The Airport Disaster That Taught Spader the Secret of the Spirit-Filled Life

Dann Spader was a brand-new Christian when someone sent him to O’Hare Airport to share his faith. He spotted a stranger and circled him for thirty minutes, trying to summon the courage to speak. When he finally approached, the man turned out to be working on his PhD in philosophy. “He chewed me up and spit me out,” Spader recalls. “I could not understand half of his questions. All I could say was, ‘Once I was blind, but now I see.’” Spader wanted to quit. Evangelism was not for him. He was not smart enough, bold enough, or qualified enough.

But something made him try once more. He approached another traveler, and this time the man reached into his pocket and pulled out the exact same evangelism booklet Spader was carrying. The man had just come from Philadelphia, where another college student had shared it with him. Right there in O’Hare Airport, the man prayed to receive Christ. Spader writes: “I would never be the same again! I experienced God working through me, and the experience changed me forever.”

What Every Worker Needs

That moment at O’Hare captures the essence of what every Chair 3 worker needs: to experience God working through them. Not around them. Not in spite of them. Through them. When a young believer sees God use their imperfect words, their trembling hands, their feeble attempts at faithfulness - something breaks open inside. They move from knowing about God’s power to experiencing it. And that experience changes everything.

But there is a danger lurking in the enthusiasm of new workers. They come to Christ, grow, start serving with passion - and then burn out. The joy evaporates. Frustration sets in. What went wrong?

The “I” Problem

The apostle Paul describes the problem with surgical precision in Romans 7. “For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do - this I keep on doing” (Romans 7:18-19). Count the personal pronouns. Twenty-nine times in that chapter Paul says “I.” I want, I try, I cannot, I fail. It is the exhausting loop of self-reliance. And every worker who tries to serve God in willpower alone ends up exactly here: wanting to do good but unable to sustain it.

The Spirit’s Solution

Then Romans 8 opens like a door flung wide: “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death” (Romans 8:1-2). The shift is dramatic. Twenty-nine “I”s in chapter 7 become nineteen references to “the Spirit” in chapter 8. The energy source has changed. No longer “I try harder” but “the Spirit empowers me.”

The New Testament gives this reality several names. The exchanged life: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). The Spirit-filled life: “Be filled with the Spirit” (Ephesians 5:18). The crucified life: “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Galatians 5:24). Three names, one reality. The “I” that dominated Romans 7 has been dethroned. The Spirit now reigns.

The Branch That Does Not Strain

Jesus gave the simplest picture of this reality in John 15: “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). A branch does not grit its teeth and produce fruit. It does not attend a seminar on fruit production. It simply stays connected to the vine, and fruit comes naturally.

For a young church-planter in a remote village in Central Java who has been preaching, visiting the sick, teaching children, and cleaning the church building - and is now exhausted and ready to quit - the answer is not to serve less. The answer is to draw from a different power source. Stop trying harder. Start abiding more. The Spirit is the vine’s life flowing through the branch.

The Only Way Through

Spader is honest about what lies ahead for workers: “Many believers do not make it through Chair 3.” Jesus Himself said, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few” (Matthew 9:37). The road through Chair 3 involves suffering, servanthood, and sacrifice. But Paul learned to say, “I want to know Christ - yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death” (Philippians 3:10).

The only way to the fruitfulness of Chair 4 is through the refining of Chair 3. And the only way through Chair 3 is in the Spirit’s power, not our own. As Spader discovered: “Nothing came my way that He had not approved in advance. He was shaping my life and molding it. When I learned this simple lesson, I began to relax and enjoy the journey.”

The exhausted worker does not need another program. He needs to rediscover the branch-and-vine connection. The Spirit who raised Christ from the dead lives in him. And that changes everything.