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Series: Characteristics of the Jesus Movement for today

6. There was no one in control. 

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. John 3:8

No one was in charge of the Jesus Movement. No committee. No pastor. No central organization. 

To be sure, there were authoritarian types who stepped up in certain areas of the world, even some cults were born, but the overall movement was widespread and under no one’s leadership but the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is unpredictable, like the wind. 

There is a free flow to the Holy Spirit. Like the wind, you cannot nail it down. You can’t catch it. You can’t put it in a box. You can’t reproduce it or mass produce it. You can’t put it in a notebook, a seminar, or video series. The Holy Spirit is unique, creative and “out of control” compared to those who want to be in control (like the Pharisee, Nicodemus, whom Jesus was talking to when He brought this up about the Spirit being like the wind). Every person He fills is going to be unique just as every person God created is different. 

So that means that any new move of the Holy Spirit today is going to be a little scary, especially to those who like to control everything. But to Millennials and GenZ generations, this capricious nature of the Holy Spirit is attractive just like it was to us. 

When you minister in the Holy Spirit, you ask lots of questions. You don’t tell people what to do, you ask questions that allow people to find and develop their own answers. You walk along and work it out together. Allow the Holy Spirit to do the leading from inside. We always try to form from the outside, but that only makes people conform to someone else’s idea of who they should be. When the Holy Spirit forms us from within, we blossom. We open like a flower as we become, through the Spirit, who we really are — who God meant for us to be all along. 

The Holy Spirit is unpredictable and threatening to those who want to be in control, but to those who want to follow the Spirit, this becomes a great adventure.