Quickening The Spirit

"God spoke that was the speaker to Adam and Eve in paradise." (Sermon VI) That George Fox repeated this revelation of the Spirit often in several of his sermons attests to its importance. He exhorts us to hear the voice of the Teacher, the Christ in us, and to remain with him.

My custom for preparation for worship is to pray my reading is profitable to my worship and prayer. In the moments before proceeding this morning I saw that the voice I heard was the voice George Fox heard was the voice Adam and Eve heard.

Nothing can quicken the spirit but God. Just the thought of Jesus walking and speaking with me quickens my soul. So too did it quicken George Fox. Listen to him at the end of a paragraph from Sermon VII. He's not speaking, he's projecting: [In] the time of Whitsuntide, so called, the Jews dwelled in booths, in green booths, and there was a feast. They had several feasts. In the old covenant they had the outward booths and "feasts of tabernacles." Now in the new covenant they come to be grafted into Christ Jesus, and in him every plant grows green always, in the second Adam, who was and is, and will be without withering to all eternity. Glory to God! Praises, praises, and glorious renown is over all to the Lord God everlasting, forever! Emphasis added to depict his quickened spirit from the Christ in him speaking to him. That spirit quickening experience is what George Fox assiduously exhorts us to know and knowing it to hear the speaker to Adam and Eve in paradise. 

Early on in his journal recounting his disgust with those who professed to be Christian, Fox wrote, "And when all my hopes in them and in all men were gone, so that I had nothing outwardly to help me, nor could tell what to do, then, Oh then, I heard a voice which said, 'There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition', and when I heard it my heart did leap for joy. Then the Lord did let me see why there was none upon the earth that could speak to my condition, namely, that I might give him all the glory[.]"

Glory and praise to God is the only satisfying response from the quickened spirit.

On page 142 (Sermon VI) George Fox asks, "Would any know who was the Quakers' first speaker?" Such an important question.

When George Fox preaches he never tells us how we have to be. He admonishes us to keep in the Spirit. Keeping in Spirit is the only way to know how to be.