Who needs spiritual renewal?

When you hear the phrase “spiritual renewal,” what images come to mind for you? Perhaps it’s a picture of people gathered and offering passionate praise to God. Or perhaps you imagine someone quietly experiencing God in a profound way, perhaps as they receive the sacrament or are deeply moved by a passage of scripture. There appear to be a vast number of other ways that spiritual renewal is lived out in people’s lives. The Holy Spirit seems endlessly creative in this regard.

More personally, though, what has spiritual renewal looked like in your life? Can you think of a time when you experienced God in a particular way? Have you ever shared that experience?

One wonderful addition to the recent Lift Up Our Hearts services has been the stories of grace told by lay people from across our diocese. Each person has shared how God has guided, comforted or challenged them. We heard how a young woman was first led to come to church, how two sisters were given hope during their mother’s deadly illness, how a new Canadian felt God’s guiding hand over his early years in our country, and how a leader of a global non-profit was shaped by his relationship with Jesus.

Kennedy Marshall, ODT

Dave Toycen, ODT

Jennafer Da Silva tells her story of faith.

For the last few years, my research and writing has delved into biblical stories of spiritual renewal. These stories have been a key catalyst in my own spiritual renewal. One story that I keep coming back to is the story of Cornelius, recorded in Acts 10. Since it is a story about Cornelius’s conversion, you could argue that it isn’t really a story of spiritual renewal as much as a story of an initial transformation. I’d love to present a case for seeing conversion as the primary form of spiritual renewal. But for now, let’s leave that question aside and focus on the spiritual renewal of the other key character in that story: Peter.

Peter had learned from Jesus over the entire course of his public ministry. He had witnessed Jesus’ crucifixion, resurrection and ascension. Peter had experienced both spiritual defeat and spiritual elation and had emerged as a key leader in the new movement that was Christianity. But God was not finished with Peter.

God used the conversion of a Roman Centurian to bring about spiritual renewal in Peter’s life too. Peter would have his view of how God’s Holy Spirit worked, and what the Church was to be, blown wide open. Peter witnessed Cornelius, a Gentile, being filled with the Holy Spirit, just as Peter and other Jewish Christians had experienced. The calling of Gentiles into the early Church would cause such controversy that it would result in the first Council of Jerusalem.

In the home of Cornelius, Peter experienced God moving in a new and shocking way. Both he and the other Jewish believers present were irrevocably changed that day. In truth, though, Peter’s experience of spiritual renewal had started a couple of days before, when he was given a strange vision through which God broadened Peter’s view of who was invited into God’s reign. The invitation was apparently open to both Jewish and Gentile believers alike! The vision from God showed Peter that he should not view anyone, Gentile or otherwise, as profane or unclean. The importance of Peter’s spiritual renewal for the trajectory of the early Church, and the early Church’s own spiritual renewal, cannot be overstated. It seems that even the first apostles needed ongoing renewal.

So, what about us? What does this story, written down almost 2,000 years ago, have to teach us today about spiritual renewal? I think there are at least three takeaways. The first is that God loves us too much to leave us where we are spiritually, even when we’re leaders in the Church.

Whether a new or longtime Christian, whether a lay or ordained leader, spiritual renewal is for everyone. It is an ongoing process in the Church across the ages. Charles Wesley (c.1707-1788) was instrumental in a global movement of spiritual renewal. Yet that movement began with his own spiritual renewal, beautifully expressed in one of his prayers included in our Prayers Through the Ages resource:

O thou who camest from above
The pure celestial fire to impart,
Kindle a flame of sacred love
On the mean altar of my heart.
There, let it for thy glory burn
With inextinguishable blaze,
And trembling to its source return
In humble prayer and fervent praise.

This brings us to a second takeaway from Peter’s spiritual renewal: prayer is foundational to all renewal. Prayers of confession. Prayers of repentance. Prayers of gratitude. Prayers of adoration and praise. Prayers of humble request. As Peter and Cornelius’s story shows us, both speaking and listening are key to prayer. In so many of the stories of spiritual renewal found in the Bible, the renewal begins with someone praying.

A final takeaway from this story: attending to what God is up to, often in silence and solitude, is also key to our spiritual renewal and that of the Church. What if Peter had written off his vision of “unclean animals” as a hunger-related delusion? What if he had refused to go to a Gentile house? What if he had ignored that the Holy Spirit had fallen on the Gentiles? God, in his love, would no doubt have used someone else to bring about the extension of the Gospel, but Peter would have missed out on his own spiritual renewal, and on one of the most pivotal and historic shifts within the early Church.

Whether we are new or seasoned Christians, God invites each of us to attend with expectation to what God wants to do in and through our lives. Don’t miss out on the renewal God offers you, and offers his Church, for the sake of the world He loves.