Make Friends with the Holy Spirit

It’s good to be with you again at the beginning of a new week, sharing with you Keys to Successful Living, which God has placed in my hand through many years of personal experience and Christian ministry. This week I’ll be continuing with the theme that I commenced last week, “If You Want God’s Best...”

But first, let me say “Thank you” to those of you who have been writing to me. Before I finish this talk, we’ll be giving you a mailing address to which you may write. It means a great deal to me to hear how this radio ministry of mine has been helping you and blessing you. So please take time to write, even if it’s only a brief personal note. Now, back to our theme, “If You Want God’s Best...”

In my talks last week, I pointed out that the “if” at the beginning of this theme confronts you with a choice: Do you want God’s best, or don’t you? Only you can make that decision. I also pointed out that there are always two sides to our relationship with God: on the one hand, what God makes available to us and on the other hand, how we respond to what He makes available. In this particular case, God has clearly shown us, through His Word, that He wants each of us to have His best and He has made full provision for us to do so. What we actually experience will depend on our response.

Last week I shared with you three ways that it is appropriate for us to respond; three things that we need to do if we want God’s best. In other words, three ways to complete that sentence that begins with “if”: “If you want God’s best, then...” The first one was: ...want God’s best. That seems obvious but it is very important. Wanting God’s best is, in itself, a response and it’s a decision. You have to say, “Yes, I do want God’s best and I will settle for nothing less.” So that’s the first essential basic requirement: want God’s best.

Second, if you want God’s best, ...focus on Jesus. He’s the author, He’s the finisher of our faith. It all begins with Him, it all ends with Him. We’re complete in Him, we must never get away from Him.

Third, if you want God’s best, ...meditate on God’s Word. That’s the biblical key to true prosperity and success.

This week I’m going to share with you five more things it is most important for you to do if you want God’s best. So, the first one I’m going to share this week, but the fourth in my list, is this: ...make friends with the Holy Spirit. I deliberately use a phrase that suggests the personality of the Holy Spirit. I think, for many Christians, the Holy Spirit is a kind of theological abstraction. They accept that God the Father is a Person, they accept that Jesus Christ is a Person, but they have no concept that the Holy Spirit is a Person. And yet, scripturally and theologically, this is a fact. The Holy Spirit is a Person just as much as the Father and the Son. And He’s compared to a dove. Now, one of the important features of a dove is that it’s a timid creature and if you don’t respond in the right way to the presence of a dove it will just fly off. And I think that’s true of the Holy Spirit. In a certain sense, He’s timid. And, if we don’t respond to Him the right way, He just takes off.

Now I’d like to quote a passage of Scripture from the words of Jesus in John 16, verses 12-15, where Jesus speaks about the Holy Spirit as a Person and what His purpose is that the Holy Spirit should do in our lives. John 16, verses 12-15:

“I have much more to say to you [that’s to His disciples], more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you. All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will take from what is mine and make it known to you.”

First of all, notice that Jesus does everything that language permits to emphasize the personality of the Holy Spirit. He says, “But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes...,” and so on. Now in the Greek language in which these words are given to us, there are three genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter. Neuter being the “it” gender. And in the Greek language the word for “spirit,” pneuma, is neuter. In other words, the normal pronoun to use with it would be “it.” But Jesus breaks the law of grammar and says not, “when it,” but “when he, the Spirit of truth, comes...” In other words, He goes out of His way to emphasize that we’re dealing with a person.

And then He speaks about various things the Holy Spirit will do. He will report on what he hears from heaven, he will bring us the latest news from heaven. He will show us what is yet to come, he can unfold the future to us. And then he says, “he will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you. All that belongs to the Father is mine.” That’s extremely important. Everything the Father has belongs to the Son, and everything the Son has, the Spirit administers. So that, if you put that together, the Holy Spirit is the administrator of the total wealth of the Godhead, all that the Father has and all that the Son has, they have in common. But it’s the Holy Spirit who takes from the wealth of the Father and the Son and makes it available to us. So that, you can be a child of God legally, doctrinally, and yet live a very poor and inadequate kind of life unless you relate rightly to the Holy Spirit. Because the Holy Spirit is the administrator of the total wealth of the Godhead. So, you can be a child of God and an heir of God and yet live like an orphan if you don’t know how to relate to the Holy Spirit because He’s the only one who administers their wealth.

Jesus brings this out again in John 14, verse 15-18, where He says to His disciples:

“If you love me, you will obey what I command. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever [that’s the Holy Spirit. And when He uses the word ‘another’ He’s emphasizing He’s a person], the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans, I will come to you.”

Two vitally important facts: first, Jesus comes to us in the Holy Spirit; second, unless we relate rightly to the Holy Spirit, we are like orphans even though we are truly sons of God. You see, it is the Holy Spirit alone who enables us to live as true sons of God. This is brought out very clearly by Paul in Romans 8:14:

“For as many as are led by the Spirit of God [and that’s a continuing present tense, as many as are being continually led by the Spirit of God,] these are sons of God.”

And the word that’s used for sons, there, implies maturity; not mere babies, not mere infants, but grown sons of God. You see, we become babies, we become infants, we become born again by the Holy Spirit. But, in order to become mature sons of God, we have to have a further ongoing relationship to the Holy Spirit, we have to be continually led by the Holy Spirit and Paul says that it’s very definitive, ”...as many as are [being continually] led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God.” So, to become a child of God you have to be born again of the Holy Spirit; but to become a mature son of God, you have to have an ongoing relationship, you have to be daily and continually led by the Holy Spirit. I observe in the church today that there are many who are truly born of God but who are not regularly led by God. They know the new birth, but they don’t know that continuing relationship to the Holy Spirit which alone can enable them to live as mature sons of God. So, if you want God’s best, you have to cultivate that ongoing relationship with the Holy Spirit, as a person, who is your personal guide, who is the administrator of the riches of the kingdom of God, who alone can impart all these things to you in experience.

And then let me say one further important fact in our relationship to the Holy Spirit--we must be respectful and sensitive toward the Holy Spirit. Paul brings this out clearly in Ephesians 4:30 and 31.

You remember that we said at the beginning, the Holy Spirit is compared to a dove, a timid bird that is easily scared away. And so, when Paul says “...do not grieve the Holy Spirit,” he means, “Don’t scare that dove away.” And he mentions the things that scare the dove: bitterness, rage, anger, brawling, slander, along with every form of malice. We have to be very, very sensitive in not saying or doing anything that would frighten away that beautiful sensitive dove, which is the Holy Spirit because He is the only one that can bring us into our inheritance and can enable us to live daily as mature sons of God.

Our time is up for today. I’ll be back with you again tomorrow at this time. Tomorrow I’ll continue to share on the things that it is most important for you to do if you want God’s best.