The Helper used a failure of mine to teach me how much He means business about service." Those words are from Catherine Marshall’s book, The Helper (Chosen Books © 2001), about the work of the Holy Spirit. I was leading a study on The Helper in my adult Sunday school class and we were going through a challenging chapter on obedience and the willingness to be put to work by the Holy Spirit.
Catherine wrote, “One night I was home alone and had carefully locked all the doors. Close to midnight, I was ready for bed and about to turn out the lights. Suddenly, there came a loud knocking on the front door. Asking who it was through the still-closed door, I heard the voice of an acquaintance whose sister was dying of cancer in a nearby town.”
Catherine opened the door so they could talk face to face. The woman had come to ask if Catherine would drive her right then, that night, to pray at her sister’s bedside. Catherine demurred, and asked if she could go to the bedside the following day. Reluctantly, the visitor agreed and left.
The following morning the sick woman was moved to a hospital. Catherine said, “When I got to her room, I found that she had sunk into a deep coma. No one was around; no family, no hospital personnel. Quietly I sat there and prayed for her, but there was a sinking feeling of anticlimax. She died later that day.”
The guilt was crushing. “What would have happened had I gone on that night?” she thought. “Was there an important word the Holy Spirit wanted her to hear?”
The Holy Spirit convicted her severely: “Not enough flexibility or promptness in obeying Me! So you drive to another town in the middle of the night. Forget sleep. Forget your convenience. When I say ‘Go!’ I’ll take care of everything.”
As we discussed this story in our Sunday school class, I asked, “Have any of you ever had a similar experience?”
A woman named Mary Jo spoke up about an amazingly similar incident but with different results. She said, “It was in 1970. I was a student at Florida State working my way through college. I was as poor as a church mouse, counting every penny. In the middle of the night there was a knock on my door. A friend from school was crying and upset. Her mother was very ill in Jacksonville, a two-hour drive across the Panhandle.”
“Could you drive me there?’ she asked.
Mary Jo thought: “I can’t really afford the gas money, and I’m not sure my beat-up old jalopy can make the trip there and back.”
Despite those concerns, Mary Jo knew God wanted her to help her friend in need.
“Yes, I’ll drive you,” she said.
Downtown Jacksonville was a dangerous place for two young girls in the middle of the night, but they found the hospital without incident.
“I left my friend there with family and made the long trip home by myself,” said Mary Jo. “I was scared to death, but I prayed and knew without a doubt God was watching over me. The next day my friend called. Her mother had died later that night.”
If Mary Jo had disobeyed, that opportunity to help her friend in need would have been lost forever.
Sometimes, as in Catherine Marshall’s case, we have to learn the hard way that the Holy Spirit means business when He asks us to do something. He expects flexibility, a willingness to interrupt our well-choreographed lives and prompt obedience. Failure to obey the Holy Spirit can have serious consequences.
Catherine Marshall searched out the Helper’s dealings with some towering Christian figures at the turn of the century, like Dwight Moody and Billy Sunday. She discovered that they were given the “gift of the Holy Spirit for service.” She concluded, “The fullness and overflow of the Spirit will come to us only as we say ‘Yes’ to Him, reach for the towel and the basin of water, and get to work.”
She was referring, of course, to Jesus’ example in John 13 of washing the feet of the disciples. We, too, are called to a life of serving others in the name of Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit living within us.
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