
Hello there friends!
I hope you all are doing good! We are in week 3 of our series “Reframe: Focusing Our Lives On The Promises Of God”. As we continue into the new year of 2021, now more than ever, we need to base our lives, our families, our hopes, our reactions, and our futures on something, or SOMEONE sure and solid and steadfast! By learning to lean into the promises and teachings and faithfulness of Jesus, we can see the world around us through God’s eyes and therefore find perseverance and peace regardless of what comes our way. It’s not always easy but my goodness it is so worth it!
Peeps, I am SO INCREDIBLY EXCITED because over the next two weeks we are going to dive deep into the amazing promise of the Holy Spirit! Now originally we were only going to spend one week on the Holy Spirit but, after some prayer and study I began to see SO MANY of God’s promises to us are wrapped up in the Holy Spirit. And I just couldn’t cover all of that in one message! Truly, the Holy Spirit is so deserving of His own series haha, but we will get to that sometime I’m sure.
Now for some time, the Holy Spirit has been a touchy and confused subject in the evangelical church world. For instance, many people think of Him less as Person of the Trinity and more like a spiritual mist or thing or even a ghost, referring to the Spirit as an “it”. I know I have called Him an “it” many times and sometimes I still catch myself saying “it”. (If this is you also, don’t worry, I don’t think the Holy Spirit gets too offended by that. Remember, no condemnation!) But because some individuals have wrongly abused the Holy Spirit and turned Him into a mythical genie in a lamp, large portions of the church world-wide have shied away from talking about Him. At times He has become almost a minor part of the Trinity, with people thanking God the Father for His power and provision, Jesus Christ the Son for His love and sacrifice, and just sort of mumbling something about the Holy Spirit quietly, relegating Him to barely an afterthought.
But the truth is the Holy Spirit is so important to our lives today! Indeed, our walk with God would be impossible without the Holy Spirit in our lives. Even last week when we look at Romans 8: 1-4, we learned that, “For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death”. So even our freedom in Christ was accomplished for us because Jesus worked through the Spirit of God!
Now the reality is there is so much to say about the Holy Spirit that even with two whole weeks, we will really only be doing a brief overview. Obviously most of what we will talk about will come from scripture itself and the Holy Spirit’s guidance (haha), but some of what I will share comes from a chapter in a book call “Gospel Centered Discipleship” by Jonathan K. Dodson and “Forgotten God” by Francis Chan. Both are excellent books that are perhaps a little dry but very helpful and formative books on our walk with God. After my prep for our conversation about the Holy Spirit, I think it will be helpful to look at all this from two different angles (with some overlap): the presence of the Holy Spirit and the power of the Holy Spirit. This week we are going to look at the promise of the presence of the Holy Spirit and how He affects us. Alright lets make a start of it!
A New Heart And A New Spirit
“And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.” —Ezekiel 36: 26 - 27
Now when I am referring to the presence of the Holy Spirit, what I mean is the passive blessings or the role and actions of the Holy Spirit that we receive or benefit automatically from His dwelling within us, i.e. His presence in our lives. I know the word “passive” is a little weird but there are some very real and awesome blessings we get from just the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives!
Way back in the Old Testament, the prophet of God Ezekiel gives us this incredible revelation on just how God is going to fix the problem of sin and condemnation forever. In the same way that God breathed the breath of life into Adam in the beginning, in the same idea of us needing to be “born again” to see the kingdom of God that Jesus spoke to the Pharisee Nicodemus about, God gives us a new living heart to replace our dead one but then also places His Spirit with us! It is the Spirit of God that made us alive and made us like God in the beginning, and it is the Spirit of God that makes our new heart alive and beating to the rhythm of God’s heartbeat.
And notice the rhythm this new heart beats to because of the Spirit’s presence. The presence of the Holy Spirit causes us or allows us to walk in the statutes of God. This again is ages before Paul writes in Romans 8: 4 when he says, “in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” Again, when we see the word “walk” in the New Testament, it is almost always synonymous with the idea “to live” or “abide”. So the Holy Spirit allows us the opportunity and ability to live in the commands and teachings and yes promises of God, in a way that we absolutely could not without His presence in our lives!
Let’s take a look at what Jesus had to say about the promise of the presence of His Spirit!
The Work Of The Spirit
“Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment: concerning sin, because they do not believe in me; concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will see me no longer; concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.” —John 16: 7 - 11
Jesus told His disciples that it was better that He left to go be with the Father because that meant Jesus would send the Helper, almost as if to say that the disciples and indeed the whole world would be better served by the Holy Spirit rather than Himself! Depending on the translation you are reading from, the Holy Spirit is referred to as the Helper, the Counselor, the Advocate, or even the Spirit of life and truth! And the awesome news is that all of those titles are true for Him, all the time!
Now again, when I read this scripture, I take it to mean that this is some of the primary function of the Holy Spirit. Meaning that this is partially what the Spirit came to do automatically. The very presence of the Holy Spirit causes these things to happen naturally in our lives, to varied degrees. Of course as I said earlier, some of the “passive” or automatic blessings of the Spirit do overlap into the active blessings as well. While the Holy Spirit came to and does accomplish many of these roles through His very presence in our lives automatically, these blessings are magnified when we actively pursue and live them out through His power. But more on that next week!
The Holy Spirit’s presence and purpose is to “convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment”. Convict us, not guilt or condemn us. Remember, guilt brings death, conviction bring life! In regards to sin, the Holy Spirit reveals to us the truth that sin is denying God and placing hope and value in ourselves or in something else that we think will sustain us. The Holy Spirit helps us to realize that instead of bringing us life, sin in fact takes that life from us and poisons us to death. Sin chains us to death-producing habits and the Holy Spirit wants to free us! While He targetly does this in the lives of Christians, don’t miss out on the fact that by working to convict the world of sin, the Holy Spirit is aiming to draw all people who would believe in Jesus to a saving and life-giving relationship with Him! The Holy Spirit is essential to rescuing and bringing the world to Jesus!
In regards to righteousness, the Holy Spirit convicts us, and reminds us of who God is, how He longs to sustain us, and how we are better than the sin that we are choosing for ourselves. Through His presence in our lives, the Holy Spirit helps to draw us to the goodness of God, helps us to understand what His word (scripture) means and presses on our hearts to follow God. Even just His presence in our lives compels us to seek Jesus!
And in regards to judgment, this is where the conviction of the Holy Spirit gets aggressive. Not aggressive with us, but with the one who accused us in the first place! The Holy Spirit convicts us to show that our enemy the devil, the one who hase been accusing us now stands accused and truly condemned himself. The judgment of God is that the enemy is a thief and that he has come to steal, kill, and destroy us, but HE WILL NOT WIN! God has reserved His judgment and wrath for him and the enemy has already lost. When we can see and know that through the presence of the Spirit of God, we can also know that we will be victorious!
And here is the main reason why we will be victorious!
The Kingdom Is Here
“O Lord, you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up, you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether. You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it. Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.” —Psalm 139: 1 - 10
This is probably the greatest blessing of the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives! The Spirit of the Living God has made our heart His home! He knows us better than we know ourselves. The joys of our lives, the scars on our souls, our strengths and weaknesses, our love and our fears, the Holy Spirit knows us fully and completely! And because He knows, God the Father knows! Regardless of the ugliness of our hearts, our “secret sin”, our hidden desires, the anger and fear that sometimes creeps up on us, God knows the depths of our heart and loves us even more!
The presence and power of God is in us at all times because the Holy Spirit is present within us at all times! Do you get and understand how miraculous this is?!?! All of the holiness and righteousness of God is in us. Wherever we go, whoever we are with, we take the presence of God to those places and people. We take God with us and His presence goes with us all across the world. To the broken, the addicted, the sinful, the hurting, the weak and the powerful, when we are with them, we bring the presence of God to them.
The gospel of Luke records this powerful moment with Jesus:
“Being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, he answered them, “The kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed, nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There!’ for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.” —Luke 17: 20 - 21
Jesus says the kingdom of God is the midst of us, that it abides with us BECAUSE THE HOLY SPIRIT LIVES IN US! Everywhere we stand is holy ground because of the presence of the Spirit of God within us. And because of that, we can reclaim the world and its people for the kingdom of God through power of God that is with us. This is God’s plan to fight the darkness of the world and the darkness in our hearts. He replaces our dark hearts with a new one, filled with His presence, and asks us to take Him into the darkness of the world and replace it with His Kingdom of light.
The Kingdom God is here friends. It is in the midst of you. Because the presence of the Spirit of God lives in you.
You are loved. Believe it!