Many Christians have only a vague notion of who the Holy Spirit is. They may have heard of him, but they struggle to understand his role. Although he is often overlooked or perhaps even neglected by many believers, he is just as divine as the Father and the Son (Acts 5:3-4). Consider these facts:
- He possesses a divine personality and personally chooses people for ministry assignments (Acts 13:2).
- He communicates with us (Revelation 2:7) and searches out the deep things of God to make them known to believers (1 Corinthians 2:9-12).
- He is the one who makes Christ a living reality to the believer (Ephesians 3:16-17) and in fact he is called the Spirit of Christ (Romans 8:9).
- He is coequal with both the Father and Son as part of the mystery of the triune God.
Understanding these biblical facts about the Holy Spirit within the larger biblical story of who God is and how he relates to his people is important.
God’s plan in redemption was that we should live life full of the Holy Spirit: “Do not be drunk with wine, in which is [debauchery]; but be filled with the Spirit” (Ephesians 5:18). When you consider that the Holy Spirit is a person, the third person of the Godhead, what does it mean to be filled with a person? He is not a gas or a liquid, he’s as much a person as the Father and the Son. So a better description of “being filled” is to say the Spirit controls us.
Would you like to love more deeply and more freely? Do you wish to have more self-discipline? Are your life and ministry producing fruit? In order for these things to happen, you must surrender to the Helper. The Holy Spirit is the only one who can produce self-discipline, love, and boldness in you: “For it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13).
Jim Cymbala began the Brooklyn Tabernacle with less than twenty members in a small, rundown building in a difficult part of the city. A native of Brooklyn, he is a longtime friend of both David and Gary Wilkerson.