CHAPTER 2
WALKING IN THE SPIRIT.
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?