We kicked off the month of June with a series on "The Presence and the Person of the Holy Spirit." Presence is an incredible word; nothing can take the place of presence - not gifts, or pictures, or memories. The presence of a loved one in your life is impossible to replace.
So it is with the Holy Spirit. Often, we want to bypass the Person of the Holy Spirit and jump straight to the gifts and the power. But without the presence of the Person, we can easily fall into serious error because everything that the Holy Spirit has to offer springs from His presence in our lives.
I want you to consider and meditate on these verses that describe some of the things that the Holy Spirit does. These verses are significant because not only do they reveal how the Holy Spirit operates, but they also reveal His personhood as each of the verbs used in these verses demand a personal agent:
- The Spirit searches and knows the mind of God (1 Cor. 2:10-11).
- The Spirit teaches spiritual realities to believers (1 Cor. 2:13).
- He dwells among or within Christians (1 Cor. 3:16; Rom. 8:11, 2 Tim. 1:14) and cries out from within our hearts, "Abba, Father" (Gal. 4:6).
- The Holy Spirit oversees the distribution of the spiritual gifts (1 Cor. 12:11).
- The Spirit of God gives life (Jn. 6:63; 2 Cor. 3:6).
- The Spirit leads us in God's ways (Gal. 5:18; Rom. 8:14).
- Holy Spirit has desires that are in opposition to the flesh, drawing us to His life-giving desires (Gal. 5:17).
- He helps us in our weakness and intercedes in our behalf, working all things together for our ultimate good (Rom. 8:26-29).
And this list is only a few of the myriad of multi-faceted things that the Holy Spirit does, revealing to us who He truly is. So the question we must ask ourselves is: With Scripture revealing so much of what the Holy Spirit does, wouldn't we want to have an appetite for more of the Spirit's tangible presence in our lives?
Ps. Paul