logo

Welcoming th Holy Spirit
By Stephen Seamands

Several years ago I was driving out of a shopping center and getting back on a main highway. Just as I approached the intersection, the stoplight turned red. I sighed because this had happened to me before. I knew this was going to be a long red light.

There was a New Testament lying on the dashboard of the car and I picked it up. It fell open to Acts 2 and I found myself reading the first four verses, which record the story of Pentecost. I had read those verses countless times before. I had preached several sermons on them, but in that moment I was struck by something simple, yet something I had never grasped before.

I was struck by the three external signs that were present when the Holy Spirit came upon those who were gathered together. In those three outward signs—wind, fire, and speaking in various tongues—you have, as it were, a beautiful summary description of what always happens when the Spirit comes, what happens when believers are filled with the Holy Spirit.

Well, by this time the light had turned green, but as I drove off, I kept saying to myself. “It’s all right there. In a nutshell, it’s all right there.”

Wind.
 “Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting.”  The wind tells us that when the Spirit comes there is energizing, life-giving power. Throughout scripture the wind represents it. The divine energy, the life-force, the vitality, the Greek understanding of dunamis, the breath of God.

Do you remember Ezekiel’s vision of the dry bones? The Lord asked the prophet, “Son of man, can these bones live?” And Ezekiel throws up his hands, “Only you know, Lord.” Then God declares to the bones, “I will make breath enter you and you will come to life.” (The Hebrew word for breath is ruach and it is also the word for wind or spirit.)

And then it happened. “Wind, breath, spirit entered them and they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army”(37:10).  

And so it always happens when the Spirit comes. That which is dead comes alive; that which is worn out, exhausted, languishing, is animated, energized, revived, brought back to life.

The church is absolutely dependent on the life-giving work of the Spirit. Without the Spirit, it quickly degenerates into a mere human religious institution.

“The presence of the Spirit is vital and central to the work of the Church,” wrote Samuel Chadwick in his classic book, The Way of Pentecost. “Nothing else avails. Apart from Him wisdom becomes folly, and strength weakness…Scholarship is blind to spiritual truth till he reveals. Worship is idolatry till He inspires. Preaching is powerless if it be not a demonstration of His power.

“Prayer is vain unless He energizes,” Chadwick continues. “Human resources of learning and organization, wealth and enthusiasm, reform and philanthropy, are worse than useless if there be no Holy Ghost in them. The Church always fails at the point of self-confidence. When the Church is run on the same lines as a circus, there may be crowds, but there is no Shekinah…Education can civilise, but it is being born of the Spirit that saves.

“The energy of the flesh can run bazaars, organize amusements, and raise millions; but it is the presence of the Holy Spirit that makes a Temple of the Living God,” Chadwick concludes. “The root-trouble of the present distress is that the Church has more faith in the world and the flesh than in the Holy Ghost, and things will get no better till we get back to His realized presence and power.”

Oh, how we need the wind, the life-giving power of the Holy Spirit. And, of course, that holds true not only in our life together as believers, in our churches, but also in our personal, individual lives as well.

How far will our religious self-determination take us? Not far at all. In the hymn of Isaac Watts, “Come, Holy Spirit, Heavenly Dove,” there is a poignant description of our pitiful attempts to live the Christian life through our own self-effort:

“Look how we grovel here below, fond of these earthly toys/ Our souls, how heavily they go, to reach eternal joys/ In vain we tune our formal songs, in vain we strive to rise/ Hosannas languish on our tongues, and our devotion dies/ And shall we then forever live at this poor dying rate?/ Our love so faint, so cold to Thee, and Thine to us so great!”

No, there is a better way, declares the hymn writer. It is through the life-giving power of the Spirit. 

“Come Holy Spirit Heavenly Dove, with all thy quickening powers/ Come shed abroad a Savior’s love, and that shall kindle ours.”

Have you been running too much on your religious self-determination? Are you exhausted rowing the boat? Do you need to discover or rediscover the power of wind? Do you need to hoist the sail? Do you need to pray, “Breathe on me breath of God, fill me with life anew, that I might love what thou doest love and do what thou wouldst do.”

When the Spirit comes, he comes in life-giving, energizing power. That’s what the wind tells us.

Purity.
When the Spirit comes, he also comes in blazing purity. “They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest upon each of them.” When the Spirit comes, he comes as a purging, purifying, cleansing, refining fire.

Later on when the Holy Spirit came upon the Gentiles, Peter explained to the elders in Jerusalem that the Holy Spirit came upon them and “purified their hearts by faith”(Acts 15:8).

That means that when the Spirit comes, he melts down the scum and the dross in our lives, he creates in us a clean heart, a pure heart so that we can see God, so that his holiness can be manifested in us.

What do we mean by a pure heart, anyway? Something that is pure consists of one thing and one thing only. Pure gold is unmixed with any other metal. It is gold and nothing but gold.

Because of our sinful, fallen human nature, however, we are anything but pure. It is after we have been converted and as we seek now to really follow Christ, that we realize how impure we are. How much we feel like that character in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress called “Mr. Facing-both-ways.” We desire God’s will, but we also want our own will. Sometimes we feel like a walking civil war.

“There is nothing more exhausting for the person than the constant awareness that his life is being lived at cross-purposes,” writes Howard Thurman, the African American spiritual writer. “At such moments the individual seems to himself ever to be working against himself. What he longs for is the energy that comes from a concentration of his forces in a single direction, toward a single end.”

Yes, we understand from first-hand experience how exhausting that is, and so we cry out with the Psalmist, “Give me an undivided heart, that I might fear your name.”

That is what the fire of the Holy Spirit comes to do. Through his purifying, sanctifying work in us, he sets us free from the tyranny of a divided self. He gives a pure heart, a heart that is unmixed and undivided, a heart that is perfect in its love for God, single and united in its desire to do God’s will.

Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish theologian and philosopher, said that “purity of heart is to will one thing.” That is what we’re talking about. Becoming single-minded in our love for God. Where the will of God becomes our controlling overarching desire, the magnificent obsession of our lives. Yes, when the Holy Spirit comes he puts within us a supreme desire not to have our own way!

It is important to clarify something here. This doesn’t mean we will always do the will of God perfectly. A pure heart is primarily a matter of the will, the intention; not primarily a matter of performance or action. Oftentimes it’s possible for our actions to be flawed even though our hearts are right towards God.

A number of years ago on Mother’s Day, I got up early to fix breakfast for my wife, Carol. Now I’m not much of a cook, but I do know how to make a nice cheese omelet. There was only one problem. There was no Teflon on the bottom of our old Teflon fry pan, and I got the heat turned up a bit too high. Then the omelet stuck to the bottom of the pan, so that by the time I got it out of the pan, it looked more like scrambled eggs than an omelet.

Now Carol was very gracious in accepting my burnt offering because she knew my heart, my intentions were in the right place. I wanted to do something to show Carol how much I love and appreciate her. But even though my heart was pure, my actions weren’t. That sure wasn’t a perfect cheese omelet!

When the Holy Spirit comes as fire, he purifies our hearts, and he unites our divided hearts so that we begin to will one will.

There are a number of things that may continue to get in the way—the whole range of our humanity: physical infirmities, mental deficiencies, deep emotional wounds—these things may prevent our intentions from being perfectly expressed in our actions.

But the Lord looks on the heart. He sees the yes in our spirits. So that even though we’re certainly not faultless, we are blameless before him. 

And then, thank God, he continues to work on us, work on those areas of our humanity. He uses circumstances, and life experiences, especially experiences of pain and suffering, so that more and more our thoughts and our feelings and our actions come in line with the direction of our heart. So that little by little we become not just pure in heart but mature and godly in character.

Do you need the Holy Spirit to make you pure in some area of your life, to give you a pure heart? Then cry out to him, invite him to come as a blazing fire to burn away the dross and impurities in your life.

 

Productivity.
When the Spirit comes there is energizing power, there is blazing purity. But there was a third and final sign on the Day of Pentecost—speaking in other tongues or languages. And this sign represents astounding productivity. When the Spirit comes, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which make us productive and fruitful in the Christian life, are released and become operative in us.

Now it is unfortunate when people go to the extreme of exalting one particular gift of the Holy Spirit such as the gift of tongues, insisting that that gift is the indispensable sign of the Spirit’s presence. But it is also unfortunate when others, often in reaction to that, go to the other extreme by neglecting or playing down the importance of the gifts of the Spirit in God’s economy of equipping his people for service.

You see, the Holy Spirit comes not only to reproduce the character of Jesus in us through the fruits of the Spirit. He also comes to reproduce the ministry of Jesus in us through the gifts of the Spirit.

What did Jesus say to his disciples? “Anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these because I am going to the Father” (John 14:12).

How does this happen? Through the gifts of the Spirit, the wide range of gifts that the Holy Spirit bestows upon different members of the body of Christ. That is the purpose of the gifts—so that the ministry of Jesus can be effected through us, so that we can do the things he did.

And when the particular gifts that the Holy Spirit has given us are operative in our lives, what happens? The same thing that happened on the day of Pentecost! The disciples spoke in various languages and as a result, people gathered from all over the world and heard them declaring the wonders of God not merely in the common language of the day, but in their various dialects, in their heart language, thus increasing its impact.

And then Peter stood up and preached prophetically. He brought a word from the Lord with such power and anointing that before he could finish his sermon, the people were so cut to the heart, they cried out, “What shall we do?” When he told them to repent and be baptized, 3000 responded!

In other words, the disciples were productive, fruitful, and effective in their service for God. The gifts of the Spirit were released. They were anointed for ministry. That’s what happened when the Spirit came on them.

And that’s what will happen when the Spirit comes on us. The gifts that the Holy Spirit chooses to distribute to us will be released and become operative. Our service for God will become increasingly productive, too.

If the gift of teaching has been given to us, when we exercise it through the Spirit’s power, people will learn. If it’s the gift of mercy, they will be comforted. If it’s the gift of administration, things will be brought into proper order. If it’s the gift of healing, the sick and the wounded will get well. If it’s the gift of service, practical needs will be met.

The point is that when the gifts we’ve been given are in operation through the Spirit, what is supposed to happen will happen. An anointing is bestowed upon us for the task at hand.

Astonishing productivity occurs that can’t be accounted for in merely human terms. Service for God that counts, that makes a difference, that builds up the body of Christ, that extends the horizons of God’s kingdom—that’s what happens when the Spirit comes.

As Dwight L. Moody said, after his deeper experience of being filled with the Spirit, “I preached the same sermons I had preached before, but the results were dramatically different.”

So we shouldn’t be afraid of the gifts of the Spirit. But as Paul instructs us, we should both “follow the way of love and eagerly desire spiritual gifts” (1 Corinthians 14:1).

Wind, fire, and speaking in tongues. When the Spirit comes, there is energizing power, blazing purity, and astonishing productivity. It’s all right there isn’t it? When the Holy Spirit comes, he wants to do all of these things.

Sometimes Christians have emphasized one of these things to the exclusion of the other. For example, some say when the Spirit comes, it’s about life-giving power (salvation), or about purity (sanctification), or some say it’s about productivity (service). We need to emphasize all three. We need the full expression of the Spirit’s work.

In fact each one needs the other. Otherwise they will become imbalanced. Productivity without purity results in anointed people lacking moral character; but purity without productivity results in sanctified people without power for ministry.

When the Spirit comes he brings all three—power, purity, productivity.

This is the promise of the Father. This is our inheritance, poured out as a result of the work of the Son. Has that promise, that inheritance—the Holy Spirit’s energizing power, blazing purity, and astonishing productivity—been claimed, and realized, and worked out in our lives? Do our lives witness to the fact that this is the Age of the Spirit? Or, are we living below our spiritual privileges?

Learning to possess.
Back in 1915, a man in west Texas named Ira Yates bought a farm. Along with his crops, he raised sheep and cattle. But during his first few years, life on that farm was very difficult. Times were hard. He had to contend with several severe droughts. So he barely managed to make ends meet.

Then in 1927, he convinced some geologists in the area to drill for oil on his land. They were skeptical at first. No one had ever found oil that far west. But at his insistence, they went ahead.

On October 29, 1927, which just happened to be Ira Yates’ 67th birthday—at a depth of 1,100 feet, they struck oil. And man did they strike it! 8,000 barrels of oil per hour, 200,000 barrels per day, flowed from that oil well. It didn’t even have to be pumped.

It became known as “Yates’ Find” and was by far the greatest oil find west of the Mississippi River. It yielded 12 million barrels of oil annually. And 80 years later, right up until today, they are still pumping oil from that well!         

The point is that Ira Yates had owned all that oil from the moment he had bought the land. But he had never possessed it.

We Christians have often done that in relation to the Holy Spirit, haven’t we? He is the promise of the Father; he’s been poured out on us by the risen, exalted Christ. Yet so many of us are living between Easter and Pentecost. We’ve never claimed the promise or possessed the inheritance that is ours.

So we cry, “Father, we ask you to give us the Holy Spirit knowing that we don’t have to overcome your reluctance, but simply lay hold of your willingness, your ‘how much more.’ Risen, Exalted Lord Jesus, as you did on that first Pentecost, pour out the Holy Spirit on us! Come Holy Spirit; come as the wind in energizing power; come as the fire in blazing purity, come as the gift-giver to make us astonishingly productive.

“Come Holy Spirit Heavenly Dove, with all thy quickening powers; come shed abroad a Savior’s love, and that shall kindle ours.”

Stephen Seamands is professor of Christian Doctrine at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky. He is the author of numerous books including Ministry in the Image of God: The Trinitarian Shape of Christian Service (InterVarsity), Wounds that Heal: Bringing Our Hurts to the Cross (InterVarsity), A Conversation with Jesus (Victor), and Holiness of Heart and Life (Abingdon).  



Click here to send your response plus the title of this article to us at Good News.

Good News | 308 East Main St. | P.O. Box 150 | Wilmore, KY 40390 | 859-858-4661 | 1-800-487-7784
info@goodnewsmag.org | About Us | ©2007 Good News magazine