When we repent of our sins and accept Jesus as our Savior, we receive a gift from God – the Helper, the Holy Spirit. Accepting the gift of the Holy Spirit doesn’t mean we unwrap it and put it on our Christian shelf as a thing that we have because we have decided to live the Christian life. First off, the Holy Spirit is not a thing, but a Him. As stated in an earlier blog Who is the Holy Spirit?, He is the third part of the Trinity of God. Just as we need to develop our relationships with God the Father, and Jesus, His Son, we also need to grow in the Holy Spirit.
Why do we need to get to know the Holy Spirit better? Simply put, as Jesus said,
“I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you…. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you (John 14: 16-17 & 26).”
The Holy Spirit is our Helper who guides us through this life in truth, teaching us how to become more god-like and giving us His words when we have opportunities to speak about and show the love of God to others.
The Holy Spirit isn’t like a mom who steps in and takes over when we have gotten ourselves in over our heads. Rather, He transforms us through our thinking, emotions, minds and love from God. He works within us so that we may do the work God has given for us to do. But we can only do God’s work when we allow the Holy Spirit to sanctify us – that is, grow us into holy people. This takes more than a lifetime.
Anne Graham Lotz (2019) recalls a definition of the Holy Spirit’s growth in a person’s life, “One of the best definitions of the filling of the Holy Spirit was given by a great Bible teacher that I heard years ago. Alan Redpath was a well-spoken dignified British preacher…. In a message I heard him give to a group of Bible Study Fellowship teacher leaders, Dr. Redpath succinctly defined the filling of the Holy Spirit as moment-by-moment surrender to the moment-by-moment control of the Holy Spirit (p. 98).”
By this definition, we must learn to live a life where the Holy Spirit is an integral part of it. We must listen to Him and live by His good advice. He needs to be consulted on every decision, big or small that we make every day. We must make the Holy Spirit so entwined in our lives that we aren’t able to separate where we begin and the Holy Spirit ends. All that we say and do should be in harmony with the Spirit, with Him doing the conducting.
Indeed, Zechariah had to teach Zerubbabel that God’s plan needed to be led by the Holy Spirit, and not by his personal abilities.
Then he said to me, “This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel saying, ‘Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,’ says the Lord of hosts”. (Zechariah 4:6)
“In the first prophetic message, Zechariah must tell Zerubbabel that the temple will be built ‘not by might nor by power’ (v. 6; cf. Ps 33:16), but by God’s Spirit. Like the lampstand that is supplied with resources from outside itself, Zerubbabel will rebuild the temple in the power of God’s Spirit (Zondervan, 2018).” It is the same when we accept Jesus as our Savior. Our bodies become the temple of the living God. They must be rebuilt “not by might nor by power” but by the Spirit of God. As we grow in the Holy Spirit, it is only by His help that we are becoming Holy vessels to be used by God for His purposes.
Paul puts it this way:
…For through Him [Jesus Christ] we both [Gentiles and Jews] have our access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit. Ephesians 2:18-22
The Holy Spirit is not only rebuilding us individually, but He is rebuilding us within a holy community of other Believers. It is only He who truly knows our hearts and how to bind them together with Himself and within a holy community. Isn’t it exciting to know that God knows we need other human beings in our lives so He sends the Holy Spirit to us to help bring us into relationship with others? Oh what an awesome God we serve!
In fact, God’s plan for each and every one of us is to be involved within a community. As the Holy Spirit transforms our lives, He is also transforming the lives of those we share God’s love with. In so doing, we are transforming our immediate circle of friends, who in turn influence their circle of friends, and so on until our local communities, cities, states, and nations are transformed.
All of this transformation is due to the power of the Holy Spirit who puts together individual transformations like a jigsaw puzzle with each piece fitting together until the whole world sees God’s love for His people. As we are becoming holy, we are to let the Spirit work through us to do good to others. In this way, we are contributing to God’s holy plan for our lives and for other’s lives.
Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. Let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary. So then, while we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, and especially to those who are of the household of the faith. Galatians 6:7-10
The Holy Spirit allows us to do good. He brings about opportunities for us to come into community with others. He is in the process of blending together the Jewish community with the Gentile peoples of all nations so that in the end, God’s community, built by the power of the Holy Spirit, will be able to live forever in His presence as His holy people. This is why we need to grow in the Holy Spirit.
This is His [God’s] commandment, that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as He commanded us. The one who keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in him. We know by this that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us. I John 3:23-24
Resources
Lotz, A. 2019. Jesus in Me: Experiencing the Holy Spirit as a Constant Companion. Multnomah, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random.
Zondervan (au.), Carson, D. etal. (Eds.) 2018. NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible, note on Zechariah 4:6. Zondervan.
Photo Credit: The Good News Today. Retrieved from https://thegoodnewstoday.org/the-importance-of-christian-community/ on June 9, 2022.
