Article September 7, 1987 Issue

Christian healing and "the fires of the Holy Ghost"

How can we see the Holy Spirit as relevant to our lives today?

Sandra Peterson

She opened the book because it was beautifully bound and she loved books. What it said was beautiful too—in fact, probably too beautiful to be true, she thought. But during that brief reading her cold disappeared for no apparent reason.

She had considered herself burned out, as she put it. As a girl she had gone to the revival meetings held in her midwestern community during the Depression and answered the alter call many times. But the faith that would glow so brightly in the meeting seemed to fade away during the next ordinary day.

This time, however—this time was different. Even though some of the cold symptoms returned when she told her husband what had happened, she had caught a new perspective. If a believable illness could come and go, she reasoned, maybe other aspects of everyday living were just as insubstantial. Maybe it was true that the reality was one God and His goodness—an article of faith that she had long held and that now, for a moment, seemed vividly real.

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