“As one godly writer put it long ago, ‘All merit is in the Son . . . and all power is of the Spirit.’ What a profound sentence! The only thing that will ever give you or me acceptance with God is the work of Jesus Christ our Savior. It will never be our own good works. But listen carefully to the corresponding truth: The only power that will keep us victorious on a daily basis comes through the Holy Spirit. It’s not about what we can do, but what God can do! His grace does not stop upon our receiving salvation; it is the storehouse from which we draw all we need for the rest of our lives.” (Cymbala)

“When the Son of God returned to his heavenly throne (Acts 1:9), it ushered in the age of the Holy Spirit. Whatever God is doing today in our world, he is doing through the Holy Spirit. He has no other agent on this planet. We see the incredible start of his working in the book of Acts, and we acknowledge our need to witness the same advances for his Kingdom today.” (Cymbala)

“Humanity faces two great spiritual dilemmas. The first is what to do about our past sins and transgressions, which separate us from God and produce a guilty conscience. This sense of condemnation makes us shrink from any communion with God - the very thing for which we were created. But Jesus came and gave his life so we could be freed from all that. The ugly record can be erased and our names written in the Book of Life through the blood that Jesus shed on the cross of Calvary.

“But then comes the second problem we all face: How can we be changed [sanctified] so that we don’t go on repeating the same old sins in the future? How will we rise above the moral pollution of compulsive sin that caused us to need Jesus in the first place? Unless Someone can get inside [Italics added] us and overhaul the very fabric of our being, we will continue to live sinful lives that grieve God.

“God provided a salvation that does more than just forgive our record of past wrongs. He provided victory over inward desires [dying to self] through the person of the [indwelling] Holy Spirit.”

(Cymbala)

Cymbala writes, “If we have been born again by the Spirit, the only way to grow to be more like Jesus is by the power of the same Spirit. As we ‘keep in step with the Spirit,’ following his motions along the daily road, he will gradually conform us into the image of God’s Son.”

The Holy Spirit interacts with people through linguistic codes within spike trains of action potentials transmitted through neural synaptic networks with meaning and purpose. I have discussed this process extensively in my books and blogs to show concordance between Scripture and neuroscience. God created Man to have an intimate and personal communion with him. Lost at the Fall, it has been restored to repentant believers by the sin sacrifice of the living Jesus Christ who sent the Holy Spirit as promised upon his resurrection to give us everlasting Life.

I cite Cymbala who explained the New Covenant:

“To fully understand the New Covenant, we must understand the Holy Spirit and what he does. The Old Covenant, which was characterized by the Law given to Moses, was a set of external commands. The New Covenant is about Christ’s atoning death and resurrection from the grave, followed by the sending of the Holy Spirit to work inside us in grace and power.”

It has been my focus to give reasons to believe in the work of the indwelling Holy Spirit in repentant believers in our time.

Cymbala states in his book, “I am not interested in debating how the Holy Spirit speaks [the focus of my apologetics research and writing]. He certainly uses more than one way. I want to stay focused on the fact that the Spirit is alive, not dead, and that he does speak.”

Cymbala shares a powerful testimony in his book concerning our relationship with the Holy Spirit:

“In the Old Testament we often read that ‘God said such-and-such.’ Likewise, in the gospels there are dozens of places where ‘Jesus said . . . .’ Now the same pattern appears in the book of Acts, only in this case, ‘the Holy Spirit said . . . .’ This, too, is a living, speaking, divine person, the third member of the Trinity. He gives divine leading on what to do in order to advance the church. All of us who say we want to build the Kingdom of God must stop and admit our need of divine leading. There must be a living interaction [Italics added] between us and the Holy Spirit . . . . “

The interaction is between the immaterial Mind of God/his Holy Spirit and the immaterial mind of repentant Man, accomplished through encoded interaction with the neural synaptic networks of the human brain. In my writings I have endeavored to provide a degree of explanation of this created process, a reality in our time.

“The Bible says that ‘with God all things are possible’ (Matthew 19:26), including supernatural things as we recover faith in the power of the Holy Spirit.” (Cymbala)

“A lot of us today would do well to hear again what the aged Paul, sitting on death row in a Roman dungeon, wrote to the young Timothy: ‘God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline’ (2 Tim 1:7). We must never be intimidated by what the devil tries to do, whether by striking out at us as individuals, or at the local church, or at the Body of Christ as a whole. We must instead trust the Holy Spirit to give us the words to speak, and to do so with boldness.” (Cymbala)

“We can rest assured today that whatever God calls us to do, he will also be faithful to equip us to do. Remember that ‘God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful’ (1 Cor 1:9). We are co-laborers with Christ through the Holy Spirit’s work in and through us.” (Cymbala)

It is my hope and prayer that the information I have shared in my books and blogs gives substance to these quotes I am posting from Cymbala’s book.