic situation that we find in our land today.  But, even though physical and spiritual powers are aligned against the Church, we know that we have the power of the Holy Spirit that emboldens us - the power that enables us to speak truth to power, as Pastor Pawlowski did, and to speak the gospel to prisoners, as Pastor Coates did.  Remember that God is with us, and as Pastor Randy Frazee highlighted on The Meeting House recently, the same power that raised Jesus from the dead dwells in us.  We can possess a determined reliance on His mighty power!