"I Pray the Spirit of Holiness on You"

I love hospitals!  Perhaps that is a strange confession to make but I spent almost 30 years of my life working in four hospitals.  The bulk of those years were spent in Flowers Hospital here in Dothan.  There is another hospital here in Dothan which a few of the old-timers remember as General Hospital, which became Southeast Alabama Medical Center, and has now morphed into Southeast Health.  I worked in their emergency department for a brief period on a PRN (as needed) basis in the late ‘80’s.  When I was in Houston attending Texas Bible College, I worked for a year at St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital/Texas Heart Institute in a very busy CVICU.  It was there that the famed Dr. Denton Cooley carved out an international reputation as one of the world’s premier cardiovascular surgeons.  He had some excellent partners who did not have international notoriety but were very skilled in their craft as well.  People from all over the nation and the world came to Texas Heart Institute for their surgeries and transplants. 

Then I moved directly across the street to the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center and worked in the SICU along with some cross-training in the bone marrow unit.  I saw some of the finest cutting-edge medicine in the fight against cancer at that facility and was there for almost 2 years.  I had intentions to only stay at MDA for a year and then move down the street to Ben Taub.  That hospital was the Harris County hospital for Houston, and I wanted to work in their shock/trauma unit.  However, that was around the time the AIDS crisis was beginning and my wife, who at the time was working in L&D at Texas Women’s, was radically opposed to it.  Her main argument was that I might get an accidental needle stick and get AIDS or hepatitis or some other sort of malady and so I stayed at MDA for the rest of our time in Houston. 

I have seen all sorts of patients, physicians, ancillary medical staff, cranks, crazies and some of the most selfless people who staff those hospitals through those years.  I have been around some of the smartest people on the planet, some with a terrible lack of common sense, others who were literally burned out to a crisp and might have been better off working elsewhere in a completely different field.  I have cried over the loss of patients, I have felt the exhilaration with patients and their families at overnight turnarounds in their conditions, I have seen babies being born, I also have seen a lot of people die, I have been involved in some tense moments as patients were “crashing” as we say.  After a while you come to understand that the housekeepers, the laundry department and the dietary crew are just as important as the top-notch surgeons and other physicians who are usually the stars of the show.  You see every facet of the human condition when you work in a hospital.  When I travel and drive by both small and large hospitals, I often wonder what kind of quality of care is taking place.

Sometime in the time range of 1993-1996, I met a man and his wife that touched my world.  The sad thing is that I cannot remember their names because they were part of the ebb and flow of daily medicine in the medical world.  At the time, I was working in one of the MICU’s at Flowers when an elderly woman came through the ER.  She was transferred upstairs to us on a ventilator and even now the medical reasons are now very fuzzy, so I am not sure why she was on the vent.  She was in her ‘80’s and critically ill and her husband was the only family member with her.  He was fragile physically as well.  I later found out that for whatever reason their children had moved several hundred miles away and were completely out of their lives.  During that stay, she managed to get better, but it was only the beginning of the end for her.  You could tell that they had a strong spiritual background.  I later discovered that he had been a pastor for several years mostly in very rural country churches that struggled greatly just to keep the doors open.  However, their spiritual life was very strong, which I determined from seeing the way they prayed for and with each other during her recovery times. 

He stayed at the hospital the entire time with her because neither of them could drive and they lived about 60 miles from Dothan.  A couple of times maybe a neighbor or a church member would bring him some clothes to change into.  He would literally camp out in the MICU waiting room which was not very comfortable to say the least.  One of our monitor techs and I got our heads together and we found some empty room on an adjoining floor for him to stay in, and we managed to keep it “on hold” so he could stay in there.  We also would scout around when the dietary department would bring the food trays and usually on one of the floors there would be an extra and we would bring it to him so he could eat.  The gratitude from that old pastor was evident and we felt like we were doing something by watching out for him.  When his wife finally moved out of the unit, we kept tabs on them in the general rooms and kept hunting meal trays for him and so forth.  Finally, the wife passed on, and I sort of lost track as time passed. 

Several months later, he had a health crisis with something called congestive heart failure.  He went into respiratory failure and was placed in our unit on a ventilator.  He managed to pull through it but now there was no one to look after him.  He repeated that cycle again several times before finally a year or so after his wife passed on, he did as well.  When he died, there was only the MICU staff there because no one else was there during those last few moments of his earthly life.  Those are the moments when healthcare can be difficult and you feel grief for those who die alone.  Through all that three-year cycle, I managed to get somewhat close to that old pastor and looking back I think that I probably should have tried to keep more of a connection with him.  I found that he had extremely similar biblical doctrines that I had and had a strong love for holiness and separation from the world.  There were a few times that I would step into the room late at night and he would be praying alone.  He had an old beat-up and worn Bible that generally was opened on the bedside table.  It was cheaply made but well-used and marked up with a pencil. 

During one of those evenings, I stepped into his room to let him know that I was almost finished for the day and was about to leave.  Earlier in the day, he and I had enjoyed a very good discussion on the Bible and spiritual matters.  But as I told him I was about to leave, he asked me if he could pray for me, to which I obviously agreed.  Even now pushing on almost thirty years later, I can remember some of the content of his prayer and he did pray for more than just a minute or so.  He stayed at it for a good five minutes or so and this phrase still stands out to me:  I pray the Spirit of holiness on this man!  Fill his ministry and preaching with Your holiness!  His old voice was still a bit raspy and hoarse from the recent extubation of the ventilator but volume in prayer almost is never the issue.  Through the years, I have had a lot of people to pray for me and with me and sadly I don’t remember a whole lot of those prayers.  Some of them I remember because they were at particularly memorable spiritual landmarks but mostly, I don’t remember the content of those prayers.  But I remember that old pastor/preacher praying that for me.  Periodically, out of nowhere, the Lord pushes it to the forefront of my memory, and I am challenged, convicted, and inspired by a prayer that took place in an intensive care unit.  I pray the Spirit of holiness on this man!  Fill his ministry and preaching with Your holiness!    

When I seriously start contemplating the matter of holiness, it stirs my soul!  I have a section in my library that has five or six shelves of books devoted to the subject of holiness.  The pursuit of holiness does not need to be a lost art among us.  I believe that the memory of that prayer the old pastor prayed ought to continue to disturb me out of my spiritual comfort zone so that I desire to be filled with true holiness, not moralism or legalism, but with the Spirit of holiness.  I want to be drawn to a place of deep undistracted prayer and spiritual desire that only true holiness can bring.  The thought of holiness will cause a greater striving toward the grace of God, grace that fights against a looseness of living and a love of this world and the things in it (1 John 2:15-17).  The matter of real holiness is not the following of rules or principles but the push toward being like Christ.  It leads to my thinking being more concerned with what God thinks than what this world thinks. 

Yet, here is the big “however” or the condition that goes along with that prayer; holiness must be cultivated!  Among Pentecostals in the area of prayer this has happened more than once or twice, we can think that if that famous “someone” will pray for us then we will get a special dispensation of whatever we are looking for, and it will come to us. Hebrews 12:14 insists that holiness must be cultivated and pursued.  If you do not know who Hillary Hahn is, you should go to You Tube and see her work.  She is a classical violinist who stepped into the classical world when she was fifteen, she is now forty-six (as of 2026).  She is considered one of the top violinists in the world.  She has worked at her craft as has Joshua Bell, another classical violinist.  No one would ever accuse them of being legalists but through rigid discipline and pursuit they have achieved a level of success.  Why is it that in the realm of Pentecostal holiness circles that when someone takes their spiritual walk seriously, they immediately are accused of legalism?  When did obedience become “works”?  God help us! 

When that old elder prayed for me all those years ago, I was already moving in a direction that has only been compounded!  We do not live our lives backward but forward yet the only way to truly evaluate progress is to look from where you used to be versus now.  Those early days of zeal, inspiration, and desire are still with me and I have discovered that life really is directional.  I am actively praying on a regular basis for spiritual transformation to continue in my own life!  With my own preaching as of late, I have begun to conclude my messages with some serious questions.  I want to consider these questions in this last part of this blog post:

Am I allowing Proverbs 2:1-5 to set a serious agenda for personal Bible study in areas of teachability, obedience, discipline, dependence, and perseverance?

Can I expect to grow in holiness if I do not take the Word seriously?

Do I have a growing hatred of sin?

Does repentance have a prevalent place in my walk?

Do I pray and not work?

Do I work and not pray? 

Do I realize that holiness and prayer cannot be separated?

Do I flee all forms of sinful worldliness when it comes to my door or to my mind?

Do I purpose in my heart not to defile myself with the king’s food and wine?

Do I press against the inconsistencies of word and walk?

I pray for the Spirit of holiness to be on you!

Thanks for reading. . .

Philip Harrelson