What Does the Holy Spirit Do?

What Does the Holy Spirit Do? February 11, 2016

So I guess I inadvertently came out as a cessationist last week. Everyone has to have their moment of shame, apparently. But also, in the guessing game of life, I’m going to swing out there wildly and say that I just don’t get it. I don’t get all the great, to me unfathomable, need for the Holy Spirit to say a lot of stuff to me as an individual person.

Now, I know, more than anyone, that reading the bible can be a real drag. I know that it can be used as a battle axe. I know that it can be really impossibly difficult to understand (or feel like it). I know that a lot of churches are filled with a lot of inarticulate preachers who struggle to read it themselves, who are worn out and don’t have time to study Greek, and who exhaust themselves on all the minutia of church leadership and have very very little left when it comes to Sermon Time. The bible has been sidelined for a couple of generations now. “Bible Believing” really just means “For All That Is Good And Holy Will You All Just Try Not To Be So Evil”. In other words, there’s not a lot out there for an ordinary Protestant to hold their body together with their soul.

But hearing special stuff from the Holy Spirit just for you in the vagaries of your spirit? Really? How do you know, For Sure, that it’s God? And, more also, why you and not the dumb brick next door, like me? I have the teaspoon full of faith that everyone else does. I’m not worse off. I love God heaps and heaps. And yet, in the most shocking manner ever, God has never vouchsafed to me his future will in groanings barely perceptible by my open and receptive spirit.

Really, I feel the onus is on the non-cessationist to prove that it is really God speaking and not something else. And also, to explain why the bible’s not good enough for All the Christians. Why would God take the trouble of thousands of years and lots of separate people to organize such a vast, rich, gorgeous witness of who he is, what he is doing, what he has already said, and why he did and said it, and then, two thousand years later, say, ‘oh never mind, I’m just going to go whisper into Anne’s ear some stuff that sounds sort of like the bible but is not nearly as good’….? Why would he do that?

See, the Holy Spirit has a big pile of work without running around giving everyone a special prophecy just for them (not that he couldn’t, being God and all. The question is, why would he want to?) He has to regenerate, convict, move, direct, organize, sanctify, build, encourage each and every believer, and all for the glory of Christ. The church is brought into being, person by person, generation by generation, through the power of the Holy Spirit. Individuals are given the ability to do actual work to build up that same church. Each and every individual believer has to be bonded together with every other single believer to form a body. And all for the glory of Christ. It makes a whole lot of sense to me that that same body, corporately and every individual member in it, would have to struggle to understand the Same Text.

Because the Bible, being, you know, written by God, is a strange document. Unlike the constitution, which isn’t what might be considered “living”–it doesn’t breathe life into the heart of every American, making them super American, it’s just there, for information–the bible, when it is read by someone who “has the Holy Spirit” just to be crass, does become a living thing. The Word enters into your soul, by the Holy Spirit, and gives you life. When you hear it, or read it and hear it spiritually, you are given life.

So, to take an example, I keep chattering on about the sermon from this Sunday, but the reason is that I was, as I like to say, Helped. James has always been my least favorite book of the bible. It’s that book that if you want to get in good with other Christians, you can memorize it. But I didn’t memorize it, because I’m kind of a jerk deep down. I hated that I was supposed to “be joyful”, that I was supposed to get a handle on my sharp tongue. I knew, growing up, that nobody thought I was a Christian, and that James was constantly there to bash me. (How does it go? Faith without crying at the right moment during the altar call is dead.) Only I was a Christian, even though decent people couldn’t tell.

So here comes the sermon series on James–and let me just say, what an incredible grace to be able to listen to the preacher, even being married to him, because God help me if I had to lie every Sunday, and say “Good Sermon Dear”–and, shock of all shock, it turns out that James is talking about the same Jesus that Paul is. James isn’t about me being good, it’s about Jesus. And Jesus saving me from my jerk self. But it takes work to understand that. A surface reading doesn’t cut it. Hearing the gospel come out of Even James just completely undid me. The Holy Spirit did his special illuminating dance to bring to light something that I needed to hear, and used it to heal and restore some dark moment I had carefully shoved away.

Was it a new word? No. Was it special to me? No. And. Yes. Was it the Holy Spirit? Yes. Was the transformation brought about by the hearing of the word miraculous? Not if you see me sitting there looking sour in my pew, but yes if you were to see my interior mountains brought low.

That the word ‘cease’ is right there in the word ‘cessation’ is too bad. Because the Holy Spirit hasn’t ceased to occupy the heart of every believer. Nor has he ceased to wield the sword of scripture, bringing a person from death to life. Nor has he ceased tying individual people tightly together and remaking them into the image of the Son, so that when they try to run away from each other, they find they are forced back to work it out. Why is more than these remarkable activities required?

And if there are good and kind answers, I will definitely allow them in the comments. But if you call me a dumb brick, even though I myself said it, I shall delete you.


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