Episode 16: The Holy Spirit
If you listened to my story, you would know that I first attended a Presbyterian church. And then as a young adult, I attended a Pentecostal church and have largely attended Pentecostal churches since. I have also completed a non-denominational leadership program attended by leaders from Anglican churches, Salvation Army, Baptist, Uniting etc etc. And I’ve been studying a Masters of Divinity for the last 4 years through a Church of Christ Bible College. My point is I have always had an appreciation for the various denominations and I think there is much we can learn from each other. I certainly don’t presume that the denomination I am in is the ‘right way’. However, my tendency toward Pentecostal traditions really comes down to their slant on the Holy Spirit. Though I must say that even Pentecostal churches these days can be very un-pentecostal and un-spiritual.
Growing up in a Hindu family has meant that I am familiar with the spiritual. And I’m sure you can imagine, some spiritual experiences I’ve had were not very pleasant. I couldn’t deny even if I wanted to, that the spiritual world exists. And of course, I have mentioned before, my own experiences with dreams.
Point is I believe in the Holy Spirit, and I believe the Holy Spirit is an active factor in the Body of Christ today. And most denominations would agree with that statement. But of course, where we all tend to differ, when it comes to the Holy Spirit, is exactly what ACTIVE means and looks like. So I am going to delicately attempt to talk about a complicated topic knowing full well that most traditions don’t agree on how the Holy Spirit operates.
Before I begin, I am making some assumptions in this episode. I am making the assumption that the person listening to this episode is a follower of Jesus who has heard, learnt and understands something about the Holy Spirit.
I am making the assumption that you believe in the Trinity. Which I know excludes some denominations, and I’m sorry for that. I’m not doing that deliberately. I just know that it would be really hard for me to deliver the perceptions and interpretations I have about the Holy Spirit without acknowledging that I make this presupposition whenever I attempt to understand the Holy Spirit. Also, I do interpret the Holy Spirit as a person. Although I say this with less certainty, because I realise that the Holy Spirit is mysterious and probably doesn’t fit into a neat little box as well as I would like.
But even if you don’t agree with all my assumptions, I still think this episode could be helpful.
There is much that we can glean from scripture about the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is a regular and active participant throughout scripture, from beginning to end:
In Genesis 1 the Spirit was hovering over the face of the waters
In Genesis 40, Joseph is being shown the future through a dream revealed via the Spirit
In 1 Samuel 10 the Holy Spirit comes upon Saul and he is compelled to prophecy
In Judges 6, the Holy Spirit came upon Gideon to win a battle
In Judges 14, the Holy Spirit empowered Samson to tear apart a lion with his bare hands
In Isaiah 34, the Spirit is described as gathering people
In Ezekiel 2 & 3 the Spirit entered into Ezekiel and lifted Him up and the Spirit spoke and Ezekiel could hear Him
Now we haven’t even gotten to the New Testament yet, and there’s still so much more in the Old Testament that I just don’t have the time to mention. But I’ll just mention one more because it is an important one, in Joel 2:28 we are promised that the Holy Spirit will pour out on all. Sons, daughters, young and old-er...will prophesy, have dreams and see visions
Then Jesus comes along....
His conception is made possible by the Holy Spirit. We mention this a lot during Christmas time, but what a remarkable act for the Holy Spirit to perform.
The Spirit descends on Jesus like a dove during His baptism
The Spirit leads Jesus into the desert to be tempted
Jesus casts out demons by the power of the Spirit
And of course He Heals a lot of people - The Centurion's servant (Matthew 8), Peter's mother in law (Mark 1), A leper (Mark 1), a paralytic (Matthew 9), the woman with the issue of blood (Luke 8), the two blind men (Matthew 9), the man who couldn’t speak (Matthew 9), the withered hand (Matthew 12)...and of course he raised a few people from the dead! (Luke 7, Luke 8, & John 11)
And then we get to the book of Acts, one of the most sensational books of the Bible in terms of its relaying of the Holy Spirit's traits and capabilities, and very important for us
In Acts we see the following:
The first ever occasion of speaking in tongues - something that we have no evidence of occurring prior to the Pentecost
The Holy Spirit empowers people to speak and teach, boldly I might add and sometimes in the face of persecution. There’s Peter, Paul, Stephen...you get the point
The Holy Spirit prompts thousands to accept Christ, on several occasions
The Holy Spirit frees Paul & Silas from prison in a violent earthquake
There are frequent healings - the crippled beggar in Chapter 3, and chapter 8 tells us that many who were paralysed, and there was a man with crippled feet in chapter 14
As Stephen is being stoned the Holy Spirit allows him to gaze into the heavens and see the glory of God
Paul is filled with the Holy Spirit and the scales on his eyes that were causing him to be blind fell off
It says in Acts 9:31 that the Holy Spirit encouraged the growth of the church numerically
In Acts 16 the Holy Spirit prevented Paul and Silas from travelling into a particular land
And of course there is the intimate guidance of the Holy Spirit
The Holy Spirit spoke several times to Philip in chapter 8, instructing him to walk here and there. It even says after Phillip baptises the Ethiopian Eunuch that the Holy Spirit snatched Philip away so that the Eunuch never saw him again. How interesting!
Peter has a vision & The Holy Spirit verbally gives him the interpretation of that vision which paves the way for a meeting with Cornelius, the first Gentile to convert and receive the Holy Spirit
And there were more visions, dreams and other miraculous occurrences, recorded in the book of Acts, which is only 28 chapters long.
The Holy Spirit is capable of many things, and is consistently present and active throughout scripture.
Now here is my question, the million-dollar question: why don’t we see the Holy Spirit operating like this today? Don’t get me wrong, we do see the Holy Spirit operating. He does guide us, and people have visions, and of course there are tongues. But there are significant gaps. Not everyone seems to experience this kind of guidance. And of course there is healing. Yes, healing does happen. But they are not nearly as often as what we read in scripture. How are we supposed to reconcile this when we read passages like Mark 16:17-18, which says:
And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.”
There are some confronting ideas in this passage. Based on what is said here, we should all expect that supernatural acts would surround us as we live out our faith. It’s a natural byproduct of being a believer! That’s astounding.
There’s something missing right? And I have to be honest, this has been the biggest ‘Something missing’ topic for me in my Christian walk in the last 10 years. I read the scriptures and I see this massive gap between what we experience today, versus what was experienced by the early church. And yet it is the SAME SPIRIT! So why would the expression of the Holy Spirit change, why would it be different today? Is the Holy Spirit limiting himself? Or are we limiting the Holy Spirit? Or both?
I have prayed and wrestled with this conundrum for years, and so today I want to share with you what I think accounts for what is missing in the Body of Christ when it comes to the Holy Spirit and how He operates.
But first, a question: Is it possible to limit the Holy Spirit and if so, why would the Holy Spirit be limited?
There’s this really interesting, and short passage in 1 Thessalonians 5:19. It says:
“Do not quench the Holy Spirit”
Within the statement, Paul is implying that we are capable of doing things that would impact the expression of the Holy Spirit. In other words, if Paul is instructing the Thessalonians not to quench the Holy Spirit, the implication is that the Holy Spirit is quenchable...by us.
In general the Holy Spirit is not limited. If the Holy Spirit wanted to do something...He could do it. He is not limited in His capabilities. But to a degree He is limited in His ability to work within us and through us, because that relies on our cooperation. Even Jesus was limited in his ability to perform miracles in His hometown, because of the people's unbelief. Now there is some discrepancy between the version of this event in Mark 6:5 and Matthew 13:58. Mark says He COULD not do any miracles...whilst Matthew says He DID not. Now we know that there were plenty of things Jesus did that did not require the faith of others to occur. He often did heal because of someone's faith, but that doesn’t necessarily suggest that He is dependent on others faith in order to heal. I mean, I’m not really sure many of his closest followers, including the disciples, believed he was going to rise again. And yet that happened. So some theologians suggest that the ‘did’ as seen in Matthew was a more accurate representation. The point is, His capability of performing miracles was not the issue. It was His willingness to perform said miracles in an environment where people denied Him. So the same could be said of the Holy Spirit. How the Holy Spirit operates is not a question of capability...rather a matter of willingness where cooperation is lacking.
So here are some really significant ways that we can limit the Holy Spirit:
We don’t honour the Holy Spirit
Honour is a really big deal in the Bible. When we honour someone or something, we recognise its value. Honour literally means to give someone or something weight and it’s a really big deal to God. We are supposed to Honour God first and foremost and Honour our parents. We’re supposed to honour the elderly...and in 1 Peter 2:17 we are unanimously told to Honour EVERYONE. Now honour doesn’t necessarily mean we obey, although in the case of God it does. But were honour to mean obey, at least for myself there would have been some circumstances where obeying my parents would have been dishonouring to God.
So let me continue to unpack this point a bit more, by demonstrating what most people believe honour looks like:
Listening
Respecting another’s power to make decisions and choices
Seeking out and considering the thoughts and opinions of others
Acknowledge someone's presence
Not embarrassing or shaming someone
Taking care with a relationship by valuing it and prioritising it
Not looking to the opportunities a person presents, as the central purpose of the relationship. In other words, not USING someone.
Sadly, in my observations I don’t believe we always honour the Holy Spirit. And this is where the extremes in our approach need to be considered. On the one hand, we have Christian traditions that don’t even acknowledge that the Holy Spirit exists. They don’t mention the Holy Spirit, they don’t think about the Holy Spirit. They presume He is a silent part of the Trinity.
Then there is the other opposite extreme where the Holy Spirit is treated like a performing acrobat, an ethereal entertainer that changes my atmosphere to make me feel good. Now I’m not trying to be negative, I’m just trying to say that we don’t always think about how we behave. In some settings there is such an intense focus on the manifestations of the Holy Spirit, that it actually diminishes the value of the Holy Spirit. The focus on the manifestations can actually depersonalise the Holy Spirit, and treats the Holy Spirit more like the energy you might get from a hypnotic drug. Because by focusing on the Holy Spirit's ability to serve me and make me feel a certain way, I consequently have degraded the Holy Spirit to a tool for my pleasure. Now I know people who can’t attend a conference or a church service, and deem the event ’good’ unless there was a manifestation...as though the Holy Spirit's only purpose and value is in His ability to manifest before us. Why are we rating the acts of the Holy Spirit? Why do we have some spiritual hierarchy of what is more or less an act of the Holy Spirit? Why would we think we have the right to judge the acts of the Holy Spirit in such a way? If the Holy Spirit causes you to speak in tongues, it is no more powerful than when He makes you understand a passage of scripture. When the Holy Spirit heals someone’s physical body, it is no more powerful than when He renews someone's mind.
The problem is that we downplay the value of everything else the Holy Spirit does. It is not honouring the Holy Spirit if we value one capability and devalue another capability. It is all valuable because it is the Holy Spirit. Let’s just put this in perspective for a second: this is the person of the Holy Spirit. He was there at the creation of the world, equal to all other parts of the Trinity, that we didn’t have access to prior to Jesus’ death and resurrection. It is an honour to receive the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is a gift to us.
If we aren’t careful we can reduce the Holy Spirit to little more than a spiritual vending machine...See when we honour the Holy Spirit we will act accordingly: We will listen... We will respect Him as the leader, and His attempts to direct and prompt us. We will seek out His opinion and guidance on a matter. We will acknowledge and honour His presence when He does show up and not critique what He does in our conferences and meetings. We won’t be embarrassed or ashamed when He does things that are outside of our comfort zone, and look whacky to the outside world. We won’t use him. And of course, we will take care with the relationship, valuing and honouring the Holy Spirit by inviting Him into our devotional times, our meetings, our homes, our workplaces. And we won’t only value the Holy Spirit for what we can get out of Him.
2. We compartmentalise the traits of the Holy Spirit
One of the hardest things to grapple with, is the fact that the Holy Spirit has these traits that almost seem like they are the opposite. So for instance, the Holy Spirit is described in scripture as a Dove...which is meant to display peaceful qualities. But He is also described as FIRE. That is supposed to relay the power and the refining, purifying nature of the Holy Spirit. It is often hard for us to imagine someone who is peaceful and passionately wild at the same time. And yet the Holy Spirit is both. The Holy Spirit is so varied in His traits. He is called counsellor. And yet simultaneously can give us incredible power to cast out, heal and prophecy. The Holy Spirit is also the revealer. He reveals Jesus and the truth to us. The Holy Spirit speaks. He can speak through gentle promptings, and wild vivid dreams and visions like what we see in Revelations.
But what I see happening often, is that we compartmentalise the parts of the Holy Spirit that we have a preference for. In the Pentecostal circles it is commonplace to focus on the POWER of the Holy Spirit. In other traditions, it’s the gentle whisper and peaceful qualities of the Holy Spirit. BUT...it is all the Holy Spirit and we ought not to compartmentalise out of preference. Think about it for yourself. If people only ever considered you in this one-dimensional way, would you like it?
Let me illustrate this for you, by telling you a little bit about my husband. Josh is a qualified light vehicle mechanic. He’s been working since He was 15 years old and He has worked really hard. He now is the National Ops Manager for a fairly large company. Now you don’t get to those levels without having a good idea about leadership and development. He is just a natural at it. He started the Brisbane team with just himself and grew it into this hugely successful operation with heaps of employees. And of course He got promoted to the National ops role about 3 or 4 years ago. Now Josh has never studied leadership, He just has a knack for it. He is one of those natural born leaders, the quiet consistent leader actually.
So, one of the churches we were at used to attend ran these different business leaders events and until I said something about it, Josh never really got invited to them. Sadly, I knew that a big part of the reason they overlooked him was because they thought he was ‘just’ a mechanic. As though that is such an ordinary job, that everyone can do. And it didn’t matter how much they tried to engage Josh in other ways, it didn’t matter how many spiritual gifts tests they would run him through. They lost him when they put him in a box. So what is the worst part of having presumed that a mechanic wouldn’t know anything about leadership? They failed to see his potential and the contribution He could have really made. And how might we be failing to see the potential of the Holy Spirit, of what the Holy Spirit might be able to do in lives, in us and through us, and on this earth because we’ve decided He’s only about power? Or because we have decided He’s only about peace? I really don’t know if the Holy Spirit thinks this way, but why would He show all of Himself, when He knows that we have the audacity to have preferences with the Spirit of the living God?
3. We don’t really rely on the Spirit
How do you rely on the Spirit? What would you be doing if you were relying on the Spirit or God? Sometimes I find it easier to define what something isn’t, in order to narrow down what it is. Relying on God is not looking for money to solve your problems. It’s not looking to a person, a relationship, a leader to rescue you from the things you face. It’s not looking to your own skills and abilities, as your hope for a good life. Relying on God means that we seek Him first to know how to respond, to pivot, to endure life. It’s not just in the practical solutions that He might be able to give you, but also trusting that He will fill your inner needs.
Our modern world is very well resourced and there are some things that we never even have to think about. Like food. Most of us don’t have to think much about where we will get our food from. The bigger question is ‘what food will we eat?’ And yet there are some believers in other parts of the globe, that can’t so easily say where they will get food. Forget about food, we in the modern world generally have homes, water, electricity, blankets, clothes...and for many of those things we have NEVER had to ask God for it. Because we can provide it for ourselves! What about healthcare? In Australia, you can rock up to any doctor and charge the bill to Medicare. And the doctor will set you on a medical treatment path, with medicine, specialists, and whatever else...with the intent of curing your ailment. Now I know it’s not a perfect system, but its way more than many other countries provide. And so for a lot of Australians, we might not have had to ask God to help us with the average health issue. Now I don’t think this is a problem, in fact God can work through all of these means to help heal us. I am merely saying that we are not geared toward ‘God-reliance’, rather we are geared toward ‘self-reliance’. And many Christians go through life, making decisions everyday, only ever turning to God when they face a hardship that they can’t so easily fix themselves.
In Revelations 3, the Lord is speaking to the church of Laodicea. And His says this fascinating statement:
“I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.
Now most preachers stop there, and preach their message about having a passion for God. But let’s read on in verse 17:
“For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing”
Now this sounds like a bunch of believers that have decided that they don’t need God. Here’s the thing: We might believe that God exists, and that Jesus came to earth, died on the cross and rose again for our sins. But if we act in every other way, as though we don’t need Him...we’ve kind of missed the point. In the case of the church of Laodicea, the fact that they believed that they didn’t need God because they had wealth, was exactly what made them lukewarm. And in the end would be the reason they would be spat out of the mouth of God.
It’s not our perception of our need that determines whether we need God. Everyday, people who hate God walk around believing that they don’t need Him, completely oblivious of the fact that they might only be one wrong decision from being desperately in need of saving.
But as believers our tendency toward self-reliance at the end of the day, creates very little room for the Holy Spirit.
So let's go a little deeper on this idea of dishonouring the Holy Spirit, point number 1. One of the biggest ways we can dishonour the Holy Spirit is by not listening to Him. Now the first complaint I hear when I raise this point is “But the Holy Spirit doesn’t speak to me, Mel”. Now I genuinely believe that part of the problem here is that we don’t teach as much as we could about how we can hear the voice of the Holy Spirit. Because the Holy Spirit does speak uniquely to all of us...and therefore there is a journey to understanding. The fact is, some leaders are really hesitant to teach that you can hear God at all, because obviously many atrocities have occurred because someone said “God told me to…” So yes, I do get our reservations, and we certainly shouldn’t ignore the fact that without wisdom such atrocities are possible. But on the flip side of that, Jesus tells us in John 10:27 that His sheep hear His voice. They hear his voice and they follow it.
See the critical thing about hearing the Holy Spirit is that we are still to use wisdom, and the Apostles demonstrated this in Acts 13:2-3. It says:
“While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off.
What’s happening here is the Holy Spirit speaks to the prophets and teachers and Antioch. He tells them to set Barnabas and Saul apart. Now they didn’t just go “YAY, wow the Holy Spirit just spoke let's go for it guys!” They continued to fast and pray some more, and then they laid hands on them. This is the kind of wisdom that we are meant to have when it comes to hearing from the Holy Spirit. We are currently in the process of moving interstate to Sydney. And I can tell you now that it has been an 8 month process of God giving us dreams, words, opening doors, and much prayer...to have gotten to this point. We didn’t just hear God say “Move to Sydney'' and pick up and go. We did the hard and patient task of discernment. Discernment is not popular because it can take time, it requires us to patiently wait out situations that feel like they have had no conclusion....but it is one of the most significant signs of surrender to God. When we practically apply Proverbs 3:5:
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.”
So here is the thing. The Holy Spirit speaks in many ways. See sometimes the problem is that we observe these very vocal prophetic people talk about how they heard the Lord and assume that this is the ONLY way He speaks. We tend to put these prophetic people on a pedestal too, which doesn’t help. And we assume well, maybe I’m just not one of those chosen people whom he speaks to.
The fact is that the early church didn’t have podcasts, or books, or anything else! They didn’t even really have scripture. Well, at least not the New Testament. Many of the letters and gospels were written decades after the church was birthed. They had the Holy Spirit. They were reliant on His voice. Now that's not to say that the Holy Spirit doesn’t work through these resources we have today...it's just to say that the Holy Spirit is first and foremost our guide. You guys have heard me mention before how I went through a severe eating phobia last year for 10 weeks. One of the things I did when I went through this...was that I waited for the Holy Spirit to guide me and tell me how I needed to walk out the journey. It was hard, and I had to be patient. I was up and down emotionally...but the path the Holy Spirit led me on was right and I will never regret it.
Okay so, here is the big point. We haven’t seen yet what the Holy Spirit is capable of. And I’m not just talking about the big moves of the Holy Spirit. And I’m not just talking about feeling His presence or His healing words. I’m talking about ALL OF IT!!
The Holy Spirit is our hope for everything in this life. We cannot live this faith journey, without the Spirit. That’s why it was so critical to the gospel that we receive this Spirit. It was an essential part of the new covenant. We are a new creation in Christ, but we haven’t got much chance staying alive in that newness of life without the Spirit of God.
The Holy Spirit is our hope for hope! Romans 15:13 says:
“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.”
It’s by the power of the Holy Spirit that you even have hope. When we have any hope, any belief for a preferred future reality, the conviction that you are saved, that your salvation is certain...it is because of the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is our hope in resisting sin and living a faithful life. Galatians 5:16-18 says:
“But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.”
He doesn’t say that when you walk by the Spirit there's a better chance of resisting the desires of the flesh. It says “YOU WILL NOT'' gratify the desires of the flesh. We’re often trying in our own strength to resist sin...but here we are told that resisting temptation is a direct result of relying on the Spirit, hearing the Spirit, and responding to the Spirits prompts.
The Holy Spirit is our hope of experiencing God's love. Romans 5:5 says:
“and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”
This couldn’t be clearer. God’s love is poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the main vehicle for experiencing that love.
The Holy Spirit is our hope of freedom. Romans 8:2 says:
“For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.”
And 2 Corinthians 3:17 says:
Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
Freedom is a given, when the Spirit of the Lord is present and active. Not only does the Spirit give us freedom from the Law of sin and death...but His goal is to continuing to lead us to greater freedom in Christ.
The Holy Spirit is our hope for revelation. 1 Corinthians 2:10 says:
“these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.”
The ongoing growing revelation of Christ in us, is wholly and solely dependent on the Spirit of God revealing Christ to us. This is huge! It means that there is no sermon, no message, no podcast or book that is able to reveal Christ to us without the active, living Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is our hope for unity! Ephesians 4:1-3
“I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”
EVERYTHING that we have been promised in Christ, is enabled through the Spirit of God living in us. This is our hope!
Before I close, I want to tell you one more story out of Acts. When you’ve been a Christian for a while, you kind of take it for granted that Jesus healed. Jesus was divine, so it isn’t so shocking in some ways that He was able to raise people from the dead.
But in Acts 9 from verse 36, Peter raises a woman to life. Tabitha had died. Verse 40 tells us that Peter walked into her room, knelt down and prayed. He looked at her and said “Tabitha arise”. And she was completely resurrected. I don’t know if there is any greater miracle than someone being brought back to life. I mean dead is dead. But the Holy Spirit operating in Peter enabled Him to raise a woman from the dead. You might be like me, who has read the incredible acts that Jesus performed and thought “yeah but He’s Jesus”. But with Peter, no such excuse can be given. He was just like us! It’s the same Holy Spirit working in Him. AND it is the same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead living in you too as Romans 6 tells us...The Apostle Paul's message to the church of Thessalonica is still so relevant today as it was those hundreds of years ago when He wrote it. And we ought to take this instruction seriously, as though our communities and societies depend on it - Do not quench the Spirit!