Rolling In the Deep

Proverbs 20:27; 1 Corinthians 2:9-16; Psalm 42:7; John 14, Romans 8

This week has been interesting. There has been a swirling spiritual theme running through it all, the Holy Spirit. What has fascinated me most is not simply that the theme appeared, but how often it appeared, and how little it felt like I was forcing any of it. I have made choices, of course. I chose what to read, what to teach, what to pay attention to. But this week felt less like I was constructing something and more like I was being led into it. I began to wonder how much of this week was grace preceding me, and how much of my part was simply responding.

Part of it began with Scripture memorization. I made a deal with Jesus and Dallas Willard that I would go back and memorize every passage he used in his lectio divina exercises in his book “Hearing God.” The passages in front of me this week were Proverbs 20:27 and 1 Corinthians 2:9–16. At the same time, I have been leading our college-age ministry through a study by Francis Chan, and this week’s focus was the Holy Spirit. That study helpfully frames the Spirit as the divine third Person of the Trinity, the One who makes dead things live and living things flourish. Sitting in those texts and then turning to that teaching, I felt the whole week narrowing around one reality.

Then my daughter graduated from nursing school. During the ceremony, the director spoke over one of the students and used the phrase, “Deep calls to deep.” The moment he said it, something in me stopped. That was the phrase. That was the thread. Proverbs had already given me searching and inward parts. Paul had already given me the deep things of God. Our ministry conversation had already pushed me back toward the Holy Spirit. Now this line from the Psalms dropped into the middle of the week like a bell I could not ignore. So this week on Monday Night Raw, I want to work through this with you, because I think God may be showing me something important.

Proverbs 20:27 says, in the NIV, “The human spirit is the lamp of the LORD that sheds light on one’s inmost being.” The ESV sharpens the edge even further, saying that the spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord, “searching all his innermost parts.” That verse has been haunting me all week, not in a crushing way, but in the way truth lingers when it has found the right room in your soul. Willard seizes on that image and calls the human spirit the “candle of the LORD.” Under that light, he says, we begin to see ourselves and our world as God sees them. That feels exactly right to me. God is not content to deal only with our surfaces. He means to search us beneath performance, beneath religious language, beneath the curated self we present to others and sometimes even to ourselves.

That matters because most of us spend enormous energy managing the external life while remaining strangers to the inner one. We stay busy, distracted, entertained, and noisy. We avoid silence because silence makes us harder to hide from. But Proverbs speaks first about the human spirit as God’s lamp, and that prepares the way for what Paul says next. I do not mean that every recurring thought is automatically God speaking. Discernment must remain under Scripture, prayer, humility, and the life of the church. But I do mean that the Spirit of God is not afraid of the inward place. He searches what we bury. He exposes what we hide. He brings light where sin, fear, and self-deception would prefer the dark.

Paul takes the next step in 1 Corinthians 2. He says that God has revealed these things to us by his Spirit, that “the Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God,” that we have received “the Spirit who is from God,” and that apart from the Spirit a person cannot receive these things because they are “discerned only through the Spirit.” Then he lands the whole passage with one staggering line, “we have the mind of Christ.” That is the hinge of the essay for me. Proverbs names the lamp God uses to search the inward life, and Paul shows that the Holy Spirit opens to us the deep things of God Himself. Paul is not attacking careful thought. He is insisting that God’s wisdom must be revealed, not discovered by unaided human brilliance. The difference is not IQ. It is illumination.

That is why Psalm 42:7 matters so much here. “Deep calls to deep” is not a line floating in spiritual abstraction. It comes in the middle of storm language, with waterfalls roaring and waves sweeping over the psalmist. This is depth spoken from overwhelm. It is lament language. That actually makes it stronger, not weaker. The deepest places in us are not reached only in moments of triumph or mystical clarity. Often they are reached in sorrow, exhaustion, longing, confusion, and the ache that tells us surface answers are no longer enough. The line is not merely poetic. It is honest. There are places in us that achievement cannot satisfy, distraction cannot numb, and shallow religion cannot heal.

And then Jesus brings the whole thing close in John 14. He does not speak of the Spirit as an impersonal power or an atmosphere or a mood. He says the Father will send “another Advocate” to be with us forever, “the Spirit of truth,” and that this Advocate “will teach you all things” and remind you of everything Christ has said. That means the Holy Spirit is not a vague religious energy hovering around the edges of Christian experience. He is God with us still. He is personal, present, truthful, and active. This is one reason the Francis Chan material mattered so much to our group this week. It insists that when we speak of the Spirit, we are speaking of God Himself, not a lesser force, and not a detachable spiritual add-on to an otherwise manageable Christianity.

That also means the Spirit refuses to remain at the surface. He moves downward, into wounds, into fear, into conviction, into desire, into grief, into the places we have spent years trying not to name. Not to destroy us, but to make us whole. And if the Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead lives in us, then the Christian life is not sustained by willpower alone, but by resurrection power. The same Spirit who comforts also convicts. The same Spirit who teaches also transforms. The same Spirit who reveals truth also gives life where sin and self-protection have made us numb.

So maybe that is what God has been trying to show me all week. The Holy Spirit is always drawing us deeper, deeper than performance, deeper than appearance, deeper than nice religious language, deeper than collecting true ideas about God while remaining untouched by Him. He searches the inward parts. He reveals the deep things of God. He meets us even in the depth of lament. He abides with us as the Spirit of truth. He gives life by resurrection power. I think many of us are content to live on the surface because depth requires surrender. But I do not think the Spirit was sent merely to make us informed. He was sent to make us alive. The question is not whether deep calls to deep. The question is whether we are willing to answer.

Here’s three questions to close. As you pray through them, I will confess my answers…

Where have you settled for surface-level Christianity while quietly avoiding the inward places God may want to search?

I think I have often settled for outward faithfulness [or works] while avoiding deeper inward surrender. It is easier to stay busy doing good things like church, serving, parenting, work, or ministry than it is to sit quietly before God and let Him expose pride, fear, exhaustion, bitterness, or areas where my identity has become wrapped up in performance instead of dependence on Him. Sometimes surface-level Christianity looks very productive from the outside, but internally there can still be worry, control, distraction, and a reluctance to fully trust God with the hidden parts of my heart. I think God often wants to search the places I try to keep moving past too quickly. I am prone to rush through life…

In your own experience, what is the difference between knowing true things about God and receiving truth from God by the Spirit?

Knowing true things about God is intellectual. It is learning Scripture, theology, and facts about who He is. Receiving truth from God by the Spirit feels much deeper and more personal because it moves from information into transformation. There have been times when I already knew a verse or doctrine, but suddenly the Holy Spirit made it alive in a way that convicted me, comforted me, or changed how I lived. It is the difference between understanding something with my mind and experiencing it in my heart. One can stay at the level of knowledge, but the other produces surrender, worship, peace, and obedience. Me holding up my end of this looks like consecration…

How might your prayer life change if you really believed that the Spirit of truth abides with you, teaches you, and helps you in your weakness?

I think my prayer life would become more honest, consistent, and dependent. Instead of feeling pressure to pray perfectly or always have the right words, I would approach prayer with confidence that the Holy Spirit is already present and helping me. I would probably spend less time rushing through requests and more time listening, resting, and allowing God to search my heart. Believing the Spirit truly helps in weakness would also make me more willing to bring Him my confusion, exhaustion, fears, and failures instead of trying to appear spiritually strong. Prayer would become less about performance and more about relationship. My best prayers are on the 30-minute drive to work in the morning…

Deep calls to deep, my brothers.

Honestly, I think about it every time I take my son to the ballpark. It feels like we live there this time of year. Practice after practice. Game after game. Dirt on the cleats. Sun going down beyond the outfield fence. Another at bat.

And every single time he walks up to the plate, I tell him the same thing.

“Watch the ball and hit it deep.”

Funny enough, I realized this week that maybe that is exactly what the Holy Spirit has been whispering to me too.

Stop living at the surface.

Watch closely.

Go deeper.

Don’t settle for watching the pitch.

Swing away, son.

And when you do, hit it deep.

We like our beer flat as can be

We like our dogs with mustard and relish

We got a great pitcher what’s his name

Well we can’t even spell it

We don’t worry about the pennant much

We just like to see the boys hit it deep

There’s nothing like the view from the cheap seats