Stephen R. Covey in his signature 1990 book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” said that there are two points of view required of those who are making their way through a jungle. You need some people on the ground cutting the trail with the best tools in hand. Their focus is the next tree in front of them. But somewhere there must be somebody else who has shimmied up to the top of the tallest tree to make sure that they are still in the right jungle and moving in the right direction. Studying the Bible requires these same two perspectives. Sometimes it’s important to step back from the specific tree you’re examining (a verse, a word, a story, a concept) to take a good look at the whole forest (the big picture – the main point of it all).
I’m leading a weekly online Bible Study of I Corinthians right now. We go chapter by chapter, verse by verse, word by word, week after week. We let the text take the lead. We try to go where it goes. We try to think what it thinks. And then we talk about what it might mean for us as Christians, for our churches and the world, We’ve just made our way through the wisdom section of 2:6-3:4, and its discussion of “unspiritual” people (2:14), “spiritual” people (2:15), and “carnal” people, those who remain “babes in Christ” (3:1).
I live in Dallas, Texas, where the influence of Lewis Sperry Chafer (1871 – 1952), theologian and one of the founders of Dallas Theological Seminary, remains strong. I became acquainted with his teachings through my involvement with the youth group of a Bible Church back when I was in high school in Southern California in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, through an association with the Campus Crusade for Christ organization when I was a student at a small Christian College in Oregon that was right next door to the state’s biggest liberal arts university, and in the years I served as a youth minister at a church in a university town in southeastern Idaho before I went to seminary. My very first evangelistic attempts were made under their supervision, using their materials. Two of them featured rather prominently in the work, the “Four Spiritual Laws” [www.cru.org/content/dam/cru/legacy/2012/01/thefourlaws.pdf] and “Have You Made the Wonderful Discovery of the Spirit-Filled Life?” [www.cru.org/us/en/train-and-grow/spiritual-growth/the-spirit-filled-life.html].
Later I would learn that much of the thinking behind these ministry tools was Dr. Chafer’s. The “Four Spiritual Laws” tract was just a distillation and practical application of Dr. Chafer’s understanding of the distinction between “unspiritual” people and “spiritual” people at the end of I Corinthians chapter 2, and the “Spirit-filled Life” tract was just a distillation and practical application of Dr. Chafer’s understanding of the distinction between “carnal” people, those Christians who unnaturally remain “babes in Christ” when they should have moved on, and more “mature” Christians. Dr. Chafer’s 1918 book “He That Is Spiritual” [Spirituality.pdf (lewissperrychafer.org)] is a good summary of what he believed and taught about these things. These are ideas that have exerted great influence in the lives and on the “walks” of many Christians I know and have served as a pastor/teacher, and I find them to be a helpful way of getting at the big question of what it is that God is doing in Jesus Christ when He saves us.
William Blake (1757 –1827), the English poet and artist, wrote of a golden string that when wound into a ball will lead us to a gate built in the heavenly Jerusalem’s wall. One way of reading the Bible is to find that “golden string” (sometimes it has been better described as a “scarlet thread”) that runs through all its stories, characters, thoughts, and truths, and winding it into a ball, follow where it leads. If the Bible has a point, if the Bible solves a problem, if the Bible answers a question (and I think it does), then by tracing its story line back to its narrative beginning, we should be able to catch a glimpse of what it was that first launched it.
When Gardner Taylor (1918 –2015), the pastor of the Concord Baptist Church of Christ in Brooklyn for 42 years, was asked what the Bible was all about, he answered – “God is out to get back what belongs to Him.” When you wind the golden string of the Bible into a ball, where it leads is to the first chapters of the book of Genesis, to a garden and a rebellion, to a painful separation and a plan to repair the damage that’s been done. This is not the only way to read the Bible, but in the history of Christianity it has been one of the primary ways, and it’s the way that has made the most sense to me.
David H. Kelsey, a professor of theology at Yale Divinity School, calls this the “health-disease-healing plot structure” of the Bible. The opening scenes of the Bible in the creation stories of Genesis chapter 1 and 2 are pictures of cosmic harmony and human thriving where everybody and everything fits together perfectly in a web of mutually beneficial relationships that serve the interests and flourishing of all. “Shalom” is the Hebrew word for it, and at the center of this “shalom” are human beings in right relationship with God, the “maker of the heavens and the earth.” Humanity, male and female created in God’s image and after God’s likeness, is positioned as God’s full partner in the tending and keeping of the garden in the narrative beginnings of the story the Bible tells. “The glory of God,” wrote Irenaeus of Lyon (135-202), is “a living human being,” and this is the idea that the Bible’s stories of creation celebrate. Being human is good, as Psalm 8 extolls –
“When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars that you have established;
what are humans that you are mindful of them,
mortals that you care for them?
Yet you have made them a little lower than God
and crowned them with glory and honor.
You have given them dominion over the works of your hands;
you have put all things under their feet…” (vs. 3-6)
Our very existence as human beings gives God glory, but when humanity refused to consciously and consistently give God the glory that was due Him as Creator (Romans 1:20-21), the harmony of the created world, its “shalom,” began to unravel (Genesis 3:14-19; Romans 8:19-25). When you throw a rock into the middle of a placid pond, other disturbances quickly radiate out in concentric circles from its point of entry, and Francis Schaeffer (1912 – 1984), the popular evangelical thinker and writer, wrote about the disturbances on the pond of God’s good creation that followed in the wake of the story we find in Genesis chapter 3. He said the “great separation” between God and humanity (theological) narrated in Genesis 3 (the rock thrown into the middle of the placid pond that was Eden) “underlies” all the other separations we experience as human beings in this life and world – the divide we feel deep inside ourselves with our very own selves (psychological), the divide we experience with others because of race, gender, economics, culture and nationality (sociological), and the divide we feel with nature that is no longer a garden (ecological).
Genesis 1-2 are the narrative beginnings of the “health” thread in the Bible’s plot structure. Genesis 3-11 are the narrative beginnings of the “disease” thread in the Bible’s plot structure. And the story of Abram in Genesis 12:1-4 is the narrative beginning of the “healing” thread in the Bible’s plot structure, a story that finally leads to the Christ event (His birth, life, death, resurrection, ascension, sending of the Spirit, and return at the close of the age). This saving work of Christ is what “heals” us. This is why so many of the pictures of final salvation the Bible paints are of a “new heavens” and a “new earth” (Isaiah 65:17-25; Ezekiel 47:1-12; Romans 8:18-25; 2 Peter 3:10-13; Revelation 21-22). The resurrection of Jesus Christ marks this new beginning, which is why Easter was called the “eighth day” of creation by the early church. The newly baptized were told that in Christ they had become new creations, that the old had passed away and the new had come (2 Corinthians 5:17). This is the picture that baptism by immersion paints –
“…All of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death.We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the sinful body might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin.” (Romans 6:3-6)
Those who by faith are united with Christ have a share in His resurrection, the very thing that believer’s baptism by immersion “pictures,” and the “newness of life” in which we are called to walk as Christians can be understood as a return to the “fully alive” status of human beings in Genesis 1-2 that is the “glory of God” (Irenaeus). God’s work of salvation is an act of re-creation. God’s saving work in Christ by the Spirit restores our humanity. It changes us back into who we were always meant to be. As the Scottish Charismatic theologian Thomas Smail (1928–2012) explained –
“Grace perfects creation and does not abolish it; it brings creation back to the point it finds its wholeness, that it does not have in itself, in the re-establishment of its ‘koinonia’ (‘fellowship’), its shared life with God. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Jesus, and he comes to us clothed in Christ’s humanity, not to make us super-spiritual saints, or ascetic anchorites, or miracle-mongering supernaturalists, or chandelier-swinging fanatics – but quite simply to make us human… The concern of Jesus is for the wholeness of our humanity. The Spirit of the Lord is upon him and has anointed him so that he may release people and make them whole (Luke 4:18). The effect of the release of the Spirit in a friend of mine was later described (by his wife!) as having made him ‘far less religious and far more normal.’ If it did that, it was indeed a work of the Holy Spirit, for according to the ‘Today’s English Version of the New Testament,’ God’s Spirit ‘fills us with power and love and self-control’ (II Timothy 1:7). The Greek of the last word – ‘sophronismos’ – which the King James Version renders ‘sound mind,’ could almost be rendered ‘balanced normalcy,’ and this verse emphasizes (the fact that) this is one of the chief concerns of the Spirit.” (“Reflected Glory: The Spirit in Christ and Christians” – 1975)
The moment we become Christians by faith, “we have peace with God, …we obtain access to grace, …we rejoice in our hope of sharing the glory of God, and …God’s love gets poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which is given to us” (Romans 5:1-5). In the language of I Corinthians 2:14-16, this is what happens when we cross the threshold from being “unspiritual” people to being “spiritual” people by the decision of faith, and this happens in an instant, “the hour we first believe.” But it doesn’t stop there with this. Becoming a Christian is one thing. It’s a good thing, a momentous thing to be sure, but it’s just one thing, and it’s only the first thing.
It was often said in the early church that salvation is like a seed that gets planted in us when we first “repent and believe in the Gospel” (Mark 1:15). In time that seed stirs and sprouts, it flowers and leafs, it grows and begins to bear fruit. Becoming a Christian happens the minute one crosses the threshold of faith. But being a Christian unfolds gradually over time. This is why every picture of the Christian life in the New Testament is a picture of growth. Not only is being a Christian like a plant growing from a seed to a sprout to a harvest, being a Christian is like a building going up from a foundation to a superstructure to the roof, and it’s like running a race from the starting blocks to the course to finish line, and it’s like the growth of a human being from birth through childhood and adolescence to maturity.
“The central goal of all spiritual formation is the transformation of the disciple into the likeness of Christ” (Michael Avery). We are to grow up in every way into Christ (Ephesians 4:15); we are being conformed to the image of God’s Son (Romans 8:29); we are to put on Christ (Galatians 3:28; Colossians 3:12-17); Christ is to be formed in us (Galatians 4:19); we are to follow in the steps of Christ who is our example for life (I Peter 2:21). But this is a process. It doesn’t happen all at once. Just as Abram journeyed “by stages” to the promised land (Genesis 12:9 – NRSV), so we mature spiritually, only gradually “reaching to the measure of the fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13), slowly being changed into Christ’s likeness “from one degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians 3:18), that is, step by step, and bit by bit.
We made good use of Willow Creek’s “Spiritual Life Continuum” in the last church I pastored. This model came from Willow Creek’s congregational self-study back in 2007. Believing that Christians are supposed to grow into greater and greater intimacy with and obedience to Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior over time, Willow Creek tried to assess the spiritual maturity of its members by tracking their movement along a “spiritual pathway” that moved from the stage of “Exploring Christ” (the people in this stage have a basic belief in God, but they are unsure about Christ and his role in their lives) to the stage of “Growing in Christ” (the people in this stage have made a commitment to Christ, but they are just beginning to learn what it means), and then from the stage of “Growing in Christ” to the stage of being “Close to Christ” (the people in this stage turn to Christ on a daily basis for help and guidance for the issues they face in their lives), and then finally from the stage of being “Close to Christ” to becoming “Christ-Centered” (the people in this stage would identify their relationship with Christ as the most important relationship in their entire lives). Because this is a process, a journey, sometimes it can stall. We can get “stuck” in a stage. The “Reveal” survey at Willow Creek back in 2007 indicated that one of every four of its members thought of themselves as “stuck” or “stalled,” and this is how Paul described the Corinthian Christians. This is what Paul meant when he called them “carnal, babes in Christ” (I Corinthians 3:1).
Spiritual immaturity is a phase we all go through as Christians on the journey of faith. We should never be surprised when new Christians act like babies because spiritually that’s what they are. This is why Paul insisted that new converts not be made spiritual leaders in the church (I Timothy 3:6). Without instruction and experience, we are all subject to error and deception (I Timothy 2:11-13). The problem comes when, rather than passing through spiritual immaturity as a stage on the way to spiritual maturity, Christians get stuck in their spiritual immaturity by refusing instruction and failing to grow. This was Paul’s assessment of the spiritual state of the Corinthians –
“Brothers and sisters, I could not speak to you as spiritual people, but rather as people of the flesh (carnal), as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food. Even now you are still not ready, for you are still of the flesh (carnal). For as long as there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving according to human inclinations? For when one says, “I belong to Paul,” and another, “I belong to Apollos,” are you not merely human?” (I Corinthians 3:1-3)
In a parallel New Testament text, Hebrews 5:12-14, this same concern about the spiritual immaturity of its readers gets voiced – “Though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of God’s word. You need milk, not solid food; for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their faculties trained by practice to distinguish good from evil.” John Stott (1921 –2011), one of the principal faces and voices of 20th century global evangelicalism, made this same observation about Christians today – “Nothing troubles me more in the church today than our Christian superficiality. So few of us are mature in Christ! We deserve the rebukes Paul addressed to the Corinthians, for we are still babes when we should be adults, and need milk when we should be eating meat. While we rejoice at the astonishing statistics of church growth in some parts, our euphoria should be tempered by whether such growth is as deep as it is broad.” And A.B. Simpson (1843 – 1919), the Presbyterian minister and Founder of the Christian Missionary Alliance, shifted the entire focus of his ministry in response to the spiritual immaturity of the churches and Christians he encountered in his day. He wrote –
“Even the most superficial observer must have noticed in the records of Christian experience, and the observation of life, that there are two very distinct types of Christians in the world, in every age; one representing an experience of despondency, anxiety, doubt, inconstancy and frequent declension – a life so unsatisfying as to make one question whether it is really worth all it costs; and the other full of confidence, victory, joy, satisfaction, power and stability… There is not a congregation of Christians on earth today but contains the same two classes – the people who have simply come out of Egypt and are wandering in the wilderness… and those who have been filled with the Spirit and are walking in the light and joy of the Lord.”
The consistent expectation of Scripture is that Christians will “grow up into salvation.” Three times in I Corinthians Paul called the Corinthians to spiritual maturity (2:6; 13:11; 14:20), and in his first letter (I Peter 1:22; 25; 2:1-3), Peter explained that when we are regenerated (“born again”), the “good seed” of the “living and abiding word of God” gets planted in us, and as it is nourished, it grows. Diadochus, a fifth century bishop of Photice in Epirus (a city in a western region of Greece), explained – “Grace hides its presence within the baptized, waiting for the soul’s desire when the whole person turns wholly to the Lord, then in an unutterable experience it reveals its presence in the heart, …the fire of divine grace diffuses itself even to the exterior senses of the hearts.” But if neglected, that good seed while present lays dormant.
In his discussion of the “Personal Experience of the Holy Spirit According to the Greek Fathers” (silouanthompson.net/2008/08/experience-of-holy-spirit/) Kallistos Ware asked “them” (the Greek Fathers) if the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit that comes as a gift with repentance and faith at baptism (Acts 2:38) is a conscious experience, or “can there be an indwelling of the Paraclete (Helper, Comforter, Counselor, Advocate – John 14:16, 26; 15:26; 16:7) which is unconscious yet nonetheless real?” To answer this question, Fr. Ware first turned to the writings of St. Mark the Monk, an important fifth century Egyptian theologian –
“Mark makes a crucial distinction, summed up in the two Greek adverbs meaning ‘mystically’ or ‘secretly’, and ‘actively’. Initially, at sacramental baptism the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit is given to us ‘secretly’, in such a way that we are not at first consciously aware of it. We only become ‘actively’ conscious of this presence if we acquire a living faith, expressed through our practice of the divine commandments. In this way baptism plants within us a hidden seed of perfection, but it rests with us – assisted always by God’s grace – to make that seed grow, so that it bears conscious and palpable fruit.. While we cannot ‘add’ to the completeness of baptism, God nevertheless awaits a response on our part; and if we fail to make that response, although the Spirit will still continue to be present ‘secretly’ in our heart, we shall not feel His presence ‘actively’ within us, nor experience His fruits with full conscious awareness.”
When a Christian fails to grow and thrive, it creates a certain dissonance. There’s a gap between who we think are and who we actually are. We carry about in our heads and hearts this seed of our true identity and potential, but it gets challenged and contradicted all the time by what we do and how we actually are. We’re not the people we think we are. We’re not the people we want to be. We’re not the people we’re supposed to be. And this creates feelings of frustration and futility. It was a feeling of such emptiness that brought J. Rodman Williams, a well-known and highly respected Presbyterian theologian, to the place of seeking “something more.” In his 1972 book “The Pentecostal Reality” he wrote –
“At the heart of much of our life and activity a deep spiritual crisis exists. Despite multiple attempts by the church at reassessment and relevance, there remains the haunting sense of something lacking or unfulfilled and a feeling of spiritual impotence… Where, many are asking, is the dynamic reality of God’s presence? In an article appearing in ‘The Christian Century’ (May 13, 1979) entitled ‘The Power of Pentecost: We Need it More Now Than Ever,’ the author asks, ‘Why in every sector of Christianity today… [is] there so little evidence of spiritual power…?’ ‘I am haunted,’ he continues, ‘by the memory of Pentecost and its power surging into the hearts of the disciples long, long ago. Where is that power today? Can it come among us again?’ Then, finally, he adds, ‘It is time we took Pentecost seriously and eagerly received a new infusion of the Holy Spirit?’”
I believe that it’s this awareness of “something missing” that prepares us for the “something more” that the experience of the fullness of the Holy Spirit brings into our spiritual lives when the seed that gets “secretly” planted in us at conversion begins to stir and grow, bearing “conscious and palpable fruit.” It’s when we hunger and thirst for the reality of the things that we say we believe are true that we will to ask, and knock, and seek, and that’s when Jesus said that the fullness of the Holy Spirit will be given to us (Luke 11:13; Ephesians 5:18). So momentous can this experience be that it is sometimes described as a “second conversion.” The Rev. Joel Hawes )1789 – 1867), Pastor of the First Congregational Church in Hartford, Connecticut, from 1818 to 1864, described it as such –
“What is meant by ‘Second Conversion’ – It implies that there has been a first conversion; that is, a principle of true piety has been implanted in the bosom, but it has hitherto been there in a weak, imperfect form. The heart has been changed, but the change is superficial and defective. The repentance is sincere, but not deep and thorough. The faith is real, but not strong and controlling. The love is genuine, but inconstant and feeble. And so, of all the Christian graces; they exist in him who has had a first conversion, but in an imperfect, partially developed state, weak, unstable, unsymmetrical, and bearing but little fruit in the life. Now the effect of a second conversion is to take the subject out of this low, inadequate, and ineffective state of piety, and raise him higher, and make him more faithful in the Divine life. The antecedents of this change are often very similar to those that precede first conversion. It commences in a serious, scrutinizing view of one’s spiritual state and prospects. The subject of this change becomes dissatisfied with his present type of religion. As he passes through this second conversion as I call it, he seems to himself to enter into a new spiritual region. He sees Divine things in a clearer and more affecting light than he ever did before.”
Dorothy Day (1897 – 1980), Founder of the Catholic Worker Movement and currently in consideration for sainthood by the Roman Catholic Church, said that “Most cradle Catholics have gone through, or need to go through, a second conversion which binds them with a more mature love and obedience to the Church.” Billy Graham experienced this “second conversion” (find an account of his experience of it in Appendix 1), and so have I.
I was “sacramentalized” before I was evangelized, or maybe the right way to say this is that I was “pre-evangelized” by being “sacramentalized.” My good parents of true faith took me to church as an infant to be baptized, raised me in church where an “experienced” faith nurtured me, and delivered me to the “affiliative” faith of my confirmation when I was 12. My spiritual awakening happened in 1965. The seed of the Christian faith that had been sacramentally planted in me as a child burst into life when I became a teenager.
One of the catalysts that moved me from the “affiliative” and “experienced” faiths of my childhood to the “owned” faith of my adolescence was a televised Billy Graham Crusade in the middle of the night. When, at the end of his message, Billy asked us to pray with him, I did. I consciously invited Jesus Christ into my life as my Savior and made a personal commitment to follow Him as my Lord. Stephen Neill, (1900–1984), the British Anglican Bishop, used to end his parish preaching missions by asking people to “commit as much as they knew of themselves to as much as they knew of God in Jesus Christ,” and that’s exactly what I did that night after watching Billy Graham on TV. In that moment, my faith went from a theory to a lived experience.
Sacramentalized, I already knew that God loved me. The Prayer Book liturgies we prayed every Sunday in church saturated me with the claims of Christianity. I could recite the Creeds and rattle off the words of the Lord’s Prayer by the time I was in the first grade. But it wasn’t until my heart was opened and I prayed that prayer that these things moved from being outside of me to taking root inside of me. With that prayer, suddenly all the things I had been told all my life in church were true about God and how He felt about me became real to me. It was this evangelical awakening that kindled the fire in the fireplace of my spiritual life. Light, life, and warmth were all brought to my spiritual life when I welcomed Jesus Christ in as my personal Lord and Savior.
But everything in the “fire” of my evangelization was focused on the experience of conversion itself. I was so focused on that initial decision of personal faith that when I finally made it, everything that followed felt a bit anticlimactic. So much attention was paid to how someone becomes a Christian, that no one took the time to tell me anything about what it means to actually be a Christian. I got my sins forgiven. I experienced peace of heart and mind. I got my ticket for heaven punched. And then it felt like all that remained for me as a Christian was to spiritually keep my bags packed until it was time to go. But there is more to Christianity than this.
Explaining the teachings of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, Kallistos Ware wrote – “Our spiritual program can be summed up in the maxim ‘Become what you are’. We are already, from the moment of our sacramental baptism as infants, ‘Spirit-bearers’ in an implicit and unconscious manner. Our aim is therefore to acquire conscious experience of Him who already dwells within us.” E. Stanley Jones (1884–1973), the Methodist missionary and “Higher Christian Life” theologian, made much the same point when he wrote in his book “Abundant Living” (1942) –
“Here is where the Christian Church is weakest. It believes in and teaches the Holy Spirit— partly. The disciples were at this stage when Jesus said to them: “He [the Holy Spirit] remains with you and will be within you.” (John 14:17 ~ Moffatt). The Holy Spirit was ‘with’ them, but not ‘within’ them. The same is true today. Most Christians know the Holy Spirit is ‘with’ them— He disturbs them by momentary touches, by flashes of nearness, by illuminations and insights, by saving here and saving there. But all this is ‘with,’ and not “within.” He goads us rather than guides us, illuminates rather than invigorates, prods us into activity rather than penetrates all activities — it is from ‘without in,’ instead of from ‘within out.’ The capital and government is on the outside, rather than on the inside. This sense of outsideness will persist in religion until we enter into what the disciples entered into at Pentecost. There they passed over from the ‘with’ stage to the ‘within’ stage. Their religion was no longer a prodding, but a penetration; no longer a restriction, but a release.”
My conversion happened in 1965 after being “sacramentalized” as an infant and child. I then “received” or “made welcome” the Holy Spirit (see Appendix 2: “Entertaining the Holy Spirit” – Richard Sibbes, and Appendix 3: “Receiving the Holy Spirit” – Dennis and Rita Bennett) six years later when I was a freshman in Christian College. For six long years the Holy Spirit was living in the house of my life, but I wasn’t aware of His presence or plugged into His power. I wish somebody had told me sooner about “receiving” the Holy Spirit – about consciously and consistently “entertaining” Him.
The normal Christian life consists of both being “born again” and being “Spirit-filled.” Jesus Christ as the Savior came to do both. He is the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), and He is the “One who baptizes in the Holy Spirit” (John 1:33). But my spiritual life was artificially truncated for six frustrating years because nobody told me this. As the disciples of John the Baptist told Paul outside of Ephesus in Acts 19:2 – I hadn’t even been told “that there was a Holy Spirit!” And then, everything changed for me at a prayer meeting in a college dormitory room when I was encouraged to “receive,” to “make welcome,” to “entertain” the Holy Spirit, and it has made all the difference. Being filled with the Spirit (Ephesians 5:18-21) is part of the Gospel, and, in fact, it is what makes what is true, real for us, and in us. It is the experiential part of Christianity for which we who are looking for more than just theories about God but an actual relationship of intimacy and affection with God are so hungry and thirsty for.
At the end of his discussion of the difference between having the Holy Spirit “with” us, and having the Holy Spirit “within” us, E. Stanley Jones prayed – “O Spirit of God, I, too, long for this withnness – I would be every whit whole. I would have the seat of Thy authority within me. For I cannot conceive that Thou hast come so far in Thy redemption and wilt not come the full way. Thou wilt not stop on the threshold— Thou wilt move within. Come, Spirit, come — within, within, entirely within. Amen.” And we know that this is a prayer than God in Christ welcomes (Luke 11:13 – “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”).
Jeffrey Simmons was an Episcopal Priest who got irritated when some members of his parish kept urging him to go to a certain conference where he could “get the Spirit.” He finally wound up going, but resolved that he wasn’t going to let anybody pray for him while he was there. Dodging offers to be prayed over at every turn, and becoming increasingly irritated by the whole idea, he finally retreated to a quiet garden where he could hide.
“Sitting with my back against the trunk of a tree, I tried to sort out my feelings. I felt trapped (someone else had driven and I didn’t have a car.) I felt pressured and manipulated… But as the sunlight sparkling through the cool green leaves started to calm me, I became aware that I (also) felt curious and a little ashamed of myself for not being more adventurous. The theme of the conference, boiled down to the essentials, was nothing more than, “God wants to have a closer and more productive relationship with you, if you will just open yourself to receive it.” I couldn’t argue with that… so I sat under that tree for an hour and a half praying the hardest I had ever prayed in my life, ‘Dear God, if you have something for me that I don’t have, I’ll take it.'”
And he concluded – “This is a prayer for everybody. I didn’t have to join any faction in the church in order to pray it. It can’t, like some prayers I have heard, be used by one group to gain political advantage over another group. It does not imply that anyone else is inadequate or defective. It simply says, as I think Christians should always say, that God always has more for me, and I am standing before him with empty, receptive hands.”
Appendix 1 – An Account of Billy Graham’s” Second Conversion” – “A Personal Look at Billy Graham, the World’s Best-loved Evangelist” (1997) – Sherwood Eliot Wirt (1911 ~ 2008)
“During his visit to Britain in October 1946, a meeting was arranged at Hildenborough Hall in Kent where Billy was to be introduced to Christian leaders before his evangelistic tour of cities in England, Ireland, and Wales. He arrived in time for the closing service of a youth conference, at which the speaker was Stephen Olford.
…At Hildenborough Hall Olford preached a fervent message on the text: “Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the spirit.”1 When he had finished, he seated himself and rested his head in his hands. He became aware of someone nearby and looked up to see Billy Graham standing over him.
“Mr. Olford,” said Billy, “I just want to ask one question: Why didn’t you give an invitation? I would have been the first one to come forward. You’ve spoken of something that I don’t have. I want the fullness of the Holy Spirit in my life too.”
Billy told his biographer John Pollock, “I was seeking for more of God in my life, and I felt that here was a man who could help me. He had a dynamic, a thrill, an exhilaration about him I wanted to capture.”
They arranged to meet in Wales where Billy was scheduled to preach in a town named Pontypridd, eleven miles from the home of Olford’s parents . In a room in a stone hotel in Pontypridd, Stephen and Billy spent two days together. Billy told Stephen. “This is serious business. I have to learn what this is that the Lord has been teaching you.”
The first day was spent, according to Stephen, “on the Word and on what it really means to expose oneself to the Word in the quiet time.” They spent the hours turning the pages of the Bible, studying passages and verses. Billy prayed, “Lord, I don’t want to go on without knowing this anointing You’ve given my brother.”
That night Billy preached to a small crowd. The sermon was “ordinary,” according to Stephen, and “not the Welsh kind of preaching.” Billy gave an invitation, but the response was sparse.
The next day they met again, and Stephen began concentrating on the work of the Holy Spirit by declaring, “There is no Pentecost without Calvary,” and that we “must be broken” like the apostle Paul, who declared himself “crucified with Christ.” He then told Billy how God completely turned his life inside out. It was, he said, “an experience of the Holy Spirit in His fullness and anointing.” He explained that “where the Spirit is truly Lord over the life, there is liberty, there is release — the sublime freedom of complete submission of oneself in a continuous state of surrender to the indwelling of God’s Holy Spirit.”
According to Stephen, Billy cried, “Stephen, I see it. That’s what I want.” His eyes filled with tears — something rare with Billy. It seems he had no appetite that day, only taking a sip of water occasionally. Stephen continued to expound the meaning of the filling of the Spirit in the life of a believer. He said it meant “bowing daily and hourly to the sovereignty of Christ and to the authority of the Word.”
From talking and discussing, the two men went to their knees praying and praising. It was about midafternoon on the second day that Billy began pouring out his heart “in a prayer of total dedication to the Lord.” According to Stephen, ‘all heaven broke loose in that dreary little room. It was like Jacob laying hold of God and crying , ‘Lord, I will not let Thee go except Thou bless me.’
They came to a time of rest from prayer. Billy exclaimed, “My heart is so flooded with the Holy Spirit!” They alternately wept and laughed, and Billy began walking back and forth across the room, saying, “I have it! I’m filled. I’m filled. This is the turning point of my life. This will revolutionize my ministry.”
Said Olford, ‘That night Billy was to speak at a large Baptist church nearby. When he rose to preach, he was a man absolutely anointed.’ Billy’s Welsh audience seemed to sense it. They came forward to pray even before the invitation was given. Later when it was given, Olford said, ‘The Welsh listeners jammed the aisles. There was chaos. Practically the entire audience came rushing forward.’
Stephen drove back to his parents’ home that night, deeply moved by Billy’s new authority and strength. ‘When I came in the door,’ he said later, ‘my father looked at my face and asked, ‘What on earth has happened?’
‘I sat down at the kitchen table said, ‘Dad, something has happened to Billy Graham. The world is going to hear from his man. He is going to make his mark in history.’ The heavenly reservoir had overflowed. A close colleague of Billy’s before Pontypridd, Chuck Templeton, heard the young preacher after that experience. Astonished, Templeton remarked that Billy’s preaching had taken on ‘a certain magnificence of effect…fascinating…really impressive.’”
Appendix 2 – “Entertaining the Holy Spirit” | Richard Sibbes (1577-1635)
Richard Sibbes (1577-1635), a Puritan “Divine” (synonym for “Theologian”), believed that the Holy Spirit must be “an integral part of our lives, our churches, and our world,” and that the way that this happened was through what he called “entertaining” the Holy Spirit in every facet of our life and experience. For Richard Sibbes, “entertaining the Holy Spirit meant to welcome with hospitality and then to nurture our friendship with the indwelling Spirit.” The Holy Spirit is the agent of conversion. It is the basic work of the Holy Spirit to take the objective work of the salvation that God in Jesus Christ has accomplished in history on the cross and out of the empty tomb, and to subjectively apply it individually to our hearts and corporately to the church. The Spirit convicts us of sin and then draws us to believe, and when we do, the Holy Spirit then takes up residence in our hearts to assure us that we are the children of God and to direct the process of sanctification by which we are increasingly conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. It is this “indwelling Spirit” who must be “entertained” by us, that is, the presence of the Holy Spirit in us is something that we must consciously welcome and then consistently acknowledge. Just like a “bad marriage” in which one partner can take advantage of the other partner’s contributions while failing to appreciate him or her, it is possible for us as Christians to “grieve the Holy Spirit” (Ephesians 4:30) and to “quench the Holy Spirit” (I Thessalonians 5:19) by presuming on the Spirit’s presence and power in our lives without being aware of them or appreciative for them, and so Richard Sibbes urged Christians to “make a daily effort to appreciate the Holy Spirit.”
Appendix 3 – “Receiving the Holy Spirit” – Dennis and Rita Bennett
What Richard Sibbes wrote about “entertaining the Holy Spirit” in the early seventeenth century, Dennis and Rita Bennett wrote about in their book “The Holy Spirit and You” (Logos – 1971) at the beginning of the Charismatic Movement in America Christianity in the mid twentieth century.
“Some are puzzled by the term ‘receiving the Holy Spirit.”’ A Christian may ask the question: ‘How can I receive the Holy Spirit when I already have Him living in me?’ (The indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit – the ‘gift of the Holy Spirit’ – is ‘part of the package’ of conversion – Acts 2:37-38; Romans 8:9; I Corinthians 12:3; Galatians 3:1-5). We all know what it means to ‘receive a person. Let us imagine the Brown household. It is 5:40 p.m., and Mr. Brown has just come home from work, and is taking a shower before supper. Mrs. Brown is putting the finishing touches on an especially nice meal, for the Browns have invited the Joneses over to eat. Their guests are scheduled to arrive at 6:00 p.m., but alas, at 5:45 comes a ring ar the doorbell. Mrs. Brown flutters a little – she isn’t through with the gravy; she has flour on the end of her nose; and her hair is a mess!
“Susie?” she calls to her daughter, “for goodness’ sake will you go and let the Joneses on; give them the evening paper, or visit with them – I’m not ready for them yet!”
Just then the phone rings in the kitchen, and Mrs. Brown answers.
“Hello! Marie?” says the voice on the line. “This is Helen. Do you have the Joneses over there?”
“Yes,” replies Mrs. Brown, “we do.”
“Well, how are they?” says the voice of the caller.
“I really don’t know,” says Mrs. Brown, patiently. “I haven’t received them yet. I’m still out here working in the kitchen.”
“You’d better hurry and receive them,” says Helen. “I happen to know that they have some wonderful news, and that they have brought you some beautiful gifts!”
So, Mrs. Brown hangs up the phone, quickly finishes her cooking, straightens her hair and powders her face, and then, together with her husband, receives her friends, hears the news they have, and accepts the gifts they’ve brought. The Person of the Holy Spirit has been living in your “house” ever since your new birth, but now you fully acknowledge His presence and receive His gifts.
…The first experience of the Christian Life, salvation, is the incoming of the Holy Spirit, through Jesus Christ, to give us new life, God’s life, eternal life. The second experience, is the receiving, or making welcome of the Holy Spirit, so that Jesus Christ can cause Him to pour out this new life from our spirits, to baptize our souls and bodies, and then the world around, with His refreshing and renewing power.”
*SOUNDINGS 