I've been thinking this morning about the movement of the Holy Spirit.  Most especially that part of it that is so attractive to us that we desire to chase it - Him - more and more.  But I find that as humans, we (and by "we", I definitely mean "I") have a tendency to need something a bit more concrete to chase.  Chasing a spirit is, well, hard work, quite frankly.  And you know, I'm never quite sure if I've got Him.  So to help me in chasing the Holy Spirit's movements, I think I (and by "I" I do mean "we") have a tendency to chase the medium through which we've last seen Him, and that is quite often a person - someone God has graciously chosen to use through whom He can channel His power and His presence.  This is the way that God designed our relationships with Him, and with each other.  We are to show God to each other, and to manifest His presence and His power through the use of our gifts and our obedience to Him.  That part of it is not wrong; it is beautiful and holy and awe-inspiring. 

Where we can stumble into a bit of a snag is in the chasing of that person or that thing through which we've experienced God.

For some reason this morning as I was preparing to do a load of laundry, I got thinking about Ave Maria.  Now, I'm a singer, so to me Ave Maria is an incredibly beautiful piece of music (well, two actually, Bach wrote the music (in one of the versions) and Gounod wrote the melody) and well deserving of its place of honour in music history.  But something this morning made me think of the words of Ave Maria - "Hail, Mary,
full of grace, the Lord is with thee.  Blessed art thou among women...," etc.  I'm sure that the subject of the Virgin Mary is a potential hotbed for comments on this post (which I would prefer did not appear), and please know that's not the purpose of what I'm writing here.  Because after Ave Maria, I went on to think about Mike Pilavachi.

Now, any of you who are familiar with Mike Pilavachi know that it's not a....natural thought process to go from the Virgin Mary to Mike Pilavachi.  But as I thought of our human inclination to grasp onto what God has worked through as opposed, perhaps, to God Himself, it made me think of Mike talking about himself as a minor Christian celebrity. 

Truthfully, Mike is probably a minor Christian celebrity, being the lead pastor of Soul Survivor here in the UK (and worldwide), but I should probably temper any irritation or judgment you might feel at him calling himself that by ensuring that you are aware that he was speaking, at the time, out his car window to a bison on the side of the road.  True story.  Apparently the bison wasn't paying enough attention to him and he wanted it to know that it was ignoring someone important.  (As a side note, I'm not sure it cared.  Probably it wasn't saved.  There's no other way to properly explain its lack of interest, really.)

Moving on from bison, however, the irony of Mike's words came back to me this morning.  Should there be any celebrity in the Kingdom of God besides Himself (not Mike, God)?  I don't think we can blame the people in 'public' ministry here entirely (if at all), but rather it is a good opportunity for us to each look at ourselves and ask the internal question, "What am I chasing?"  Am I chasing the Holy Spirit and the movements of God, wherever they might lead me?  Am I chasing a person and their ministry or the way they make me feel?  Sometimes those two things can look similar, especially if God is powerfully moving through a particular servant of His at a particular time.  But for their sake, and for our own, and most especially for the sake of the glory of God which is His alone, I think we have a responsibility to continually check our spirits and our motives as we talk about and chase any particular thing. 

Probably most of us do this anyway, and yet I felt it is something important to say, even as a reminder to be protective.  Protective of the humility of those God has chosen to lead us so that they are not confused or tempted to be prideful.  Protective of the holiness ('set-apart-ness') of God and His glory so that none share in His fame.  Protective of our own individual intimate relationships with God so that we do not allow absolutely anything to come between us and our Lover that will spark His jealousy or our distance.

Praise God for His servants - without them we would be wandering as lost sheep and far too vulnerable to the wolves in the world.  But God's glory is not is the shepherds themselves; it is only shown through the shepherds. So as we thank them and thank the Lord for giving them to us, let us not forget that we are chasing Him alone.  Only in that does the hunger inside of us truly get satisfied.