Element 8

Element 8: Openness to the Wind of the Spirit

We allow God to take us where the Spirit wills, whether by gentle breeze or wild wind. The Celtic Christians had such faith in the leading of the Spirit that they gladly put to sea in small coracles, and went where the wind took them. We desire this kind of openness to the leading of the Spirit. Essential to this is a proper affirmation of the gift of prophecy. St. Paul urges us all to prophesy (I Corinthians 14:1). We honor this gift and encourage its proper and appropriate use. Learning to listen is a skill that has almost been lost, and which takes many years to acquire. We seek to cultivate an interior silence that recognizes and sets aside discordant voices, to respond to unexpected or disturbing promptings of God, to widen our horizons, to develop "the eye of the eagle" and see and hear God through his creation.

There was an expectation about the personal experience of the Holy Spirit in the first Christians that is remarkable in the light of later church history. In the Book of the Acts of the Apostles three episodes illustrate this level of expectation. In chapter 8, when Philip preaches in Samaria, the Jerusalem church sends two of the apostles, Peter and John, to check things out. When they arrive, they start laying hands on the new converts that they might receive the Holy Spirit. Luke notes: "for as yet the Spirit had not come upon any of them; they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus." (8:16) This action raises an interesting question: How did they know that the new converts had not received the Spirit? What expectation did Peter and John have that was not met when they arrived? Further, what was it about the reception of the Spirit that so impressed Simon Magus that "he offered them money, saying, 'Give me also this power so that anyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.'" (8:18-19)

In chapter 10 the sudden outpouring of the Spirit upon the Roman soldier Cornelius convinces Peter to break the powerful Jewish/Gentile barrier and baptize Cornelius and his entire household (10:44-48). In chapter 19, Paul finds a group of disciples in Ephesus and something he notices (or fails to notice) prompts him to ask "Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers?" Upon discovering that they had never heard of a "Holy Spirit" he questions the nature of the baptism they had received.

Beyond Luke's testimony, Paul demonstrates his own expectation that the receiving the Spirit is an unmistakable event that is evidence of the grace of salvation and the power of God in a person's life. He chides the Galatians about their turning to the keeping of the Law as the means of reconciliation with God by pointing out that it was not by the keeping of the Law that they received the Spirit (Galatians 3:1-5). He points out to the Corinthians that it was not his eloquence but the power of the Spirit that brought them to Christ (I Corinthians 2:4).

This biblical mood of expectation is noticeably muted in later times up to and including our own. There are a number of reasons why this shift occurred. Not the least of these is that the experience of the Spirit can be rather messy, upsetting a more settled order of church life. Nonetheless, even in the most tightly organized era of the church, there are ample records of outbreaks of the fullness of the Holy Spirit throughout all of Christian history. In most cases such direct experiences of God's presence were feared and resisted by the leadership of the church. Those who had such experiences were forced into movements outside of the institutional structures, often falling prey to captivating leaders who led those movements into heresy and disintegration. In the 20th century the early days of the Pentecostal revival experienced the same exclusions, forcing the creation of Pentecostal denominations. In the latter half of that century, the traditional churches, with great reluctance, began to accept such experience as valid and sought to incorporate "charismatics" into the mainstream of the church. Even today, such welcome is by no means universal.

The 8th element of the Aidan Way invites us to live once again with a biblical level of expectation, looking for the Spirit of God to manifest in works of power, mercy and love in every situation. Before we look at the text of the element there are two caveats to be issued.

First, we must never mistake the presence of the power of the Spirit within us for spiritual maturity. God pours out His Spirit without measure upon all who call regardless of age, gender, learning or mental stability. We can no more be proud of the power of the Spirit within than a well educated person can be proud of having mastered the alphabet.

Second, in daring this element we may well find our faith put to an unexpected test. In The Last Battle, volume 7 of C. S. Lewis' Narnia Chronicles, a cynical soldier is faced with the possibility that the deity he has used for his own benefit may have existence beyond the minds of the credulous. Farsight, the eagle, looks upon the soldier's fear and muses: "There goes one who had called upon gods he does not believe in. How will it be for him if they have really come?" So it is with any Christian who calls upon the Spirit of God. The biblical record tells us of extraordinary reactions to the Spirit's descent. God comes to us both in the still, small voice and in mighty wind and tongues of flame and neither can be excluded.

The Epistle of James warns us: "Now listen, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.' Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, 'If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that.'" That warning is as relevant today as in the 1st century. All that we think is solid and predictable about our culture, our economy, our nation is neither solid or predictable. Rather than live in the illusion of control we look to the leading of the Spirit who may direct us to places, lifestyles, or relationships beyond our imagining. This means that every major life decision becomes a communal prayer project, an extended exercise in listening to the sounds of God. When we set ourselves free to follow the Spirit's lead, free to see just how far God can be trusted with all we hold dear, we will find ourselves in a place of truer and deeper security than any power of this world can offer.

Essential to this is a proper affirmation of the gift of prophecy. St. Paul urges us all to prophesy (I Corinthians 14:1). We honor this gift and encourage its proper and appropriate use.

Prophecy in these times can make us very nervous. The contemporary church is littered with stories of damage and manipulation caused by troubled souls prefacing their own outpourings with "Thus says the Lord." Yet prophecy is urged upon us in the Scripture and we need to take thought about just what this gift is and how it is to be exercised. First of all, the gift of prophecy has behind it an assumption that is not always true among Western Christians. That assumption is that God is involved in all human circumstances and desires to communicate with us through encouragement, warning, and direction. However, in our interior listening, the voice of God is not the only voice available. There are the deceits of the Evil One, but that infernal voice rarely speaks any direct message. Rather it seeks to push us towards an uncritical acceptance of the prime competing voice: the voice of our agendas and desires. For instance, if you are praying with a person for healing of a tumor and you feel a strong desire to pronounce that God has healed that person, how do you know it is truly the Spirit of prophecy or simply your own deep desire to see the person healed? There is no easy answer to this, because without care and true Christian love much harm can be done with the best of intentions. So what is the "proper and appropriate use" described in the 8th element? Paul's longest teaching on the prophetic occurs in the context of his discourse on manifestations of the Spirit in I Corinthians 12-14.

For most of that section, while trying to restore some sense of balance in the Corinthian church, Paul reveals that the prophetic message is under the control of the will of the prophet, that it needs to be submitted to godly leadership, that its purpose is to build up the Body of Christ. The most remarkable thing about this passage is, however, not so much its content but what we have done with it. Chapter 13, Paul's discourse on the nature of Christian love, is taken out of its context and applied to all sorts of human situations, appearing most often in wedding ceremonies. There is nothing wrong with this, provided we do not forget that this passage does have an original context. The "Love Chapter" is not about marriage or even about Christian relationships, but about the application of the manifestations of the Spirit. Look to Paul's description of love before sharing a prophecy and see how the prophetic message complies with that description.

Learning to listen is a skill that has almost been lost, and which takes many years to acquire. We seek to cultivate an interior silence that recognizes and sets aside discordant voices, to respond to unexpected or disturbing promptings of God, to widen our horizons, to develop "the eye of the eagle" and see and hear God through his creation.

The last phrase of the 8th element will serve us best if taken first. Learning to listen to God does not come naturally for us. It is best done in community. It will challenge our basic assumptions about what is "normal." It will upset the settled order of our lives. But as we learn to listen we will see our lives, our relationships, our world and indeed all creation from a new and liberating perspective. The "eye of the eagle" soaring above the circumstances of earth, enables us to see the context of God's working in those circumstances releasing blessing and guidance for us and for all the Body of Christ.