The Person of the Holy Spirit
Have you ever had the feeling that someone is only interested in you because of what they can get out of you?
It’s not a nice feeling is it? Nobody likes to feel that someone is taking advantage of them. Ultimately we all want people to want to know us, not just to be around us because we have something that they want or need.
Sometimes we can treat God like that. We can focus so much on the gifts and the power of the Holy Spirit that we forget about the fact God simply wants us to know Him.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s right for us to seek the gifts and power of the Holy Spirit. Paul encourages us to do just that (1 Corinthians 14:1). Nevertheless, we do need to make sure that in our pursuit of the power of God we don’t neglect the overarching call for us to know the Person of God.
The Hebrew word we translate as Spirit in the Old Testament is Ruach. It means energy, wind or breath. The Spirit is the breath of God, and just as breathing in oxygen sustains our physical bodies, so too breathing in the Holy Spirit sustains our spirits. We die from lack of oxygen, and so too our spirits will wither and fade without the ongoing presence of the Holy Spirit within us.
Just stop for a moment and take a deep breath. Feel the oxygen fill your lungs. Imagine the oxygen cells attaching themselves to your blood cells, travelling around your body and ensuring the ongoing vitality of every organ, limb and digit.
The Holy Spirit is our ever-present help. He is our encourager, our equipper, our counsellor. He is our sustainer, and the one through whom our bodies are transformed into temples of the Living God (1 Corinthians 6:19).
God no longer inhabits a building. Sometimes people refer to church buildings as “The House of God.” This comes from the right place – wanting to honour God in the place where we gather to worship Him – but the theology is not quite right. Our church building is a wonderful gift from God and we use it for His glory, but the house that God now inhabits is within the hearts of His people by the Holy Spirit (John 14:17, 23).
Wherever you go, the house of God is there because you are there. The temple in the Old Testament was the physical place where heaven and earth met. Now that place is within your own heart! You carry heaven within you because the person of the Holy Spirit lives in you.
As much as we want to see miracles, signs and wonders, healings, deliverance, salvation, and anything else God wants to do, let’s not simply pursue a power encounter with God. Instead, let’s pursue a deeper relationship with the Person of God, knowing that as we do this He will equip and empower us for mission through the Holy Spirit within us.
