This strength usually depends upon our spiritual maturity, but not always. Love is something dynamic, even a person with a heart of love, can find that they are not promoted to action upon that love in every circumstance. What is good and right for one person in a given situation – might not be right for another.
You could liken the strength of such unction, in a broad sense, to a traffic light. In the U.K. traffic lights are red, amber or green – stop, get-ready and go. Using this analogy, we can broadly classify the different spiritual conditions of believers.
We will contrast these spiritual states with the typical challenging pulpit message – something which I call the “Just Do It!” message or the “Do It Afraid” message. “Do It Afraid” has become a popular cliché of Joyce Meyer.
We can also apply this analogy to people who are in particular situations.
Red
Red means that they are bound by fear and in this condition; they have no real strength of conviction in their heart upon which to act. “Condition Red” is a “stop sign” comprising of a closed heart and a closed mind. In such a condition there is no unction of the heart, but rather, a sense of guilt, shame and desperation of the mind.
Such people will probably have so-called dreams but they will be nothing more than baseless aspirations and fantasies. The “Do It Afraid” message can cause such a person to believe that they have to take one of these fantasies and force themselves to act upon it; or that they have to do what other people expect them to do; or they have to just randomly do “something” for the sake of doing something.
No amount of encouragement or even intimidation from the pulpit is going to be sufficient to break such a believer free from his fearful condition – it takes something more in order to diagnose the condition and implement a solution. If a person is in “Condition Red” he is bound to respond to the “Do It Afraid” message by wondering whether he is just being too apprehensive and if he is just going over-the-top with his excuse that he is waiting for the leading of the Holy Spirit.
Even a person, who has a heart of love, is bold and dynamic, can find that in certain situations, there is hardly any flow of that love. In such circumstances, they will be unable to respond in a certain way in that situation. For example, if a person comes up to you and ask you to trust them, love always trust, but for some reason, you find that you simply cannot trust that person and you end-up backing-off from that person’s requests.
There are times when I want to do something, like pray in other tongues, and for the life of me, I simply cannot do it. At such times, I am up against a red-light in the spirit.
Amber
Amber, I believe, is the condition which the “Do It Afraid” message is seeking to address. The intention of the “Do It Afraid” message is to address that condition whereby a person senses a motivation and conviction to step out and do something in their heart, but their mind begins to reason against it with “What if?” and we try to talk ourselves out of it, or we ask someone else for advice so that they can talk us out of it.
In summary, you could say that the “Do It Afraid” message is for the “Condition Amber” people who believe with the heart but doubt with the mind. In my experience, most neurotic Christians have a conviction or motivation to do something with their mind, perhaps out of a sense of frustration, impatience or guilt; but they do not have a strong enough conviction in their heart. Confusion arises when they hear the “Just Do It!” type of message that is really intended for people who are in the opposite condition: they have a heart-felt conviction but they listen to doubtful thoughts in their mind which are often sufficient enough to talk them out of what they know they ought to do.
A person might have a heart felt conviction regarding something which is strong enough and convincing enough to act upon. However, their mind is still judgemental and they are trying to reason-out the situation in their mind. Perhaps they have not done those things before and they are looking for some sort of guarantee as how things are going to turn out. As a result of this apprehension, they could be asking other people for their opinion, in the hope that they might give them a list of convincing, logical reasons as to what they should do. In the case of a believer seeking the advice of another Christian, they could be hoping for a “word of knowledge” or other supernatural means of guidance.
Unfortunately, in the case of seeking Christian advice, some believers are devoid of the Holy Spirit’s guidance themselves; as a consequence, they live their lives by going into extremes when it comes to church tradition and rules, as well as seeking the advice of other Christians. The result is that personal points of view, traditions, guidelines, rules and extremes get bandied about the Body of Christ. It really is like the blind leading the blind that Jesus spoke about. Other people in church do not know the will of God for your life, only you can know it for yourself, but you really do have to be sensitive to His leading. Otherwise, other people’s advice can send you adrift.
There are certain situations in which people find that they are equally able to pass-up an opportunity to take a certain course of action, as they are able to act upon it. I find this tends to happen a lot with something like prayer and the use of spiritual gifts, such as speaking in other tongues.
Green
Green is the condition whereby a believer has a good strength of conviction, walks in love, and therefore, is led by the Holy Spirit. Such people are not insensitive to the direction and wisdom of others, but they can discern the will of God for themselves.
Too many times we hear spiritual leaders saying, “Everybody should do this-or-that”. But it takes someone who knows the will of God for their lives and is not afraid of saying “no” – to just make a stand for what they believe and to do what they believe they are called to do. It is one thing to be given the revealed Word of God and even the testimonies and anecdotes of other Christians, but you have to be careful when such people attempt to make rules, guidelines and doctrines out of what they themselves believe to be true.
Do not just accept everything that you hear from the pulpit as being true – no matter who is speaking and however much you respect that person. Learn to accept everything you hear according to your own Bible study, faith and prayer-life.
There are times in our lives when we simply act upon something, without giving it a conscious thought. In such circumstances, there is a green-light in our heart and mind. But even if I have slight doubts in my mind towards something, if it’s a green light, I cannot help but respond. We need to get to such a place in our spiritual walk that we have a green light to the direction of the Holy Spirit, and a red-light to the things of the flesh.
In Summary
- Red: The conviction and compulsion is too weak to act upon.
- Amber: The conviction and compulsion is at a level whereby you are equally able, and likely, to ignore it or act upon it.
- Green: The conviction and compulsion is too strong to ignore, you simply must act upon it, or you act upon it without even consciously thinking about it.
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