In the Deeps and in Weakness

The Work of the Spirit among Friends

In my time among Friends, I’ve sometimes yearned for the fiery and passionate faithfulness of the early Quaker movement. I’ve wanted to see the captives freed, the last come first, and good news shared with all who are seeking. I’ve struggled with our creaking institutions, our somber respectability, and what it means to be a “good Quaker,” as if that was something I could do in my own power. I’ve wondered if we’re ready to respond to the call to take up new wineskins for the Spirit of Christ’s new wine, willing to open ourselves to the Spirit’s transforming power. Do we recognize that God is as close to us as God was to the early Friends, the apostles, and the prophets? Do our lives testify with the peace and purpose that come from that recognition?

Holding these hopes and questions, I’ve sometimes looked with longing at the Pentecostal and charismatic traditions. In those traditions, I’ve glimpsed room for the Holy Spirit’s unfettered power to transform lives and communities. I’ve seen an amazing freedom in worship, as each person is encouraged to bring their gifts and yield to God’s leading. Of course, there are divisions and difficulties among charismatic Christians, as there are among Friends. There may be an immense pressure to conform, the view that salvation must be proven by the exercise of specific gifts, like speaking in new tongues. As in many faith communities, there may be more drama than life, more form than power, and too much focus on individual redemption, rather than the redemption of the whole cosmos. There may be social views that are, to my mind, divorced from the gospel. But for all that, Pentecostal and charismatic followers of Jesus have taught me that the Spirit doesn’t always speak in the language of the White middle class and that when the Spirit is truly running the show, we can expect to be helped and changed at almost every meeting for worship. We can expect God to show up and lead us.

When the Spirit was poured out on all who attended those early meetings, it was so that all might be pointed to their present helper, Christ Jesus, who could bring them into new life. 

I’ve discovered similar lessons in the journals and tracts of the early Friends. George Fox, riffing on Paul’s Letter to the Romans, frequently refers to the gospel as “the power of God.” His experience taught him that when God shows us our darkness, God also gives us the help to change our lives: where there’s Light, there’s Power. Fox invites the professing Christians around him to come from knowledge about Christ to knowledge of Christ’s actual power in their lives. Edward Burrough, who brought the Quaker message to London, writes about how the Spirit was poured out on early Friends as they met for worship. He describes how their “hearts were made glad” as they “spake with new tongues.” And Margaret Fell defends the right of women to prophesy, because any who “speak by the Spirit and Power of the Lord Jesus” should be heard. All of this might sound rather charismatic. Perhaps this is no surprise: the Quaker tradition is often regarded as especially centered on the Holy Spirit, a forerunner to later charismatic movements. Quaker theology had a clear influence on the development of the Vineyard movement, the Azusa Street Revival, and the Holy Spirit churches in East Africa. I’ve even heard us described as “the quiet charismatics.”

As I’ve continued to read the first Friends, however, I’ve found that their distinctive understanding of primitive Christianity revived was not just Spirit-centered but Jesus-centered. This has helped me to understand their excitement at the discovery of a practical, living faith, with Jesus as their present teacher. They realized that they could relate to Christ, risen and working in their hearts, just as his disciples did, and they felt a call out of religious ideas and practices and into this simple teacher-student relationship. They were a community of humble learners in the school of Christ. Liberated from the need to work their way to God, they were sent out into the world with the joy of those who know they travel in the company of their loving guide.

Among some charismatics, the Holy Spirit is seen as the custodian of the church until Jesus’s bodily return. In the interim, the Spirit has been given to lead and comfort us. This is far from the understanding of the early Quakers. They experienced Jesus himself, come again in their hearts. They heard his voice within, leading them toward greater love and truth. His light showed them how to live differently. They knew Christ as their shepherd, who gathered them into community to learn from him together. They saw how the whole sweep of the biblical narrative portrayed our need to listen for help from a power greater than ourselves and our repeated unwillingness to do this, and so they set out to listen and build their lives on what they heard. These Friends had no need for a custodian: Christ had come to be the head of the church. He had promised to be present wherever two or three gathered in his name, and Friends found this promise fulfilled as they met on hillsides and in valleys, carrying this experience from town to town.

Our spiritual forebears knew the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Christ. Jesus told his students he would send the Spirit of Truth, and he told them he was the Truth itself. These things are not neatly separable; the early Friends didn’t have a way to understand the Spirit apart from Christ. They knew the Spirit was working among them because it drew them to the living Jesus, their rescuer and teacher. When the Spirit was poured out on all who attended those early meetings, it was so that all might be pointed to their present helper, Christ Jesus, who could bring them into new life. This is how they knew it was the Spirit of Truth, and not just the spirit of the age.

We can tell God’s voice apart from other voices because, in the companionship of Christ, we are brought to a deeper sense of what God sounds like. And when we begin to listen, we slowly learn to recognize this voice more and more clearly.

When New Testament writers mention discernment, they often seem to have this question in mind: how can we distinguish the Spirit of God from all the other spirits, all the other forces that might move us, all the other powers we might follow? Paul regards the discernment of spirits as a spiritual gift (1 Cor. 12:10). John reminds us of the need to “test the spirits to see whether they are from God” (1 John 4:1). Discernment of spirits was needed among early Friends, as they struggled to understand Christ’s guidance, and as they confronted the powers and principalities of their time. We also need this gift in an increasingly secular culture where the spirit of the age is individualistic and success looks more valuable than faithfulness. There are many spirits, many voices we might hear and obey. In me, there’s the voice of frustration and impatience, and I need Christ to soften my heart. Outside, there are the norms of my society; calls to ambition and prosperity; and the spirits of greed, envy, and fear. I need Christ to help me focus on what matters, to plant me in faithful simplicity. With all this, how am I to know which spirit to listen to, which to follow?

Early Friends have helped me to see that I can better distinguish the Spirit of God from these other spirits if I look to Jesus. After all, it’s his Spirit—the Spirit of Truth—that will lead me toward more abundant life, a gentler heart, and a bolder witness. Christ has come to guide and gather us himself, no custodian needed. So I ask myself, is this voice drawing me to Jesus? Does it sound like his voice? Does it echo and confirm his teachings? Does it tell me to love my enemies and pray for those who persecute me, or does it suggest that I build higher walls to protect myself? We can tell God’s voice apart from other voices because, in the companionship of Christ, we are brought to a deeper sense of what God sounds like. And when we begin to listen—first in the small things—we slowly learn to recognize this voice more and more clearly.

I don’t know how to draw a tidy line between Christ and the Spirit. On the one hand, the disciples didn’t really understand Jesus until the day of Pentecost, when the Spirit descended on them and helped them to see what his life, death, and resurrection meant for them. On the other hand, they couldn’t have begun to understand that experience without knowing Jesus. I need a Jesus-centered spirituality and a Spirit-gifting Jesus. My experience teaches me that with this Jesus at the center, the fire and freedom I yearn for will take care of itself.

Early Friends experienced the Spirit’s electric current because they recognized that Christ had come to direct their worship personally, bringing that Spirit with him. Assured of his presence, they knew the gift of his power, and they testified, sometimes in great suffering, that nothing else is needed for our worship. We don’t need a particular person with a particular skill. We don’t need a plan or program. These may be helpful at times, but they’re not necessary, and there’s an extraordinary freedom in this. All we need is the one who is with us to the end of the age. Jesus is utterly sufficient. The early Quaker writings call us from our dead forms and man-made ideas to the living Christ, to his “enoughness.”

George Fox’s experience of Jesus’s sufficiency was born in despair. He searched for a power that could change him within and found that no minister or priest could provide this. He was offered plenty of cures and counsel, but each left him more despairing, until he came to see that nothing outwardly could help him. All those he had gone to for answers seemed to be “miserable comforters.” Finally, in this despondent condition, he was turned to the one ever-present friend who could speak to his condition. He found Jesus as a living presence within, and his heart leapt for joy. In his Journal, he records that through his loneliness and distress, he came to see that Christ alone was “sufficient in the deeps and in weakness.” He saw that he had to be brought to that low place, so that he might be brought to Christ. And from then on, he felt a call to anchor his life only on the one who could reach him in that difficult place. When Fox says that he knew Christ’s voice in the heart experimentally, I hear the conclusion of a long and difficult experiment to discover what can truly help in despair. The Quaker tradition is rooted in that experiment. Our ways of worship, discernment, and testimony stem from the centering of the answer—Jesus is sufficient in the deeps and in weakness—and the subtraction of anything that won’t really matter when we’re at the end of our rope. In that place, when I’m searching for a power that can transform me from within, I don’t need any particular spiritual gift. I don’t need new ideas or plans, a dramatic worship service, a growing church, a plunge into busyness, or a revised Faith and Practice. I need Jesus, with me the whole way. Nothing but the help and guidance of his Holy Spirit will do.

If we will allow Christ to be enough for us, trusting the one who can speak to us in the deeps and in weakness, then our worship and testimony will have all the life they need. We will know the Holy Spirit among us because we will know the one whose spirit it is.

I too know this experimentally. I’ve known times of deep depression and anxiety. I’m good at worrying about nearly anything, and at times I’ve felt despair about the world and my place in it, aware of my own weakness and unable to find a power to truly help me on the inside. I’ve sought cures and counsel, outward help aplenty, and have found some of it healing. But at different times, I’ve found all of it somehow wanting. Then one day, at a particularly low point, when I was ready to resign myself to an unguided and unmoored life, I heard a voice of love and hope in my heart. I felt the presence of a guide. I was told to listen, trust, and follow. This was a bewildering and unwanted experience, but as I listened and then kept on listening, I came to see that this was Jesus’s voice and that he was there to lead me into new life. This voice drew me into community with others who could help me to hear and follow, to distinguish Christ’s Spirit from other forces and powers I might be tempted to embrace. My life was not turned around in an instant, but I knew that if I found myself in the deeps or in weakness, I would not be there alone. The joy of Christ’s friendship and direction would be there too. Waiting for his grace and truth to help me within, what more could I long for? This friend, with me in the deepest valleys, would guide me day by day in decisions and conversations in ways that I could rely on.

I still pray for a Quaker community where the blind see, the lame walk, lepers are cured, the dead are raised to life, and good news is preached to the poor. But these days, when I hunger for the earth-shaking faith of the early Friends or look with longing at the charismatic churches, I remember that the teacher and companion who started the early Quaker movement—finding George Fox in despair—is just as present with us. The good news that he has come to guide and gather us himself is still good. And though the gifts of the Spirit of Christ may seem daily and ordinary, this needn’t mean that the fire has cooled. In everyday ways, we are called to a faithfulness as adventurous and a friendship as passionate as the Friends before us. We are called to be humble learners in the same school. That may not look as exciting as charismatic zeal, but I’m no longer worried about that. If we will allow Christ to be enough for us, trusting the one who can speak to us in the deeps and in weakness, then our worship and testimony will have all the life they need. We will know the Holy Spirit among us because we will know the one whose spirit it is.