I have a question brewing in my mind today. I'm going to use today's blog to sort it out. The question is this: How can a believer spend almost their entire life in church and never learn how to operate in the Holy Spirit? As I think about this question, it causes me to ask a lot of other questions. While I don't know if we will ever get the answer, it's going to be fun working through this one.
John 16:7 says, "Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you." According to Jesus, the coming of the Holy Spirit is to be advantageous to His followers. But if we never learn HOW to cooperate with the Spirit in our lives then we will never know the life that Jesus describes.
This question came to me as I thought about Jesus' description of the Holy Spirit's coming. It's also the result of me thinking through my life growing up in the church and even during my time as a ministry student. Most of my learning about the Holy Spirit came on my own. I learned about Him through experience. Don't get me wrong, I did learn the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. I knew where He went in my theology. But there was never a time when someone sat me down (or even in a classroom setting) to teach me how to live in Him, understand how He spoke to us, the tools that He used in our lives, etc. There is so much about the Holy Spirit that we are simply left on our own to figure out.
I find it amazing that much of what I've heard about the Holy Spirit were just token phrases. You know...we expect Him to work with us through evangelism. We expect Him to be a part of our worship or preaching. He's supposed to be leading us into all truth. And we think we understand how He speaks to us. It's almost a sad statement but the truth is that I probably learned more about the Holy Spirit through Blackaby's study "Experiencing God" than I ever got in church or Bible College. What did I learn in church or school?
I learned how to get a message together
I learned how to evangelize (through memorization)
I learned how to pray, sing, and share my testimony
I learned the basic doctrines of the faith
I learned about the Old and New Testaments
I learned how to study the Bible
These are all good things but where was the instruction necessary to operate in the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus said that I would have an advantage when He came. And there are plenty of believers who could benefit greatly from His ministry in their lives.
Why does this problem exist? I'll close all of this out by listing some things that I think:
Church leaders who don't know how to approach the topic
Churches that have learned to do 90-99% of ministry without Him
Church members who don't understand the necessity of the Holy Spirit in their lives
Churches have spent so much time trying to figure out what the Holy Spirit isn't supposed to be doing that they aren't really sure what He does anymore.
And the lack of overall experience with the Holy Spirit.
After going through all of this, you can bet one thing: I will do my best to convey to my people the importance of the Holy Spirit, His ministry within the earth AND the believer, and how we can operate in Him. I will do my best to help others develop a personal relationship with Him. He is God manifest in the world right now. I think it's time the Body of Christ gets to know Him. Don't you?
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