Monday, January 19th

We are continuing our series, Faith Essentials, what are the essential realities of our faith journey, so that we can grow in loving God, loving others by being with Jesus, being like Jesus, and doing the things Jesus did. The last two weeks we’ve been talking about the essential role the Bible has for us in that process.

Notice what Tyler Staton says in his book, The Familiar Stranger. “A life deeply rooted in Scripture is absolutely essential for a healthy relationship to God, self, others and the world at large. Equally essential is a life deeply rooted in the Holy Spirit who leads by experience and functions in partnership with Scripture.”

The Holy Spirit is as essential as Scripture. I wonder how true that is for you? Or when it comes to the Holy Spirit, you’re like, sounds good in name, but in practice, not quite sure what to do with the Holy Spirit? Sounds more like a sidekick to the other two.

That’s just it, the person of the Holy Spirit is a part of what we refer to as the Triune God, the Trinity, it’s a who, not an it. The Trinity is the three-persons, one God. God in community, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We get God the Father, maybe struggle with it, but we get that idea of something larger, supreme. For the most part we get Jesus, the Son, the person of God, in the flesh, who came to earth. The Holy Spirit or in some translations, the Holy Ghost, that’s filled with confusion, suspicion, doubts or for those crazy Baptists or Pentecostals; arm raising, banner waving, aisle dancing, bunion healing, snake handlers.

I believe there is a tension that we have with the Holy Spirit, especially depending on your faith background or your current faith journey, you may be sitting here, in of four places when it comes to the Holy Spirit. You are either thirsty for more of the Holy Spirit, living insufficiently of the Holy Spirit, suspicious of the Holy Spirit, or uninformed about the Holy Spirit.

I think that’s where we need to start. Where is your starting point for the Holy Spirit?
Because I tell you what, I need to confess where I am at. I thought, for the most part, I was doing a-okay with the Holy Spirit. He’s a part of my life, I routinely depend on him, seek him out, but I think he’s camouflaged in my life. What I mean by that is that I think I live with a mixture of me dependent on my strength and wisdom, and a mixture of being dependent of the Holy Spirit’s strength and wisdom. And after my studying this week, I realized that I have a gap between living with the Spirit in comparison to how the people of the Bible lived with the spirit.

I confess to you, I’ve been plugged into the source of the Holy Spirit, like a power cord, but sometimes I unplug and think I can do it in my own strength and power. Thinking that the things of Scripture will still come true if “I” work hard enough. For that I’m sorry. I don’t want to settle for an insufficient view of the Holy Spirit. I don’t want to lead you with a suspicious
or uninformed view of the Holy Spirit. I want us all to hunger and thirst for more of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

Let me shift it back to you and ask you a telling question. How many of us would trade our experience with the Holy Spirit for one, face-to-face, chat with Jesus? I know, not fair right? But yet, Jesus said, “I’m going to leave and give you a gift, one greater than I.” Yet, maybe because of our experience of the Holy Spirit or our suspicion, or our ignorance, we don’t want the gift from Jesus, we just want Jesus.

I would argue, loosely, that it must break Jesus’ heart that the very Spirit he was dependent upon, given to us as a gift has become unknown, feared, and divisive.

Here’s my goal, for myself, and for you over the next two times I’m with you. I want to introduce you or reintroduce you to the person of the Holy Spirit and invite you to live, in the obligations and opportunities of ordinary life, clothed in the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.

Today, I want you to sit with, where are you at with the Holy Spirit? What is real, what is honest? Is there a gap between the way you live with the Holy Spirit and the pages of Scripture? Do you have a greater hunger and thirst for the Holy Spirit?

Take a moment with this song as an encouragement as well. Holy Spirit