The Farmville herald. (Farmville, Va.) 1957-current, 1962-10-26
God Within
Lesson for October Is, 1862


Sometimes it looks as if the
Church made it harder instead
Of easier to believe in God. The
Church talks about the Trinity,
but we don't understand that.
It talks about the Holy Spirit,
but that seems very hard to
understand. On the contrary, the
Church's teaching about the
Holy Spirit (all the good of
which we owe to the Bible in
the first place. makes God
much nearer than we would
otherwise dare to think about
Him. In fact a definition Of the
Holy Spirit which many Chris
tian teachers have expressed is
just this: The Holy Spirit is God
at work in the hearts Of men.
The Holy Spirit is God-within.
You will never be any closer to
God nor He to you, than you are
to the Holy Spirit.
He Will Send. 1 Will Send. .
OF course no reader will sup
pose that he can find out all
there is to know about God, in
one single column in a news
paper. God cannot be shut up
in a million books, and of course
not in a few lines of print. The
Bible material for this week S
study gives much more than we
can deal with in so short a
space. ALI we can do is to point
out three truths, all of them
from the teaching of Jesus.
First of all is that apparent con-
tradiction: Jesus tells His dis
ciples first that the Father will
send them the Holy Spirit, and
then that He Christi will do So.
We are intended to put these
two truths together. The Holy
Spirit comes from the Father
and comes from the Son Of God,
from Jesus Christ. Now if you
insist on puzzles, there are puz-
zles in that simple statement.
But let's bypass the puzzles,
and look at what is plain. The
least this can mean is that the
Holy Spirit is like the Father
and like the Son, we might
using human terms Of colTse)
say that the Holy Spirit is in
harmony with, and represents,
both the Father and the Son,
both the high God and our Lord
Jesus. Zone is no more and no
less God than the other is
Well, what is this? Another
puzzle? No; this truth gives us
way to distinguish between al
aeged Spirits of God and the
true Spirit. If the Spirit leads
man to do what is not Christ
like, then We may be sure that
whatever he has in his heart, it
is not the Spirit whom Christ
has sent.
Truth and Conscience
Jesus furthermore calls the
Holy Spirit the Spirit of
Truth" Some Christians under
stand this to mean that wher-
ever men are moving in the di-
rection of truth - any truth,
scientific, economic, intellectual,
religious - there the Holy Spirit
is at work. Now Of course, if
God is a god of truth, His SPIRIT
will never support lie. And we
may well believe that God is
concerned with truth of every
kind and in every aspect Of life.
But it is also true that the Holy
Spirit is most especially con-
cerned with truth about God and
about his relation to the world
and particularly to man. It is
quite possible. it happens every
day, that men who have no re-
lgiOn and do not believe in God
at all. make scientific explora-
tons and discoveries that are
true and even valuable. But no
one is likely to learn much
about God who does not seek the
help of the Holy Spirit. To put
this another way only God can
introduce us to God.
What a normal human being
wants, however. is not mere
bare truth. he wants not only to
know, he wants to do. This is
particularly true in the Christian
religion. Like its mother-rehgion
OF Judaism, Christianity has al
ways been interested in action.
Right living is quite as impor-
tant as right thinking, the two
cannot be separated. So the
Holy Spirit is called the "Coun-
selor." This is a better transla-
ton than Comforter" or "Ad-
vocate" though it may include
those other meanings. The word
suggests that God-within IS not
p essence only. but a guiding
presence. Put into simple Ian
guage. this means that the more