Heart-Hospitality

Since our recent observance of Pentecost Sunday, I’ve been thinking about the Holy Spirit... I hope you have been, too.

I had a conversation with two Jehovah’s Witnesses some years ago, and of all their comments, the saddest I recall was their assertion that the Holy Spirit is a vague “force” emanating from the Father. Not a “He” but an “it.” Not a Person but an ethereal presence of some kind... How glad I am for the Christian theology written into the hymn “Holy, Holy, Holy” (sing it with special gusto next time!): “God in three Persons, blessed Trinity.” I am blessed when I think about the Person of the Holy Spirit.

This puts some responsibility on me, though. If God’s Spirit were just a nebulous force of some sort, I assume I wouldn’t need to worry about how to relate to “it.” But the fact that He is a Person makes it a whole different matter. For one thing, how must He feel about living inside of me? I’m sure I haven’t always made it a pleasant experience for Him. He’s seen more than enough of my doubts. He’s been ignored and manipulated and argued with and taken for granted. He’s lived with the garbage of my life (when I haven’t bothered to “take out the trash”) and been subjected to my choices of input – what I read, watch, hear...

After reading C&MA founder A.B. Simpson’s book, The Gentle Love of the Holy Spirit, some years ago, I’ve come to think of life with the Spirit in terms of hospitality - and Simpson writes some convicting things about heart-hospitality. Here are a few excerpts:

“This is the only way that we can receive a person – by treating him with confidence, believing that he comes to us in sincerity and, opening the door to him at once, recognize him as a friend and treat him as a welcome guest. So let us treat the Holy Spirit.”

“The Holy Spirit is especially sensitive to the reception He finds in the human heart; never intruding as an unwelcome guest, but gladly entering every open door...”

“The heart in which He loves to dwell is a quiet one, where the voice of [selfish desires] and the world’s loud tumult is stilled, and His whisper is watched for with delight and attention.”

Simpson was intimately acquainted with the Person of the Holy Spirit – because he cultivated a heart in which the Spirit loved to dwell. What about me? Am I a suspicious and controlling host – or a sensitive and attentive one? What living conditions do I offer Him? How do my choices affect Him?

Matters of heart-hospitality...worth thinking about.