The Holy Who?

Between the teachings of the two pastors, our church is beginning to hear a lot about the Holy Spirit.

When I was growing up in the church the Holy Spirit was rarely mentioned and when it was, it was called the Holy Ghost. I was not interested in the Holy Ghost. It sounded to me like something to be avoided. I had it in my head that the Holy Ghost resided in the boiler room in the church basement so that became a place to avoid at all costs.

As I progressed through life, at the “proper age” I made a nominal commitment to Jesus, joined the church and became what was generally thought of as a “Christian.” Though I met the commonly accepted criteria to wear the label, I could in no way, shape or form, be described as a follower of Christ. Nothing in my life, and I mean nothing, changed when I joined the church. To say that being a Christian had a minimal impact on my life would be an amazing understatement.

I wasn’t hostile toward God. It was just that God meant nothing to me. It never occurred to me to pray or read the Bible or seek God’s guidance in the decisions I was making. And at that particular time of life I was making several very important decisions. On the rare occasions that I did attempt to listen to God for direction, I did not like the guidance I was receiving. It was certainly not what I wanted to hear and do. It was that rare listening to God thing that ended with me sitting in Seminary for three long years.

Up until this point in my life, Christianity could not be described as a spiritual journey. I was plodding through life as a Christian. It was an uphill struggle in a basically downhill life. Being a Christian was not fulfilling, it was exhausting. It was brutal. It was frustrating beyond words. It was a farce. It was a fantasy. I was a phony. The only thing I learned to do well was to pretend to be a Christian – or at least pretend to be what I thought a Christian was supposed to be like. I learn the correct words and phrases. I learned the company line. I learned how to pray acceptable prayers. I even learned a few Bible verses. I just wasn’t a Christ follower.

And then I tripped over the Holy Spirit. Wait, I probably have that wrong. I didn’t trip over the Holy Spirit, he was waiting for me and at just the right time jumped up and grabbed me. I had first bumped into the Holy Spirit while attending seminary. God showed up (the Holy Spirit) at school and did several powerful, life changing, miraculous things to people all around me. I was mystified and awestruck. But I was not changed. My thinking was changed but my life was not changed. Because of what I had seen and experienced, I could no longer hold God at an arm’s length as just a theory and a theology. I had no choice but to begin wrapping my mind around the reality that God is real and actively interacting with me and my generation. So, my seminary experience caused me to think differently about God, the Holy Spirit and what this Christian thing was all about. The experience really rattled my cage.

As a very disgruntled young Christian, I had made a deal with God that I might not go into the ministry but I would go to seminary. I was hoping that would appease Him, get Him off my back and after seminary God would lose track of me and I could continue on with my plans to go to law school and then pursue my political career. It was during my second year in seminary that I first came in contact with the Holy Spirit. It was an awesome and life changing experience. But I still didn’t want to go into the ministry.

I graduated from seminary and began working what I would call “small” jobs as I attempted to sort out my future. By small jobs, I mean jobs that had no future as a career, paid little and required little from me. Kids were beginning to show up, my family and obligations were growing and I had some decisions to make. It was during that year following seminary that my home church called to inquire if I would be interested in helping out with a floundering youth program. The positives were: moving back to my home town; work in a church with old friends; work with kids and they offered to pay me more money than I could imagine – almost $10,000. The down side was it was suspiciously like going into the ministry. I took the job. I had been on the job less than a month when my senior pastor told me – TOLD ME – DIDN’T ASK ME – TOLD ME – that I was going to ordained in a couple of weeks. It was a requirement of employment.

I threw a fit. I threated to quit. I complained to everyone I could find who would talk to me. And then, like a sheep led to slaughter, I was ordained. The deal was, I rather suddenly found myself newly ordained and working in my home church as the Associate Minister for Youth and Education when I ran face first into the Holy Spirit again.

When my Holy Spirit “reality experience” took place, I thought it was happenstance, something I inadvertently stumbled into. Looking back over the years of experience in the ministry and all the amazing situations and opportunities I was given to see God at work I now know it was the hand and leading of God. I had been ordained and set aside for ministry and our God of infinite wisdom knew that if I was going to be of any use in the very difficult and challenging ministry areas He was going to lead me into, I had better get in touch with His power supply. Thus He led me to the place where I would meet the Holy Spirit.

One of the spiritual truths I often repeat is that the Holy Spirit is the power supply of the Christian life. It only takes a few months of living as a Christian for one to realize that the Christian life is not difficult – it is impossible. To live as God calls us to live is not something to be done on human power. As we are sometimes warned on TV, don’t try this at home. We must plug into the power source and that power source is the Holy Spirit. Our challenge is not to try to be better and better each day, it is to stay plugged into the power of the Holy Spirit. While working at my home church, I kept hearing through friends of this cool new church meeting a couple of miles away in the community center were I used to play baseball.

So, one Wednesday evening I joined a couple of friends and heading down to check out this new church. When we walked in and looked around several things struck me. First, that the crowd was so large. Next, that people were not wearing formal attire – there were a lot of jeans and T-shirts in the crowd. (This was the early 70’s and people still dressed up for most occasions.) But there were also some fancy dresses, jewelry and fur coats around. The crowd was a real mix of young and old and wealthy and not so wealthy. Long hair hippy types and up tight money types were attending worship together.

Worship was like nothing I had ever experienced before. There was no worship leader. The worship just flowed. It was laid back yet empowering and invigorating. I had never heard music like that in a church service. Stringed instruments of several types provided the music. Various members of the congregation lead the singing while remaining seated. Several people spoke up and shared life experiences where they had seen God at work. Then a quiet little young preacher got up and shared one of the most excellent messages I had ever heard. I was enthralled. It was church like I had never experienced church and everything about it seemed right. As we met in that old metal building, the presence of God was thick and the people of God had gathered and worshipers truly worshiped God.

My buddy and I both hung around to meet the preacher. His name was Carter Foster and I have never met a kinder, more God filled person in my life. In our conversation he turned to me and asked if I had ever been filled with the Holy Spirit. My honest answer was, “I don’t know.” Carter told me that if I had, I would know it. So he asked, “Would you like to be filled with the Holy Spirit?” True to my nature, my response was, “Sure, why not?”

This phase of the experience reminds me of when I moved to the country the summer before the third grade. I went from living in a busy suburb of Louisville and attending a grade school with several hundred city kids, to attending a three room country school with less than 100 other children. It took some adjusting. One of my first educational experiences was being led to a fence made of a single thin strand of wire at the back of the school and challenged to touch it. I may be a city kid but I wasn’t going to look like a fraidy-cat to my new friends. And what could a single strand of wire do to me anyway. So I reached out and grabbed it. Even after being thrown to the ground by the current running through the electric fence, it took some real effort to pull my hand off the wire. My new “friends” thought it was hysterical. Once I realized I was probably going to survive, I was infuriated. But – lesson learned.

And then, around twenty years later, I did it again. God and this kind young preacher led me to the wall socket and I happily stuck my fingers in. That is not exactly what happened. He invited me to pray with him. He quietly asked God to fill me with the Holy Spirit and God did. It was a wonderful experience. Nothing earth shattering happened. But there was no doubt in my mind that God had done as He had promised and filled me with the Spirit.

The most interesting thing about the whole deal happened later that evening. After the prayer time, I felt good. I felt energized. I sensed deeply within myself that God had done something powerful in me. When I got home my wife met me at the door. Her reaction to me was interesting. She approached me and then suddenly stepped back and said, “What happened to you?” I asked her what she meant. She went on to say that obviously something had happened to me because I was literally glowing. She said it was like something was burning inside of me; that power or energy was escaping from me. She kept repeating that it was like I was on fire.

The more she talked the more I felt like I had entered the pages of scripture and popped up in the second chapter of Acts. I didn’t feel much but it seemed obvious that God had filled me with the Holy Spirit and set me on fire. Was that cool or what?

I tell you this story: to help explain why I am the way I am; to share the good news that God is alive and well on planet earth and still changing lives; and to encourage you to ask God to fill you with the Holy Spirit.

Copyright © 2012, William T. McConnell, All Rights Reserved