Our Idea of the Holy Spirit

"Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?" (1 Corinthians 6:19)

The power of the Spirit will not be given to any mincing assent to pneumatological truth. The Holy Spirit cares not at all whether we write Him into our creeds in the back of our hymnals; He waits for our emphasis. When He gets into the thinking of the teachers He will get into the expectation of the hearers. When the Holy Spirit ceases to be incidental and again becomes fundamental, the power of the Spirit will be asserted once more among the people called Christians.

The idea of the Spirit held by the average church member is so vague as to be nearly nonexistent. When he thinks of the matter at all he is likely to try to imagine a nebulous substance like a wisp of invisible smoke which is said to be present in churches and to hoer over good people when they are dying. Frankly he does not believe in any such thing, but he wants to believe something, and not feeling up to the task of examining the whole truth in the light of Scripture he compromises by holding belief in the Spirit as far out from the center of his life as possible, letting it make no difference in anything that touches him practically. This describes a surprisingly large number of earnest persons who are sincerely trying to be Christians.

Lord, deliver me from untrue impressions of the Holy Spirit. May I realize anew that He is a real Person, indwelling and empowering me and deserving of my worship and obedience. Amen

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Fruitful Spirit-Filled Lives

"Behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high." (Luke 24:49)

It is my contention that the individual believers who comprise the membership of our evangelical Christian churches ought to be leading fruitful and happy Spirit-filled lives.

If you will set aside the necessary time to search the Scriptures with an honest and open being, you will be convinced that fruitfulness and joy and peace and blessing and contentment are all part and parcel of what the Holy Spirit expects to provide in and through the yielded life of the Christian believer. 

As a Christian believer, shouldn't my life and outlook, and the very life of my church, be affected by the promise of the Father God that He would give the Spirit as a gift to His children?

In Luke 11:13 I am sure God had in mind the love we have for our children when He said, "If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall you heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?"

The members of the redeemed Church should be bound into a bundle of love with the Holy Spirit. The truth is that God never fathered His Church apart from the Holy Spirit. We should be anointed with the Spirit. We are led of the Spirit. We are taught by the Spirit. The Spirit, then, is the medium, the divine solution, in which God holds His Church.

Thank You, Father, for the gift of the Spirit. May I be "bound into a bundle of love" with Him today. Amen

~A. W. Tozer~