Reversing Our Tragic Neglect of the Holy Spirit
I want to be different today from what I was yesterday as the fruit of the Spirit becomes more manifest in me. I want to live so that I am truly submitted to the Spirit’s leading on a daily basis. Christ said it is better for us that the Spirit came, and I want to live like I know that is true. I don’t want to keep crawling when I have the ability to fly.
Joni Ereckson did not end her life the day she was paralysed, instead, she chose to surrender it to God. Little did she know that the Spirit of God would transform her into one of the godliest women ever to grace this earth? God gave her a humility and a love that enables her to look beyond her own pain and to see others’ hurts. She is a person who consistently “in humility count[s] others more significant” than herself (an embodiment of Philippians 2:3)
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The Lord challenges us to suffer persecution and to confess him. He wants those who belong to him to be brave and fearless. He himself shows how the weakness of the flesh is overcome by the courage of the Spirit. This is the testimony of the apostles and in particular of the representative, administrating Spirit. A Christian is fearless.
A life of following Christ requires relinquishing those fears when they do come. It means refusing to let your fears of what others think, your fears of rejection, keep you from pursuing the truth about the Holy Spirit and whatever else God is teaching you and calling you to.
Empowering His children with the strength of the Holy Spirit is something the Father wants to do. It’s not something we have to talk Him into. He genuinely wants to see us walk in His strength.
The truth is that the Spirit of the living God is guaranteed to ask you to go somewhere or do something you wouldn’t normally want or choose to do. The Spirit will lead you to the way of the cross, as He led Jesus to the cross, and that is definitely not a safe or pretty or comfortable place to be. The Holy Spirit of God will mould you into the person you were made to be. This often incredibly painful process strips you of selfishness, pride, and fear.
The Holy Spirit does not seek to hurt us, but He does seek to make us Christ-like, and this can be painful.
As disciples of Jesus, being in a relationship with Him must be our focus.
God loves to take people in the worst of situations and transform them by His Spirit.
The Holy Spirit brought creation to life and continues to sustain it.
God is not like anything. He is incomprehensible, incomparable, and unlike any other being. He is outside our realm of existence and, thus, outside our ability to categorize Him.
The Holy Spirit is a Person who has personal relationships with not only believers, as we have seen, but also with the Father and the Son. We see the Spirit working in conjunction with the Father and the Son multiple times throughout the Scriptures.
Second, the Holy Spirit is God. He is not a lesser or different kind of Being than God the Father or God the Son. The Spirit is God. The words Spirit and God are used interchangeably in the New Testament.
When we forget about the Spirit, we really are forgetting God. Third, the Holy Spirit is eternal and holy.
Because the Spirit is holy and dwells in us, our bodies are holy sanctuaries from God’s vantage point. Too often we disdain our bodies as the source of sin and our fallenness, yet they are precisely where God the Spirit chooses to dwell! Fourth, the Holy Spirit has His own mind, and He prays for us.
In any given situation, we may not know exactly how we should pray or what we should do. But we can take confidence in the fact that the Holy Spirit knows our hearts and the will of God, and He is always interceding on our behalf. Fifth, the Spirit has emotions.
The Spirit is grieved when there is a breach in a relationship, whether it be a relationship with God or relationship with other people. When we are disunified, unloving, hateful, jealous, gossipy, etc., that is when we grieve the Spirit of God. And since He is the creator of emotions, I believe that the Spirit grieves more deeply than we can even understand.
Sixth, the Holy Spirit has His own desires and will.
The Spirit has a plan for our lives, for each of us. And He has a plan for the church, including your individual church body and the worldwide body of Christ.
Seventh, the Holy Spirit is omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient.
Our desire to live should be for the sake and glory of the God who put us on this earth in the first place.
The Holy Spirit has given you a supernatural ability to serve the people God has placed around you.
God wants us to trust Him to provide miracles when He sees fit.
God does miracles when He sees fit and for His own purposes.
We also need to look for His action in the midst of our daily lives.
Trust that you are more than just a helpful addition. You need to believe you are a vital member.
You are still alive on this planet, it’s because He has something for you to do. He placed us on this earth for purposes that He orchestrated long before we were born (Eph. 2:8–10).
The Spirit is meant to lead us toward holiness. The Spirit is here with us to accomplish God’s purposes, not ours.
The way of the Spirit is not a gentle downhill grade. Often, walking with the Spirit is an uphill trudge through all sorts of distractions and difficulties. But while the path is winding and difficult, you are constantly moving in a particular direction, and that direction is set by the leading of the Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is the one who fills believers with God’s love and the one who enables us to love one another.
Serving God and living faithfully can become a constant guilt trip of “trying harder” and “doing better next time.”
Our upbringings definitely create challenges for us. Some of you have wounds so deep that you wonder if you’ll ever be able to trust. Perhaps you’ve subconsciously taken the failures from sinful human relationships and imposed those shortcomings onto a perfect God. Now uncertainty creeps into even your relationship with God.
One of the greatest aspects of being in the relationship with the Holy Spirit is the intimacy, security, and encouragement He brings us. It is then we can serve God as a beloved child rather than a stressed-out, guilt-ridden slave.
Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit as the “Helper” or “Comforter.” Let me ask you a simple question: Why would we need to experience the Comforter if our lives are already comfortable?
Our lack of intimacy often is due to our refusal to unplug and shut off communication from all others so we can be alone with Him.
Part of His answer to how we are to have peace and be comforted is through the provision of the Holy Spirit, the other Counsellor, who He promised would come once He left.
The reality is that I am indwelt by the Holy Spirit. And because of this reality, stress and tiredness and impatience don’t have to define my day.
As you live your life, the Holy Spirit is dwelling in you.
We have been chosen, grafted, adopted into the family of God.
Don’t let your personal baggage keep you from enjoying this intimacy that both your spirit and God’s long for.
I think a lot of us need to forget about God’s will for my life. God cares more about our response to His Spirit’s leading today, in this moment, than about what we intend to do next year. In fact, the decisions we make next year will be profoundly affected by the degree to which we submit to the Spirit right now, in today’s decisions.
Jesus is calling us to be willing to suffer anything and forsake everything for the sake of the gospel. His call is to love those who have cheated us in business; those who have spread nasty rumours about us; those who would kill us if they could; those who disagree with us politically, practically, and fundamentally. His call is to consider everything a loss for His sake. His call is for total surrender. He calls us to give up all that we have, to give even to the point of offering up our lives as a living sacrifice. His call means realizing that His power is made perfect in our weakness, that when we are weak we are also strong (2 Cor. 12:9–10).
This does not mean that if you sin, you don’t have the Holy Spirit or aren’t a follower of Christ. It does mean that when you are sinning, you are not simultaneously submitted to the authority and presence of the Holy Spirit in your life. He is still present, but you are most likely suppressing or ignoring His counsel.
It’s obvious when someone is not walking in the Spirit (at least not consistently). What you see and experience from such a person is usually along the lines of rage, selfishness, dissension, bitterness, and envy. However, when a person is habitually and actively submitted to the Spirit, what comes out of his or her life is the fruit of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit will not—cannot—lead you into sin. If the Holy Spirit is in you, as a believer, then when you sin you are not listening to the Spirit’s leading.
Don’t believe God wants me (or any of His children) to live in a way that makes sense from the world’s perspective, a way I know I can “manage.” I believe He is calling me—and all of us—to depend on Him for living in a way that cannot be mimicked or forged. He wants us to walk in step with His Spirit rather than depend solely on the raw talent and knowledge He’s given us.
But God is not a coercive God. And though He desires for His children to know peace and love and to have wisdom, I have noticed that often He waits for us to ask.
Have you ever thought to yourself, “I’m praying to the exact same God Elijah prayed to”?
To completely ignore experience—including your personal experience and the experience of the wider body of Christ, both now and historically—is unbiblical.
God delights to show up when His children call on His name and when they are trusting fully in Him to come through, whether that is in relationships, in battling sin, in strength to make sacrifices, or in endurance to be faithful in daily life.
Let’s pray that God would build His church, an unstoppable force, empowered and sustained by the Holy Spirit.
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