One Spirit
W. Carl Ketcherside
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As I look back upon it, from this ever-increasing distance, I do not think the church of my boyhood ever thought a great deal about the Holy Spirit. He was not the subject of our conversation except in a negative sort of way. We were not so much opposed to the Spirit as we were ignorant of his nature and work. That is not all about which we were ignorant. In our pitiable little mining village there were a lot of people who could not read. Many of them were my relatives. Like other illiterate folk they were very superstitious. Life was inhibited and made miserable by fears of the unknown and unseen.
They believed in ghosts, haunts, signs and portents. Almost anything that happened was a sign of "bad luck" and a lot of good people carried a "buckeye" to ward off rheumatism, and a rabbit's foot to bring good fortune. That always impressed me as being foolish because the rabbit had four feet and they did not bring him luck. All of this did not interfere with our religion. It enhanced it. Those who read the Bible every day also consulted the signs of the zodiac in the Lydia E. Pinkham Almanac with the same fervor.
The essential thing was to get the unknown into a position where you could handle it. You had to control it or it would control you. If you could find just the right charm or dig up the proper amulet you could ward off malign influences or even control those which were beneficent. We shut the Spirit up in a book. We could then carry it in an overcoat pocket or place it on the shelf by the Seth Thomas clock. As long as the Spirit was bound in black leather and stamped in gold he was fairly harmless.
We were caught up in the prooftext fallacy. We reasoned that since God's revelation was perfect we could find a passage somewhere to cover every contingency. It took a considerable amount of hammering and whittling and arranging *o make some of them fit, but I do not recall a single failure. We were enslaved by what a good Texas brother calls "pattern theology" which means in its final analysis, searching the scriptures until you find something that will justify what you think, or what you are doing!
Our text for putting the Spirit in his place was John 6:63, "The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life." That took care of it. The Spirit was words. The more passages you could quote the more Spirit you had. No one ever questioned this explanation. We never really examined the context. The verse contained the word spirit. Another verse said there was one Spirit so that was that. We were never guilty of taking things out of context like Methodists and Baptists.
Taking things out of context was a vicious circle trodden by sectarians like a blind mule at a sorghum mill. You were a Methodist because you took things out of context, and you took things out of con-
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It took a long time before I outgrew our error about the passage and realized that Jesus was contrasting the bread of life which he dispensed, with the manna which Moses provided through God's power in the wilderness. "Your fathers ate manna in the wilderness, but still they died...he that believeth in me has everlasting life...the words I speak unto you are spiritual words, producing life."
One reason we were skittish about the Holy Spirit and shied away when he was mentioned was the way our neighbors carried on who claimed to be guided directly by his influence. There were not too many of these "holy rollers" as we always kindly and generously referred to them, but they made up in noise what they lacked in numbers and education. Most everyone went to bed at the decent hour of half-past seven in the autumn, but the Pentecostals did not really get wound up and on a high lonesome until the unearthly hour of 9:00 p.m., and when they got under the power they carried on until midnight and you could hear them a mile away if the wind was in the right direction.
One night they undertook to cast a demon out of a fifteen-year-old girl, a pitiable slatternly creature who had been "playing around" with some of the men in the group. Apparently the demon was one of the tough kind. After surrounding her and praying for almost an hour at the top of their voices, the group decided to beat the devil out of her. She almost died before the neighbors summoned the village constable who was delayed because he couldn't find his pipe in the dark. The Ku Klux Klan set a bunch of switches against the front door of one of the leaders and burned a makeshift cross in his front yard. That cooled "the Spirit" off for a few months and the noise subsided until everyone caught up on his sleep.
It was my respect for the revelation of God which finally prevailed to lead me into a closer walk with Jesus through the Spirit. There were too many scriptures which would not fit into the expository crate we had constructed and nailed together out of traditional slats. I began to develop a kind of honesty which the factional spirit always quenches and the fear of man destroys. We always had two mental cans into which we sorted the things said of the Spirit. One bore the label "For the apostles." The other was tagged "For us." Anything we did not understand or which was emphasized by "the sectarians" went in the can "For the apostles." Whatever was left over went into the can "For us."
The apostles' can was full of things. It was hard to cram them all in. Our can was almost empty and you had to turn it upside down and beat on the bottom to get a little blessing to fall out. It was as if the Spirit had dumped all he had on the apostles and didn't keep much back for anyone else. Of course, I still believe that the Spirit bestowed much upon the envoys of Jesus by reason of their special function as ambassadors. But I also know he has ample blessings for me. In fact "my can runneth over."
There are a lot of things about the Spirit I do not know, but I'm finding more every time I study the Word. I'm a fairly practical down-to-earth sort of person and I do not soar off into space and blame the Spirit for it. I'm not "too hep" on closing my eyes and holding up my hands and shaking my head, and I do not have dreams, or hear voices, or get the weak trembles and goose pimples. I think the Spirit helps me in every phase of life to act more rationally, and keep my cool a little better. Best of all he makes it possible for me to really love my enemies, and even the brethren, without having to sham it!
The Holy Spirit dwells in me. My body is his temple. I am not my own. I
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I have not yet received the inheritance which is in my Father's will, even though it has my name-tag affixed to it. He sought me and bought me and adopted me. I've got the promise that with the redemption of the purchased possession--my body--from the grave I will know the ultimate Joy. But while I am waiting to go through the Shadow the Holy Spirit dwells in me, marking me out as his. He is a seal of ownership. He is also the guarantee that when I have met the last enemy at some disputed barricade, and overcome him through the power that raised Jesus from the garden tomb, I will stand in the presence of the glorious Light, the Lamb of God.
The great blessing now is the utter loss of any sense of loneliness. Jesus said when he got ready for the upward trip, "I will not leave you orphans." He promised he would ask the Father and he would send another Helper. The word means "One to stand beside another." He did not forget and the Father honored his request. It does not make any difference how dark the night becomes, I am not alone. When storms rage, and the wind howls and rain hurls in gusts against the windows, I am not alone. Jesus said the other helper would be with us and in us! That's closer than any earthly friend can ever corne!
I never walk alone! I've got someone to laugh with me and someone to cry with me! I've got someone who understands what I would like to tell others but cannot, or dare not tell them! He is my real helper when I get too weak down inside to couch my deep longings into words, when I run the scale of human vocabulary and learn that man has not yet developed a language that is great enough and deep enough to capture and confine every emotion and wrap it up in a neat linguistic package and hand it to God. There are groanings which cannot be uttered.
There's no use trying to convince me by subtle argument that Jesus did not mean what he promised and that all he gave me was a book. If that were true I would still be an orphan. An orphan with a book is still an orphan. An orphan needs someone. He needs someone who understands and someone who cares. The Spirit prompted men who knew Jesus to write love letters to those whom they cherished. Those letters which were originally scattered were finally collected, argued about, fussed over and compiled in a book. I love it! I read it with an absorbing passion. It is my guide. I shall never forsake it!
But it is precisely because I believe what it says that I am sure the Spirit lives in me, dwells in me, abides with me, and strengthens me with might in the inner man. The book is the book of the Spirit. It is a gift from God, just as the Spirit is a gift from God. I believe what the book of the Spirit says about the Spirit, and I intend to go on believing it until I meet my glorious Lord!
I am not going to get into a big dither about how the Spirit works. A lot of good brethren get so uptight and argumentative and develop such an attitude toward those who disagree with them that the Spirit couldn't work in them or through them. I am just going to let him have his way with me as the song says. I do not intend to let anyone else try to live my life for me. I do not intend to get hooked on little exercises they have worked out to prime the Spirit like a rusty pump. The Spirit and I are friends, close friends! I suspect that is why I sometimes hurt him and grieve him. And that's why I'm so sorry and could kick myself when I do. I don't like to hurt any of my friends or disappoint them. But it is your best friends you usually hurt the most.
The Spirit and I walk together all of
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I am sure the Spirit is interested in this article and is helping me to write it. I do not mean he is sitting on my shoulder whispering words in my ear. But he is very close to me and I sense his presence in all I do or say that is to the glory of the Father and the exaltation of Jesus who sits at the right hand of God. You will have to forgive me if I do not jump up and click my heels together, and clap hands and do a spiritual jig. I do not think it is necessary to fall on the floor and roll my eyeballs around and kick with my heels. Instead, the Spirit encourages me to be calm, patient and consistent. It isn't easy for either him or myself. I know he is thrilled there's only one me, and I know I am happy there is only one Spirit. That one Spirit is the Spirit of oneness, and we will never have the spirit of love until we have the love of the Spirit!