Walking in Your Anointing

Introduction

Surprised by the Spirit

Never in my wildest imaginations would I ever have thought that I would write a book about the filling of the Holy Spirit or attempt to impart an understanding of His activity in and through Spirit-filled believers.  God knows how frustrated, threatened and turned off to this issue I have been for most of my Christian years.  I have been comfortable writing about spirituality in a more general sense, such as discipleship.  But just as C. S. Lewis was surprised by joy,[i] so have I been surprised by manifestations and fillings beyond what my theology allowed.   So, I write somewhat autobiographically out of the surprising, abundant blessing that I once spurned.  And I would imagine that every card-carrying evangelical Christian might be so blessedly surprised if our doctrine and paradigm did not unnecessarily limit the work of the Spirit in our lives and in our churches. 

I am impelled to write this book for believers who are seeking to live a more empowered life, but who are paralyzed by the confusion and imprecision of so many voices.  Traditionalists, evangelicals, charismatics, and Pentecostals see the work of the Holy Spirit in different ways.  My approach is not to start with a theological banner to uphold, but to deal honestly and with the relevant biblical texts and invite true seekers to receive the Spirit’s fullness.  Many of these, I hope, will be my kinsmen in the faith, members of The Christian and Missionary Alliance, who have such a rich spiritual heritage buried beneath decades of pneumaphobic[ii] dust.

But I also write to unify the Church on an issue that has needlessly divided the evangelical church.[iii]  Many individuals and churches that hold to basic, biblical convictions withhold fellowship from other parts of Christ’s body because of differing ideas of the work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of believers.  For years I contributed to this unnecessary fissure.  I have come to see, however, that this problem largely exists because we have not paid adequate attention to nuances in Scripture.  For example, the church denomination in which I serve, The Christian and Missionary Alliance, has no shortage of books about the Holy Spirit.  Indeed, our founder A. B. Simpson was prolific in his writing about the divine third person.[iv]  Nevertheless, I believe that at a critical juncture in its history the Alliance might have responded better and more biblically to the challenge of some of the pentecostally inclined brothers and sisters, and perhaps would have avoided much tension and division. 

The early days of many evangelical movements were pioneering, radical, pneumatically charged, and independent of ecclesiastical expectations.  Leaders championed their vision without worrying about anything other than being biblically faithful for the glory of God.  In the last decades of the nineteenth century and early years of the twentieth century people who associated with these movements were fearlessly open to workings and manifestations of God in His Trinitarian provisions of grace.  Those early days were reminiscent of Jeremiah 2:2, 3:

            I remember concerning you the devotion of your youth,

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