It has become common practice
lately for
pastors to "import"
revival from such places as Toronto and Pensacola, Florida. The hope is
to reignite bored congregations and flagging enthusiasm for ministry.
We seem to be asking: How do I
and my
congregation get fired-up again?
We might better ask: How do we press on to spiritual maturity when the
fire
fizzles?
We will be forever walking out
of church
and those moments of rekindled
enthusiasm for God into cold blasts of reality. We will always
face
moments when the truth we've seen with our spiritual eyes wide-open
must
become truth we live when we wish God's eyes were closed.
It is in these moments that we
need to
understand the deeper working
of the Spirit or, when the "rush" wears off, we will have
little spiritual ground to stand on within ourselves.
In the 1800s, revivals swept
America and
Europe. Phenomena like shaking,
"swooning" in the Spirit, laughing and weeping filled the meetings
of popular charismatic preachers.
The revivals lasted long
enough for a
few to notice that the impact "wore
off" for some who returned again and again for "another touch".
One who saw the danger in this
was
Hannah Whithall Smith. The wife of
preacher Robert Pearsall Smith, Hannah was pressured to keep her views
quiet
because she saw the movement her husband and others touched off
burning
itself out and Christians failing to grow in spiritual maturity.
Hannah's primary concern was
that bored
Christians were seeking to be
"touched by the Spirit's power" purely for the experience of it.
She was also concerned that the touch of the Spirit was viewed as a
cure-all.
Does any of this sound
familiar?
Though Robert and his friends
ridiculed
Hannah as "a dry stick",
she was convinced that the main work of the Holy Spirit is to build in
us
a rock foundation of godly character the character of Christ.
"The baptism of the Holy
Spirit is, to
me, the crowning point of
the Christian experience. Unfortunately it seems a subject beset with
difficulties
and errors.
"To be baptised means to
immerse. To be
baptised with the Holy Spirit
means to be immersed into the Spirit of God. It is described in various
ways but it is always described as growing in the kind of life
Jesus
Christ exhibited in Himself: 'Partakers of the divine nature' (II Pet
1:4).
"Having Christ 'dwell in our
hearts by
faith' (Eph 3:17). Being
a 'dwelling place for God through the Spirit' (Eph 2:22).
"To be filled with the Holy
Spirit means
simply to open every aspect
of our lives to Him, holding nothing back at all, until we are filled
with
God. This is the life 'hidden with Christ in God' (Col 3:3).
"Herein lies the mistake we
are making.
We look upon [our encounters
with] the Holy Spirit as an experience, rather than an introduction to
a
life. And we are taught that the Holy Spirit is a 'gift from God'
[rather
than God Himself, in His invisible power, seeking to live in us].
Worse,
we are taught that the Holy Spirit is a gift we will obtain if we seek
it
in certain ways and in certain places.
"The secret is that we must
allow God to
take full possession, We
are His sanctuary, His dwelling place, although we may not yet have
opened
every inward chamber in our heart to let Him dwell therein.
"Simply, do what Jesus Christ
did:
Recognise the presence of God
already within you. Every day, in everything, fully submit to His
ownership."
While Hannah learned humility
and
constancy before God, Robert failed
to grow inwardly in the attitudes of Christ, which left him weak and
vulnerable.
Thrown by the ups and downs of ministry, not knowing how to find God in
the tough times, he kept seeking more and better "spiritual
experiences"
when the rush of earlier ones wore off.
Let this stand as both a
warning to us
and a hope. As fire flames
in wood, then burns more quiet and deep as it penetrates, so does the
presence
and glory of God as His Spirit takes hold and remains in us. This, and
this
alone, is the staying power of the Christian.
· David Hazard is the
editor of a
devotional series Rekindling
the Inner Fire (Bethany House). Quotations are taken from Safe With
Your
Love (Bethany House, 1992
When
the fire fizzles 
.
.............