WALKING IN THE SPIRIT
by A.B. Simpson
I.
What is it to Walk in the Spirit?
Generally, it may be said, it is to maintain the habit of
dependence upon the Holy Ghost for our entire life; spirit,
soul and body. We know what it is at times to enjoy His conscious
presence. We live in the Spirit, we have felt the touch of
His quickening life, now let us walk in the Spirit. Let us
abide in this fellowship. Let us lean continually upon His
strength, and drink unceasingly from His life, a babe from
its mother's breast. But more particularly.
1. To walk in the Spirit is to recognize the Spirit as present
and abiding in us. How often, after we have asked His presence,
we treat Him as if He had deceived us, and cry to Him as if
He were afar off! Let us recognize Him as having come, and
address Him as a present and indwelling friend. He will always
meet our recognition, and speak to us as the ancient presence,
not from the mount, or the pillar of fire, but from the tabernacle,
and from the holy of holies in our inmost heart.
2. It means to trust Him and count upon Him in the emergencies
of life, to regard Him as one who has undertaken our cause
and expects to be called upon in every time of need, and will
unfailingly be found faithful and all-sufficient in every
crisis. The very name Paraclete means one that we can always
call upon and find at our side. We must trust the Holy Spirit,
and expect Him to respond to our need as implicitly as we
expect the air to answer the opening of our lungs, and the
sunrise to meet us in the morning. And yet how many treat
the Holy Spirit as if He were a capricious and most unreliable
friend! How may of our prayers are despairing groans or scolding
reflections on His love and faithfulness!
It was for this that Moses lost the Promised Land; instead
of quietly speaking to the rock and expecting its waters to
flow forth to meet his call, he struck it with hasty and unbelieving
violence and spake as one who did not fully trust the love
and faithfulness of God. There is no need that we should strike
the rock, or cry, like Baal's priests to the distant heavens
for help. Let us gently and implicitly claim the love that
is always in advance even of our prayer. Let us speak in the
whisper of childlike trust to that bosom which is ever ready
to pour its fullness into our empty hearts, and lo! the waters
will gush forth, and the desert of our sorrows, doubts, and
fears will blossom as the rose.
3. We must consult the Holy Spirit if we would walk in the
Spirit. We shall often find that the things that seem most
easy will fail and disappoint us when we rely upon their apparent
probability and the mere promise of outward circumstances,
and we shall also find where we commit our way unto Him, and
acknowledge Him in all our ways, that He will so direct our
paths that the things which seemed most difficult and improbable,
will become the easiest and the most successful. He would
teach us thus to trust in Him with all our heart, and lean
not unto our own understanding; in all our ways to acknowledge
Him and He will direct our steps.
The chief condition of His Almighty power is that we shall
first have His omniscient wisdom. He is given to us as our
wonderful Counselor and also as our Mighty God. And I have
never taken Him as my Counselor and obeyed His guidance without
finding that He followed it up as the Mighty One with His
omnipotent working. The reason we do not more frequently find
His power is because we try to turn it into the channels of
our own wisdom instead of getting His mind, working in His
will, and even knowing that we must have His effectual working.
How blessed that that wonderful Counselor is always a child,
and that His guidance offered to each of us is as simple,
as accessible as the hand of a little child.
So let us walk in the Spirit, trusting His guiding hand,
and committing all our ways to His wisdom and love
4. If we would walk in the Spirit we must obey Him when
He does speak, and we must remember that the first part of
obedience is to hearken. It is not enough to say we have done
all we knew, we ought to know, and we may know, for He has
said that we shall know His voice, and if we do not it must
be that we are to blame, or else God is responsible for our
mistake. But this cannot be.
If we will be still and suppress our own impulses and clamorous
desires, and will meet Him with a heart surrendered to His
will and guidance, we shall know His way. "The meek will He
guide in judgment, and the meek will He teach His way." The
soul that walks in the Spirit will therefore be a hearkening
spirit, watching daily at His doors, and longing to know His
very commandments; and when we understand His voice we will
implicitly obey it. The minding of the Spirit is life and
peace. The very condition of His continual presence is obedience.
"The Holy Spirit whom God hath given to them that obey Him."
The secret of every cloud that has fallen upon the soul will
probably be found in some neglected voice of our Monitor.
He is waiting and has been waiting for us at that point where
we have refused to follow, and when we step in His will we
shall find Him there.
5. Walking in the Spirit implies that we shall keep step
with the Holy Ghost, and that our obedience shall he so prompt
that we shall never find ourselves a step behind Him, and
following Him at a distance which we may find it hard to recover.
On our great railroads there are certain trains which run
upon the highest possible schedule of time. The itinerary
is so arranged that there is no margin allowed on which to
overtake lost time, so that should the train be late, it is
scarcely possible to overtake the interval lost. God has drawn
the plan of our life on such a scale that there are no minutes
left blank, and if we lose one, the next has no margin to
afford for its recovery. All that we can crowd into the future
will be needed for the future itself, and therefore if we
lose a step there is danger that we shall continue to be a
step behind, and it will require the same exertion to keep
up even a step behind as it would to walk abreast of God every
moment.
Yonder mill-race needs just as much water to run at low
as at high tide. The very same quantity of water, if kept
up to the level of the wheel, will run all the ponderous machinery
as that which on a lower level only wastes itself in fretting
wavelets among the rocks of the torrent bed. And so it is
just as easy for our spiritual life to move at the maximum
as at the minimum if we only start at the right level, and
so guard the moments that we shall not lose our headway, or
get behind God. The secret of this one blessing is instant
obedience and walking by the moment with Him in the fullness
of His blessed will. Let us not disappoint Him. Let us not
come short of all the good pleasure of His goodness. His thought
for us is always best; His commandments "for our good alway;"
His schedule of our life-journey planned by unerring wisdom
and unutterable love.
He has given us a gentle, patient Guide, who is willing
to go with us all the way, and come into the minutest steppings
of our life. Let us take heed that we grieve Him not away
nor miss aught of His gentle will. Let us be sensitive to
His touch, responsive to His whisper, obedient to His commandments,
and able ever to say "He hath not left me alone, for I did
always those things which please Him."
II.
Some of the Blessings of thus Walking in the Spirit.
1. It will secure us a complete and delightful deliverance
from sin. The expulsive power of His presence will drive out
the presence of evil. "If we walk in the Spirit we shall not
fulfill the lusts of the flesh." Our life shall thus be transformed
from a defensive warfare, in which we are always attacking
evil, to a glorious consciousness of God only, which shall
exclude the evil from our thought as well as from our life.
We shall not have to constantly clear the sunken rocks from
our channel, but on the high and full torrent of the Divine
life we shall rise far above every obstruction and move, as
in Ezekiel's vision, in a river of life which shall be above
the ankles, and above the loins, a river to swim in, carrying
us by its own substantial fullness.
2. Such a walk will give a delightful serenity, tranquility,
and steadfastness to our whole life. We shall not be at the
bidding of impulses or circumstances, but shall move on in
the majestic order of the Divine will, carried above the vicissitudes
of failure and outward change, and fulfilling, like the stars
in their courses, the full circle of His will for our life.
3. Such a walk will enable us to meet the providences of
God as they come to us in victory, and to maintain the perfect
harmony between our inward life and the outward leadings of
His own. We have some beautiful examples of the transcendent
importance of this walking in the Spirit, in connection with
the conjunctures of circumstances on which so much often hangs.
There never was a moment in human history on which more depended
than that when the infant Christ was first brought into the
Temple. What an honor and privilege it was to be there and
catch the first glimpse of His blessed face, and even hold
in the embrace of human arms the Gift of ages! Yet that was
the honor of two aged pilgrims who were walking in the Spirit.
Simeon and Anna, led of the Holy Ghost, came in at that very
moment into the Temple. Led of God unerringly, and walking
step by step with Him, they were enabled to meet Him in this
glorious opportunity, and be the first heralds of His coming.
No wonder the aged Simeon, as he took him in his arms, could
ask no more on earth: "Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant
depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation."
Only less important was the crisis in the apostolic church
when the gospel was to be preached for the first time to a
new circle of disciples. The man chosen to carry the glad
tidings to the Samaritans and the Gentiles, and to be the
pioneer of Christianity among all the myriad tribes of the
heathen world in that great progression of which the churches
of Christendom to-day form the outcome, was a humble disciple,
whom God could trust to walk in the Spirit and obey the slightest
intimation of His will. It was Philip, the humble deacon.
Already he had been sent to Samaria to preach the gospel in
that city, no doubt in obedience to a similar Divine message.
But, in the very height of his successful work in that city,
the command suddenly comes to him to leave his work and go
down to the desert of the South.
To most persons it would have seemed a misleading, a mistake,
a neglect of providential duty, a waste of precious time,
and an arresting of the great work in Samaria. But Philip
immediately obeyed, and at every step of his journey he waited
for new directions, and in due time the path was made plain.
The first fruits of the heathen world were waiting at that
very moment for his direction; and there on the cross-roads
of life, at the fitting moment, the Spirit brought those two
men together, and the words were spoken in that chariot by
the way, which changed the destiny of a life, and the course
of a Dispensation, which opened the gospel to the whole world,
and sent that Ethiopian prince to his home, to be, in all
probability, the founder of many of those mighty churches,
which for the next four centuries made Northern Africa the
most important seat of ancient Christianity.
Yet, when his work with the eunuch was accomplished, the
command was as distinct, to leave his new convert in the hands
of the Lord, and follow on at the unknown leading of the same
blessed Spirit that had brought them together." "The Spirit
caught away Philip," we are told, "and the eunuch saw him
no more." These are but some instances of the blessedness
of this heavenly walk. Shall we trust our unseen Guide, and
as we step out into the mysterious and momentous future, shall
we walk more humbly, simply, instantly, and obediently in
the companionship of His guiding hand?