Back in Montana when I was a kid, we got the enthusiasm for Holy Spirit about once a year. It came at times in the spring, but most often in the fall, when farmers were done with their crops. Always it was well-organized, if not overly stimulating. Once a year, the pastor would solemnly announce an all-night prayer vigil for the coming of the Holy Spirit—in anticipation of the evangelistic team that was blowing into town.

The turnout for the yearly Prayer Vigil for the Outpouring of the Holy Spirit was usually sparse—limited to the same faithful few who remain to this day in memory. My sister and I were the only kids who ever attended. It took fortitude to attend. The prayers were long and the talks that accompanied the prayers dreadfully boring. A church elder would read, in a monotonous voice, passages on the Holy Spirit from Ellen White.

Despite the tedium of such prayer vigils, they have left with me a lasting fascination of looking for the mighty works of the Spirit—of seeing the sick healed, the dead raised, and the world restored to Montana splendor. As a boy, I always hoped that our pathetically little group, praying in a cold, barely heated room, might receive the Spirit and set the world on fire. But it never happened. The old-timers are gone now, and I am not sure that many churches still pray for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit before the evangelistic advance team rolls into town.

Part of the problem, of course, is that we Adventists are so steeped in our brewed-down version of New England rationalism—by way of the Whites, Joseph Bates, and the half-converted deist, William Miller—that anything that smacks of enthusiasm comes with great difficulty to us. We are most certainly a people of the Truth, but only by small, well-defined measures a people of the Spirit.

In keeping with The-Line-upon-Line-Precept-upon-Precept-Here-a-Little-There-a-Little method of Bible study I learned back in those Montana churches, let me make a proposal about the Fruits of the Spirit. Jesus once said that "a tree is known by its fruits," and again, "by their fruits you shall know them." Now if the fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, and a tree is known by its fruit, then the Holy Spirit must be loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, and not easily flustered or upset (see Gal. 5:22).

In other words, if someone, God forbid, should be caught in sin within the church, we could imagine that the Spirit might be the last person to throw the book at them and cast them out to brew upon their own just desserts. Rather, with very little imagination, we might picture the Spirit as the first person to go and restore the person, gently, back to the community. And if the person were in difficulty, the Spirit is likely the one to shoulder up and help the sinner.

Furthermore, if the Spirit were to get riled—as even loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, and not easily flustered or upset people do at times—we might think the Spirit would get a bit miffed at those who thought themselves something, when they were nothing, and even a tad angry at those who make a good impression outwardly, while working overtime to compel people to conform to their own strict interpretations of faith and morality.

As a matter of fact, this is the smack-on-the-head-of-the-nail homily Paul hammers home with his own large hand to the Galatians (see Gal. 6: 1ff.). I do remember hearing in those late-night prayer vigils as a boy the part of Paul’s message that commended us not to become "weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up." We needed to hear that, because we were dreadfully weary.

But the preachers never read to us, as far as I remember, the next sentence: "Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers." Somewhere, the preachers had the idea that the Holy Spirit would never come until a small band of us turned our backs on the outside world and became the very elect, who by our devotion and strict conformity to church teachings would usher in the final outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

Thankfully, try as they did, the preachers’ interpretation of the Holy Spirit never took root in those small Montana churches. In our heads, we believed their message, but it never found a home in our hearts.

We thought we should clean house so the Holy Spirit could come, but we never could. The mother who brought her children to Sabbath School, but never stayed for church, was always welcome. Everyone knew the frayed rectangular shape in the shirt pocket of the old cowhand didn’t become that way from carrying a pocket New Testament, but we never thought to call him on it. And certainly a number of our members worked in the rail yards and in the sugar beet factory when their turn for weekend shifts came around, but we still counted them in our membership.

We were quite simply too small of a group to be anything other than a family—complete with our squabbles and occasional jealousies.

Maybe, I think, looking back after almost half a century, our prayers for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit as a boy back in those small Montana churches were answered, despite all of our assumptions to the contrary. We were looking for something grand and earthshaking. Something like wind and fire, which uproots trees and destroys them root and branch. But maybe, just maybe, the tree is known by its fruit, rather than by the storms that rage about it.

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