God fills every believer with the Holy Spirit and each in a different way. Young and old. Rich and poor. Men and women. Slave and free. God fills each one of us with his Spirit in a unique way. ALL people are filled with the Spirit, not just the religious big shots of the Old Testament nor the religious heros of the New Testament and each one of us in our day. All people, including you and me in our ordinariness, are filled with the Spirit of Christ.
But notice they were praying for the Spirit to come in the Upper Room. We need to pray, “come Holy Spirit!” We need to open ourselves to the Spirit’s power.
One of the great purposse of the Holy Spirit is to make the church alive. The Spirit of God will shake a church, move a church, renew a church. The Spirit of God blows us off the front porch, blows us out of our pews, blows us out of our institutions and safe communities and into the world.
Who is the Holy Spirit? There are two fundamental facts about the Spirit that you need to know.
A. The Holy Spirit Is a Person --This may seem obvious to you, but it is not obvious to everyone. Some people speak of the Holy Spirit as a impersonal power or influence. They speak of the Holy Spirit as an “it.” If you saw the Star Wars movies, you’ll remember the phrase, “May the force be with you.” That’s how many people think of the Spirit–as a mysterious force from heaven that somehow helps us on the earth.
Te Bible clearly refers to the Holy Spirit in terms that can only apply to a person. For instance, the Holy Spirit possesses a mind (Romans 8:27), he speaks (Acts 13:2), he commands (Acts 8:29), he has a will (I Corinthians 12:11). Ephesians 4:30 says, “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit.” But you can’t grieve a force or a power. You can only grieve another person.
In John 16:13 Jesus says of the Holy Spirit, that “he will only speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.” That passage is important because Jesus clearly calls the Holy Spirit a “he.”
All the attributes of personality are given to the Holy Spirit in the New Testament. Therefore, we may say that the He is a person, not a mere force or an impersonal power.
B. The Holy Spirit is God
The second truth is that the Holy Spirit is not only a person, he is a Divine Person. That is to say, he is God. In the famous story of Ananias and Sapphira in Act 5, Peter says in verse 3 that they had sinned against the Holy Spirit, but in verse 4 he says they sinned against God. Which is correct? Both, because the Holy Spirit is God. That’s why when Jesus gave the Great Commission (Matthew 29:19-20), he commanded the disciples to baptize “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” One name, three Persons. That’s the doctrine of the Trinity clearly stated. The Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God.
Now if you put these two truths together, what do you get? Since the Holy Spirit is a person, you can have a personal relationship with him. And since he is God, his power is God’s power. Therefore, in relating to the Holy Spirit, you are coming into personal contact with the God of the universe.
This week I ran across a powerful quote from J. B. Phillips: “Every time we say, ‘I believe in the Holy Spirit,’ we mean that there is a loving God able and willing to enter human personality and change it.” What a tremendous truth this is.
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