What is the Purpose of the Holy Spirit? Reviewing the Case Against YM Yang: Part 9

For context behind this posting, please read the first post in this series. 

(20130623Taipei, 歌詠從思愛成病到乳香崗的全然獻上1)(55:00-56:10)(mp3.8)

Many things, as I think about it, feel a little odd. I do not deny its efficacy but I somewhat doubt its necessity. For example, praying for the Holy Spirit. We say that the Holy Spirit is promised, isn’t that so? We say that God will give you the Holy Spirit. Is that not right?... I have not spoken wrongly, have I? …Since the promised Holy Spirit will be given to you, I’m thinking, someone says, yes, I’m going to wants to give you this, and you are happy, and then, you keep knocking at his door every now and the, give me! Give me! And I say, yes I’m going to give you, but why do you keep knocking on my door? We even plead so earnestly, give me! Give me! Hence I feel it’s funny, eventually it feels funny to me. We spend a lot of time pleading, we are not conversing, between us and God, there is no loving exchange.

Analysis:

1. Prayer is a communication and an exchange with God. But if one has not received the promised Holy Spirit, all the more he should pray to receive.

-We will not doubt the necessity of praying earnestly for the Holy Spirit since the teaching of the Lord is: How much more will the heavenly Father gives the Holy Spirit to those who ask?

-Didn’t the Lord use the parable of the loaves and the parable of the unjust judge, to teach us that in the face of rejection, we should not give up but should instead pray earnestly?

2. Yet YM doubts the necessity of praying for the Holy Spirit since it is a promise.

3. Isn’t such a saying a deviation from the Lord’s teachings? The Lord promises the Holy Spirit but it is not gotten automatically. You have to pray and ask Him for the Holy Spirit.

-The Lord’s instruction was for the disciples to tarry in Jerusalem to wait for the promised Holy Spirit. The disciples did not just sit down by faith and wait for the Holy Spirit.

-By faith, they prayed in one accord patiently. They did not come every now and then to pray to the Lord. Rather, they earnestly prayed until the tenth day, the Day of Pentecost, when the promised Holy Spirit finally came upon them.

4. With regards to praying and receiving the Holy Spirit, YM calls it grace upon grace., without the speaking of tongues, you can also enter heaven., he does not deny  its efficacy but doubts its necessity. Such statements have already deviated from our church’s basic beliefs.

Going back to the words of Pr. Yang that I transcribed in my last post, let's look at the context of what he said. And again, remember that many of his sermons focus on the issue of rote, mechanical, habitual faith, faith that's "for the sake of faith" rather than faith that helps you grow and become more like a reflection of Jesus Christ.

I've seen for myself the same phenomenon he's describing in my own local churches. Children as young as E1 class are forced to attend Prayer Services where they are forced to kneel down for a 45 minute prayer. They're taught that there is one thing they need to pray for. Ask God to give you the Holy Spirit. And they're taught how to pray. You kneel down, close your eyes, and repeat Hallelujah over and over again.

Sometimes I observe these kids as they pray. Their eyes are tightly closed. They have pained looks on their faces. Some of them are just repeating "Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah" over and over. Sometimes you'll see little kids screaming at the top of their lungs, "Give me the Holy Spirit! Give me the Holy Spirit!" over and over again. When the prayer is over and they haven't started speaking in tongues yet they are despondent. They think to themselves, what sin do they have within their little seven year old souls that has prevented God from giving them the Holy Spirit? They see their little friends to the left and to the right receiving the Holy Spirit. And especially when you're a kid, that's tough to take.

I thank the commentator for reminding us what the definition of prayer is, and of the unjust judge, and of how the disciples prayed in one accord on the Day of Pentecost. It's nice to be reminded of these stories. But these stories are completely irrelevant to the point here.

Let's say you had a little 7 year old child and someone convinced this kid that they should ask you for a car. So every day this little child screams to you, "I want a car! I want a car!" Every day you wake up and hear the same thing. "I want a car! I want a car!"

Years pass by. In the years when this child could have been asking you all other kinds of questions and making all other kinds of requests to you, there's only one request he's been making. "I want a car".

Wouldn't this have been a waste? You knew the child's needs and when the time came that he needed a car, you'd have given it to him happily. But in all those years there were so many other questions he could have asked you, so many other things you and he could have communicated about that would forever go unsaid.

A few of you are going to run off now and spread the word that I'm preaching heresy because I compared the precious Holy Spirit to a car. Go and do what you have to. But for the rest of you, here's the point.

As I mentioned, I was 10 years old when I received the Holy Spirit. Here's how it happened. There was a minister who was describing, in great detail, what would happen when the world ended. I was terrified. I knelt down to pray and knew that if I didn't have the Holy Spirit I couldn't go to heaven. I prayed with focus and great emotion. And suddenly my jaw started moving and weird noises started coming out of my mouth. Later they told me I'd received the Holy Spirit.

While others have complained that this kind of preaching is cruel, in all honesty to this day I thank God for the minister who preached these words. Because probably for the first time in my life I felt my own mortality, even at age 10. And that's not a bad thing for anyone at any age to do.

Here's the problem, though. To this day, perhaps because we limit our preaching to the letter of the Ten Basic Beliefs and not the infinite truths behind them, the church places the bulk of its emphasis on "getting the Holy Spirit". You pray and pray and pray until one day you speak in tongues and then it's game over—you have the ticket to heaven. You can check that box off.  Because that's what it says in the Ten Basic Beliefs.

While I of course don't disagree with our Basic Beliefs, to even imply that this is the totality of the teaching of the promised Holy Spirit is the false teaching here. And yet that's what we seem to do. 99% of our preaching about the Holy Spirit seems to be about the importance of merely receiving the Holy Spirit.

Here's how that affected me personally. At age 10 I was praying in tongues. But from that time I really only heard two kinds of messages preached about the Holy Spirit. First, I heard about how to get it. And second, I heard about how you can lose it.

And so as I entered my tumultuous teenage years, I didn't really know how to rely on the Spirit in my day to day life. Thank God, I still had a mother who helped keep me grounded in my faith. But in those years I never found myself really knowing who the Spirit was nor how I as a teenager going through rough times I could rely on the Spirit, walk by the Spirit, and deepen my relationship with Him.

I remember years later I spoke to another older brother. In a moment of total honesty and frankness I said to him, I almost wish God hadn't given me the Holy Spirit. Because I felt such a burden. With so many temptations and new opportunities to sin in my teenage years, I felt that at any point God would take the Holy Spirit away from me because while maybe I "deserved" the Holy Spirit at age 10, as I grew into my teenage years I wasn't doing what I needed to "keep the Holy Spirit" (as you can see, I didn't have an understanding of "grace" either).

This brother had a puzzled look on his face. He'd received the Holy Spirit later in life than I had and he told me very simply that he felt that the Holy Spirit had guided so much of his life. And I realized at that point that for so many years I'd had the Holy Spirit but didn't know anything about Him or how He could work in my life as a comforter, counselor, and guide.

Now don't get me wrong, I cherish the fact that God had given me the Holy Spirit at such a young age, and I believe that even if I wasn't consciously following the Spirit as best as I could during those years, the Spirit was still guiding me. But in a way I almost envy those who get the Holy Spirit later in life. Because I think in many ways they cherish it more, and they have more of a reference point of what their life was before they received the Holy Spirit and afterwards.

Is the purpose of the Holy Spirit solely so you can earn a ticket to heaven?

No.

Receiving the Holy Spirit is just one of the first steps along a long, long journey of faith. Receiving the promised Holy Spirit isn't the end, it's the means to an end. Because in addition to receiving the promised Holy Spirit you need to grow in the Spirit, attain perfection, be more like Christ, and bear fruit for God.

So what's the takeaway here?

First, let's think about those kids at the front of the chapel who are pleading and begging at the top of their lungs. "Give it to me! Give it to me!" On the surface, it looks like they're praying the same prayer as the widow to the unrighteous judge. They're asking and seeking and knocking.

But on the other hand, for a little 5 year old who is just aping the words that someone told him to repeat, how much is this prayer from their hearts, and how much is it a learned behavior that they're taught they need to do?

Let's put in another way. When my daughter cries out for her bottle, I can see from the depths of her being that she's hungry. She has a need, and she feels this need so desperately that she needs to cry out for help, even to the point where tiny tears come out of her little eyes if I don't grab her bottle quickly enough. And as her father, I have such compassion for her and know her needs so much that I drop everything that I'm doing to get her bottle for her.

Shouldn't this be the same spirit with which the 5 year olds, and 10 year olds, and 20 year olds, and 50 year olds in our church pray for the Holy Spirit, or for anything? And if they're just practicing rote behavior, what's the difference between that and the "vain repetitions" that Jesus so harshly criticized in Matthew 6:7? When we teach them to cry and to beg like that, are their prayers really authentic and from the heart, or are we teaching them to pray like those whom Jesus scolded for disfiguring their faces to show others they were fasting?

How can you tell whether their prayer is genuine or forced? It's quite simple. Compare the prayer they make in front of the chapel with the prayer they make at home alone kneeling by their own bed. Is it the same prayer?

Finally, the commentary here claims that when Pr. Yang said that he "does not deny its efficacy but doubts its necessity", he was talking about "praying (sic) and receiving the Holy Spirit". In other words, the commentary here once again asserts that Pr. Yang message was that "receiving the Holy Spirit is unnecessary".  But if you go back and read the commentators own words describing exactly what Pr. Yang said, isn't it clear that he was just talking about prayer for the Holy Spirit that is forced and inauthentic that he's describing as  "effective but questionable as to its necessity", and NOT about receiving the promised Holy Spirit itself? Has this analysis gotten to the point where it's grasping at straws to try to "prove" the false thesis that Pr. Yang claimed that one does not need to pray for the promised Holy Spirit evidenced by speaking in tongues?

Again, good people can disagree on the substance of the answers, but let's not misrepresent what those answers are. When I listen to Pr. Yang's message here, I don't hear heresy or deviancy. I just see a man of God who has noticed a real, practical problem in the church and provides his own perspective on it.

Maybe you agree that little children should be conditioned from birth to beg for the Holy Spirit from the time they learn to pray. Or maybe you feel that maybe it's best for the kids to grow up to the point where they can understand a little more about what the Holy Spirit is and how He can work in their lives before you teach them how to pray for it. Personally, I see some truth in both perspectives. But to shut down one perspective completely and call it "heresy" does a severe disservice to all who with pure hearts are seeking the perfect Truth.