I often think of the image of the beloved Jewish character from Fiddler on the Roof, Tevye, lifting his outstretched palms heavenward, furrowing his brow in confusion. Wordlessly with these gestures he exclaims to his God, “Why?” I, too, have often found myself exclaiming to the Lord, “Why? Why me? Why now?” Too often when life runs amuck I have turned an accusatory finger to the Lord, instead of a word of praise. For a while, I began to believe that the Lord didn’t really care for me—He didn’t really provide for and sustain me in every moment and in every breath. He simply gave and took away the things I loved and cared about according to “His will.” Whatever that means. I stopped looking for Him and His grace in every moment of life.
I never believed I’d find recovery and reconciliation from this isolating perspective in African Pentecostalism. Living in South Africa for all of high school, I was surrounded by Christians who occasionally said things like “The bus came to my stop today, and I made it to work on time! Praise the Lord,” and “The Spirit is moving inside me—I feel it in my chest.” African Christians (not just Pentecostals) live and speak in a way that acknowledges the work and movement of the Spirit in their day-to-day experiences. There is creamer for their tea? “God has provided.” They have found a new job in domestic work? “The Lord has blessed His servant.” My experience in the conservative American church has been significantly less God-dependent. There is creamer for our coffee? A sign of a well-functioning capitalist industry. Someone is offered a promotion at work? They worked hard enough to deserve it. Western Christians have become so self-sufficient that they don’t have to look for God’s providence in all things. And yet when hardship befalls us, we turn in blame to our God.
Most will say that the reason Western Christians don’t think about God’s provision this way is due to an overall cessationist view of the Holy Spirit—we don’t believe that the Spirit works miraculously or with signs and wonders. Because we don’t believe the Spirit works in signs and wonders, we forget to look for other ways in which the Spirit works. I challenge the cessationist: is believing that you have creamer in your coffee in the morning because God gifted it to you as a sign of His provision and grace the same as believing a miracle has taken place? Unless the creamer has materialized in your refrigerator from nothing, God has gifted you this creamer by perfectly normal means; you had transportation to the grocery store. There was plenty of creamer available there. You had enough money to pay for the creamer. You brought it home and had a cool place to store it to ensure it stayed fresh. The harder thing to grasp is this: do you believe that God aligned all of these variables in order to enable you to have creamer in your coffee this morning? Is it such a stretch to believe that He purposefully ordained for you to have creamer in your coffee purely because He knows you like it?
Many cessationists live as if the Spirit not only stopped performing miracles but stopped working and moving entirely. It seems to me cessationists should be the best at recognizing the movement of the Spirit in “normal” ways. Cessationists should be the first to say, “I have creamer in my coffee this morning! God has provided.”
As a Westerner, it doesn’t come naturally to intentionally seek out little ways in which God has provided “normal” things in my life. It takes a lot of intentionality for a Westerner to see the world this way. However, as I have begun to remember to look for the Spirit in each moment, I have continually begun to find it more. All of a sudden, the Spirit is moving everywhere—including in my suffering. Beginning to seek the Lord in each moment has turned my accusatory finger into an outstretched palm of gratitude.