The Ministry of the Holy Spirit

The importance of the work and ministry of the Holy Spirit in the Church and the place of the Holy Spirit in the growth and fruitfulness of the individual believer cannot be overemphasized. The following is a list of important Biblical truth concerning the Holy Spirit.

Christ is revealed by the Holy Spirit

Paul said, "But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned" (1 Cor. 2:14, NKJV).

The natural man means the soulish man, man of mind and intellect - connot understand nor receive the things of the Spirit. We know God through our spirit quicken by the Holy Spirit. Someone said: "God gave us our spirit to apprehend Himself, and intellect to apprehend theology". In other words, by intellect and theology alone we will never get to know God; we may know about God but we never get to know Him intimately.

Jesus said, "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speaks; and He will tell you things to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you" (John 16:12 - 14).

It is perfectly plain that the One who reveals God to us, who reveals Christ to us, is the Spirit of God. The Church cannot know Christ except as the Spirit reveals Him.

The Ministry of the Holy Spirit is the Ministry of Jesus

We must understand that the Holy Spirit has come as a Person and that He is willing and waiting to do for us all that Jesus would do if He were here on earth. But some of us don't recognize Him, don't praise and worship Him, and don't fear Him.

It is possible to run a Local Church and all of its activity without the Holy Spirit. You can organize it, get a board of leaders together, employ a Pastor, form a group of musicians and form a choir, launch a Sunday School and a ladies' group and all that. If you could increase the attendance of your Church until you need a much bigger building, if you could provide everything that men want and love and value, and yet you didn't have the Holy Spirit, you might as well have nothing at all.

"Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit, says the Lord of hosts" (Zech. 4:6).

You cannot minister by eloquence of a man, not by good music, not by high-tech equipment, not by 'good' preaching, but it is by the Holy Spirit that God works His mighty work. The Holy Spirit is not enthusiasm. Some people can get all worked up over a song imagining that this is the Holy Spirit, but this does not necessaritly follow. Some of these same people go out and live just like the sinful world that hates God. I believe that is the reason most people don't want to be filled with the Holy Spirit - they want to live the way they want to live and to merely have the Holy Spirit as a bit of something extra.

We need to bring the Holy Spirit of God back into the Church. We bring Him back by prayer, by repentance, by obedience, by confession - until He takes over in our midst! Then there will be light, life, power, victory, joy and blessed fruit that will come to us. The Holy Spirit being a Person can communicate with you and He can love you. He can be grieved (Eph. 4:30) when you resist and ignore Him. He can be quenched (1 Thess. 5:19) as any friend can be shut up if you turn on him when he is in your home as a guest - he will be hushed into hurtful silence if you wound him, and we can also wound the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is exactly the same as Jesus, just as Jesus is exactly the same as the Father.

Jesus said to Thomas, "If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; and from now on you know Him and have seen Him" (John 14:7).

Jesus said, "Not that anyone has seen the Father, except He who is from God; He has seen the Father" (John 6:46).

He added, "However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears he will speak; and He will tell you things to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you" (John 16:13, 14).

Jesus was saying, in essence, "The Spirit will demonstrate me to you".

Life in the Holy Spirit

It is the will of God that all members of the redeemed Church be filled with the Holy Spirit. The apostle Paul, Peter, John and James wrote their epistles to spirit filled, though somewhat troubled, Churches. The truth is that God never fathered His Church apart from the Holy Spirit. The Spirit, then, is the medium, the divine solution, in which God holds His Church.

Here are some promises of God concerning the coming of the holy Spirit:

1. "Until the Spirit is poured upon us from on high, and the wilderness becomes a fruitful field, and the fruitful field is counted as a forest. Then Justice will dwell in the wilderness and righteousness remain in the fruitful field. The work of righteousness will be peace, and the effect of righteousness, quietness and assurance forever" (Isaiah 32:15 - 17, NKJV, emphasis added).

2. "For I will pour water on him who is thirsty, and floods on the dry ground; I will pour My Spirit on your descendants and my blessing on your offspring" (Isaiah 44:3, emphasis added).

3. "And it shall come to pass afterward that I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, you old men shall dream dreams, you young men shall see visions. And also on My menservants and on My maidservants I will pour out My Spirit in those days" (Joel 2:28, 29, emphasis added).

4. Jesus Himself said, "If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him" (Luke 11:13, emphasis added).

5. Jesus' last words to His disciples were, "Behold, I send the Promise of My Father upon you;but tarry in the city of Jerusalem until you are endued with power from on high" (Luke 24:49, emphasis added).

Here are some statements of truth:

1. The benefits of the filling of the Holy Spirit include fruitfulness, peace, quietness with assurance (confidence) and general blessings.

2. The outpouring of the Holy Spirit causes believers to prophesy, see visions and dream dreams.

3. The Holy Spirit will not force Himself on you. You have to desire Him, thirst for Him and ask Him to fill you.

4. The Holy Spirit will empower you to work the work of God.

The Holy Spirit and His work in the Church

From the Gospels, the book of Acts and the Epistles we can trace three periods with respect to the Holy Spirit and His work in the Church.

1. The period of promise

This period stretched from the time of John the Baptist to the resurrection of Christ. In this three-year period, the disciples were called, commissioned and taught in the best Bible School in the world - Jesus being their only Teacher. They didn't get a degree which they could frame and put in the wall but they had a degree inside of them! Jesus promised them a new life in the Spirit.

2. The period of preparation

In some measure, they were being prepared while Jesus was with them, but after He was gone, they actually began to prepare themselves. They stopped all their activities to organize a 10 days prayer meeting in an upper room in Jerusalem where 120 believers were involved. They prayed and waited on Him until the Day of Pentecost had fully come (Acts 2:1 -3). Suddenly they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance (Acts 2:4).

Shouldn't our Church stop all activities, once in a while, and organize a prayer meeting with multitudes of believers and wait upon the Lord - no "shopping list" prayer but just worship Him, praise Him and thank Him?

3. The period realization

The outpouring of the Holy Spirit came suddenly like a rushing mighty wind (Acts 2:2). The period of realization came suddenly, and the Father fulfilled His promise. The expections were fully met and more!

We are living in the period of the "last days" which began with Pentecost and continues until Christ returns. We are now living in the latter days when God is pouring out His Spirit on all flesh (Joel 2:28).

Peter's first sermon, after the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the first Pentecost, came with these words:

"Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you and to your children, and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call" (Acts 2:38, 39, emphasis added).

Notice that the promise of the Holy Spirit also to future generations of believers.

You will notice that thoughout the four Gospels the disciples were asking questions - while in the book of Acts and after Pentecost they were answering questions. That is the major difference between the man who is Spirit-filled and the man who is not!

Fellowship of the Holy Spirit

The fact that the Holy Spirit is a living Person, we can get to know Him and have fellowship with Him. When we talk about communion with God and the fellowship with the Holy Spirit, we are talking about that which begins the moment we are baptized in the Holy Spirit, but will grow and increase and mature while life lasts. As we go on to have fellowship with Him we go on to have increasing knowledge of Him.

But no one is able to have fellowship with the Holy Spirit unless he walks in perfect agreement with Him. Contrary to what most professing Christians like to think, many of God's people are not willing to walk in perfect agreement with Him. This explains why so many believers do not have the gift of the Spirit, the power of the Spirit, the peace of the Spirit and many of the other qualities and benefits which the Spirit of God brings. This also explains why so many spirit filled, tongues speaking Charismatic/Pentecostal Christians lack power and the anointing of the Holy Spirit.

God spoke through Amos, "Can two walk together, unless they are agreed" (Amos 3:3).

Two persons, in order to walk together, must agree that they want to walk together, and they must agree that it is to their advantage to have the companionship and fellowship together.

In my opinion we can cultivate the fellowhip of the Holy Spirit and here are few suggestions:

1. Be engrossed with Jesus Christ

Contrary to what most people of God unintentionally assumed, the important thing here was not that the Spirit had come - the important thing was that Jesus had been exalted. Where Jesus is glorified and exalted, the Holy Spirit comes. He does not have to be invited nor even begged. Whenever Christ is truly honored in a Christian fellowship the Sprit comes (Acts 2). We honor Him by our worship, by our obedience, by our witness and by our fellowship.

2. Walk in righteousness

The Holy Spirit will not have fellowhip with those who will not live right and walk right.

Jude said, "For certain men have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men, who turn the grace of our God into lewdness and deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ" (Jude 4).

Christians need to understand that it isn't their righteousness that saves, but the salvation they have received brings righteousness. We must walk in righteousness if we are going on to know the Lord. The man who is not ready to live right is not saved, and he will not be saved.

Paul said, "For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodiness and worldy lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hop and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, ..." (Titus 2:11 - 13, emphasis added).

3. Make your thought a clean sanctuary

Our thought life is part of us - controlled by our mind which is part of the human soul. Christians are new creation in Christ (2 Cor. 5:17). Therefore the mind of a Christian has been renewed by our spirit man which is controlled by God's Spirit (Romans 12:1, 2). But God give us freewill to control our thought life, to keep it clean or to keep it unclean.

Can you imagine a believer with malicious and evil thought in his heart having companionship with the Holy Spirit? Can you imagine a believer bloated with egotism having an intimate fellowship with the Holy Spirit? Never!

We can make our thought a clean sanctuary by seeking to know God in His Word! We are sanctified through His Word (John 17:17; 2 Thess. 2:13).