The Holy Spirit is God’s only agent on earth.
- He is the only experience we can have of God Almighty, the only way we can have the work of Jesus Christ applied to our lives, and the only way we can understand God’s Word.
- Only the Holy Spirit can make the things of Christ real and alive to people.
So many of us live with faint trickles and shallow pools of the Spirit, rather than the promised rivers of living water.
- Everything about the Spirit speaks of powerful currents of life that refresh us and flow out to bless others.
The apostle Paul taught that believers are “temples of the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor. 6:19), and because the Spirit lives inside of us, that makes us different from the rest of the world.
- If the Holy Spirit doesn’t live inside a person, no church membership or even a sincere effort to live a good life can make that person a Christian.
- Only true faith in Jesus Christ as Savior, confirmed by the Holy Spirit living inside of us, makes us a new creation.
- The Spirit inhabiting every believer is just another way of saying “Christ in us,” for the Holy Spirit’s presence represents Jesus.
When God looks down on the earth, he doesn’t focus on ethnicity, and he never acknowledges religious denominations. He just sees two kinds of people, his children who have the Spirit living inside of them and unbelievers who don’t have the Spirit living inside of them. It’s as simple as that.
- Today we split hairs about doctrinal positions to validate our faith, but to the early church the definition was simpler. Either we are temples or we are not temples.
- “If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ” (Rom. 8:9).
- It would have been impossible for the apostles to consider someone a true believer in Jesus without the accompanying witness and work of the Spirit. The Spirit of God was the bottom line.
William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, said, “We are not such fools as to refuse good bank notes because there are false ones in circulation.”
- We must not be scared away by the counterfeits or abuses.
Re-source: Represent
be entitled or appointed to act or speak for (someone), especially in an official capacity
God has promised every one of us a manifestation of the Holy Spirit. It is part of being a Christian.
God strengthens his church. Since the church is a spiritual organism, it needs spiritual ministry to build it up.
- Spiritual ministry can only come by the Holy Spirit showing himself through human beings. His power flows through human vessels.
We have to believe that Holy Spirit is present for us today.
- We can only receive according to our faith.
- If we don’t believe, we won’t pray, and when we don’t ask, we won’t receive the blessings God has for us.
We need fresh showers of blessing to soften our hearts and to bring fruitfulness to our lives.
- “Come down on us, Holy Spirit, for we are truly helpless without you.”
craving and resource from “Spirit Rising” – Tapping into the Power of the Holy Spirit – by Jim Cymbala with Jennifer Schuchmann
