All in Holy Spirit
You believe in God the Father, and have accepted His Son Jesus Christ as your Redeemer, and Savior, but have you come to the realization that there is another who now dwells within you? Deep inside, you have become the abode of the Holy Spirit, and perhaps you haven’t acknowledge His presence... but He is there and even though He helps you secretly, He wants to know you in an amazing way.
How do we come to understand the Word of God, and His will for us? Is it by our own intellect, and through diligent study that we are able to piece it together like a puzzle? Do we somehow find the hidden key within it that allows everything to fall into place so that we can stand back from it and marvel at our ingenuity? No, we understand with our hearts, and not our minds. Our minds barely scratch the surface, but our hearts use them like a scalpel.
Once we have received the Holy Spirit into ourselves what can we expect to occur? What is it that we find within ourselves from that point forward? It is of course accompanied by the obvious gifts that were promised like wisdom and comfort, but it is much more... we are going to know the fullness of God. We are going to receive an amazing spark.
Do you allow God to dwell with you? Is His spirit within you, and does it repair and revive your brokenness? When we first believe, we are inclined to wear our faith like a new suit; we feel good in it, and want to wear it all of the time, but it is still just a garment... never going any deeper than our skin. However, when the Holy Spirit arrives, and we breathe Him deep into us, something remarkable happens... our faith suddenly wells up from within us like a spring, and the external faith that we once put on, and could take off, becomes the person as well as the clothing.
How does your life fit together with your faith? Does your life contain your faith, or does your faith contain your life? The answer to this question dictates how you will approach the Holy Spirit, and even more than that, what your perception of faith is. Will there joy flowing from your faith, or will you study its details looking for perfection, and fail. Perhaps you have solved the mystery... that by living within our faith we find perfection and joy through Jesus alone. We are imperfect yet live encapsulated by the perfect sacrifice of Jesus, and surrounded in grace by the will of God.
There are times in our lives when we are self-assured and as we study the scripture we say to ourselves “Ah Ha! This is the truth, and I will base my faith on it!” but who are we to be so arrogant? Who are we to interpret scripture without the direction of He whose hand guided the pen? Yet, this is what we are inclined to do, and we build the castles of our faith out of sand on shores strewn with stone... we silence those into whose hand God has placed stone, and cover our ears.
One of the questions that I am asked all of the time is about the Holy Spirit. Everyday Christian believers ask me this because they desire to know about who He is, and what He means to them and their faith, and many Pastors ask to determine what side of the fence I am on. Like Jesus He fascinates and enthralls us, brings us to a place where we feel the coolness of the inhale, and the warmth of the exhale as God Himself breathes, and yes, He scares us, and that fear often separates us from one another.
Every day I begin my prayers with an expression of love for God, then a plea for my forgiveness of sin, followed by my thanks for His many blessings, and next I ask for three things I would like to talk about today... wisdom, knowledge, and intelligence. Do you ask the Lord for these things? Not that you should receive them in a worldly sense, but more-so in a spiritual sense... Do you desire supernatural enlightenment in understanding God’s will for you this day?
There are those today that are filled with the Holy Spirit and don’t realize it because they don’t know the Holy Spirit from any other part of their faith. If he had come to them with a jolt like he did to the apostles, and licked above them with fingers of flame, and filled them with tongues, then there would be no doubt, but for many he comes gently with joy and comfort. To those who receive him in this way, it is so subtle that they have a hard time realizing he is with them for they can’t separate him from the basic movements of their faith until one day they are awakened joyfully to the reality of his presence within them.
Do living waters flow from you? Are you filled with the Holy Spirit as Jesus had said, and become the source of a flood... not a trickle, but rivers of living Water? If you are able to contain the desire to spread the good news of the gospel, then you have not yet found the source of the waters that Jesus spoke of, and there is more for you to believe will come. These are the waters of life which will be offered by both the Spirit and the bride of Jesus Christ.
Do you stand at the foot of the hill and listen to Jesus teach? Do you watch Him enter Jerusalem and celebrate the fact that you know Him? Are you in the upper room and marvel at His foot washing and the words surrounding the bread and the wine? Well all of these things are amazing and wonderful but in each case you are a bystander, yet when you are filled with the Holy Spirit then suddenly the life of Jesus moves from before your eyes to a place deep within you. You cease being a watcher, a marginally practicing Christian, and become one with Christ.
Is the Word of God alive to you? Is the gospel of Jesus Christ breathing within your being? If we really desire the Word to come alive and to infuse us with the life that only God can provide, then we need the Holy Spirit moving within us. It is the difference between a grade school child reading “The Charge of the Light Brigade”, (the work of poet Lord Alfred Tennyson), and sitting at his feet while Tennyson himself reads the verse. The Spirit brings life to the Word for us.
You have heard of the gift of the Holy Spirit, And you see the results of it in believers around you, but despite your desire for it, you remain barren and unfilled. Perhaps you have been a Christian for a long time, and in all those years have not received the Spirit. You may have consoled yourself by saying that it will never be yours and that you will suffer on without it, but listen as God tells you to take heart, and that it is your gift as well.
Have you ever been anointed with oil? Has a Pastor, or elder, prayed over you as they took oil, and applied it to you? Did you understand what was happening at that moment, or did you think it was merely an aromatic balm, or lotion; symbolic? Anointing is a sacred practice and is Holy; in so doing the one being anointed is being made Holy, Consecrated, and being set apart. Let’s look at this further.
More likely than not, if you are reading this, you know Jesus; who He is, and about His life. If you are reading this you may have asked Him to come into your life, confessed Him to be your Savior, and gone down in the waters of baptism. My question to you this morning is two fold today... how deep has your relationship with Him become, and, have you asked to be filled with the Holy Spirit?