Holy Spirit in Action!

The question of the day: How does the Holy Spirit work?

The Holy Spirit acts whenever we do something that is not possible due to our depraved, selfish, sinful nature. Every act that falls under one of the fruits of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control – Galatians 5) is living proof of the Holy Spirit’s work. He is there in compellings, in urges, and in tugs on the heart that pull you away from selfish desires. The Holy Spirit is not flow of strong feelings (charismatic view).

That is not how He worked in the early church, and is not how Christ revealed the Holy Spirit. The titles the Holy Spirit has, counselor, comforter, guide, helper, champion of faith, sealer of souls (I kind of made the last two up according to scripture) do NOT reflect something that provides strong emotions. So it is okay to be skeptical when you think you feel a strong conviction toward an action or decision to test if it actually is the Holy Spirit speaking or just strong emotions that your brain came up by the flesh. Remember that in spiritual warfare, Satan can and will use strong emotions to misguide us, look at any example of Satan’s temptations in the Bible, while God doesn’t ever have to use feelings at all (though feelings are very important in worship and praise). Faith is the greatest example of this, as there is absolutely no need for feelings in faith.

So this leads to the other side of the playing field, where people will ask “well, if feelings are not how we know the Holy Spirit is working in us, then how do we sense the Holy Spirit?” This leads people to be confused about the nature of the Holy Spirit and He becomes some kind of abstract thing in our lives. But like I said before, we do not give enough credit to the Holy Spirit. I will use an example to show this. Say at some ACF/IV large group, you see a new visitor in the corner. You easily think to yourself that you don’t want to talk to that person, that it will cost you in time and energy and that someone else will talk to the stranger. This is the innate selfishness in all of us talking. You know it is true. You rather talk to the people you do know, spend your time/energy/resources for your own benefit. But then you get up and go over to talk, because you somehow know the right thing to do. And when you talk and introduce yourself, you feel good, because showing this little bit of kindness/care/love is a good thing. This is the Holy Spirit working in you. You know this to be true because there once was a time when you were the stranger. You were afraid of talking, already exhausting all of your energy to just go to a new community. You remember the first few people who reached out to you, and you were very grateful they did. Those first moments made lifelong impressions on you, and you will think of the first people who reached out to you fondly. And you wanted to follow in their footsteps, using their love and kindness as an example for you. If you know Church history, you know that the Holy Spirit was moving in them to talk to you, and what you actually saw was Christ in them. Because you know that someone in their past made them into the disciple you met, just as they made you into their own disciple. And this was repeated time and time again, for two thousand years, until you can trace every Christian back through the (apostolic) discipleship lineage back to Jesus Christ Himself (even Paul). This is the Body’s family tree, proving we all are family together. This is truly the power of the Holy Spirit in each of us to enable us to make disciples, produce fruit, and show love to the world. Remember, the mark of the Christian is to have the Holy Spirit in us (Romans 8:16, Ephesians 1:13, 1 Corinthians 12:3). He is our bloodline to Christ.

Update: So this actually occurred last Friday during LG. It was towards the end LG where a stranger walked into the room and hid himself in the back row. I believe I was the only person who saw him, and I didn't recognize him. In my head I was debating with myself whether I should talk to him or not. There were people I wanted to chat with, and I felt like someone else would engage him instead of me. But I saw him leave, and then the Holy Spirit said "Dan, u lame butt, go talk to him," so I chased him down as he was exiting the door out of the Cathedral. Turns out he was a senior from Cornell who was a PhD candidate at CMU. He ended up getting lost outside and inside the Cathedral of Learning and so only made it to the last 5 minutes of LG. I ended up chatting with him and inviting him to board game night. Throughout the evening he kept on telling me how grateful he was for me to reach out to him, but I know that it was all the Holy Spirit and not me. If it were up to me, I would have left him at the side of the road (figuratively) in a heartbeat. To him, all I did was nod and go “mhm." If I hadn't reached out to him, things could have been different. He could have left w/o talking to anyone and returned to his hotel. This single act could make him decide to come to Pittsburgh instead of Seattle. This moment may have changed his entire life as a new Christian. I don't know, but I do know the Holy Spirit was totally working in this event.

So to give credit to the Holy Spirit means to realize it is by the Holy Spirit’s power, He who is the conduit for God’s love to be poured into us (Romans 5:5), that causes to care for people. We know that we suck at loving. Try replacing the word Love in 1 Corinthians 13. Are you always patient? Are you always kind? Nope nope nope. Those things are a struggle. By our human nature those things are unnatural to us. Hence every time we are able to do something that supersedes our naturally selfish nature, it is actually the Holy Spirit working. He is doing all the heavy lifting.

Now then, why is it hard as Christian to love, still? Yes there are human limits to how much time and energy we can do before our bodies are spent. But let’s be honest with ourselves for a bit. How often are we truly pushed to that limit? Instead I believe most of the time we try to love others with our own strength (which is like nil) instead of relying on God’s strength. To overcome that, we need to remember to continuously ask God for strength and the capability to love others unconditionally through prayer. I know myself I often forget to ask, and then I get burnt out and exhausted. I start to complain and start making the situation about me. “I’m giving it my all, but why isn’t anyone feeding me or caring about me?” It is all too easy. If the Holy Spirit is the hose we use to pour out the water of love onto the people we care about or are called to love (aka plants), prayer is the act of turning on the faucet. We just forget to turn on that faucet.