I am referring to a summary article that was presented in The Hearing Review in June 2015 that summarized the work of neuroscience researchers from the University of Geneva. Their work was done under the direction of Anne-Lise Giraud and her Auditory Language Group at the university. It was confirmed that “speech, emitted or received, produces an electrical activity in neuronal circuits that can be measured in the form of cortical oscillations, or brain waves. . . . to understand speech and other cognitive or sensory processes, the brain breaks down the information it receives into cortical oscillations [spike trains of action potentials in different frequencies and amplitudes] to integrate it and give it coherent meaning [within instantiated neural codes]. . . . The new study results confirm the significance of certain cortical oscillations, or brain waves, and how they must synchronize to decipher spoken language.” There is a “crucial role of neuronal oscillations for decoding spoken language.

As this work is reviewed (additional articles will be reviewed in this context), we shall see parallels with points made in the blog posts of the last few days concerning visual percepts within the visual cortex of the human brain. I add that the article makes no mention of the role of the immaterial mind in deciphering spoken language.

The objective of the researchers “was to discover if the theta and gamma-coupled brain waves observed in the auditory cortex are key to understanding and producing speech. . . . The researchers found that synchronizing these two oscillations is crucial to correctly understanding speech.” Desynchronization resulted in cases such as dyslexia or autism. “Imbalance between slow and fast auditory oscillations . . . would compromise the ability to form coherent conceptual representations [I would add that would be interpreted by the immaterial cognitive mind].”

There is similarity between the processes of encoded wave form transmission in audition and vision, and we specifically see the need for waveform synchronization in deciphering and generating normal speech.

In an article published in October 2015 it was stated that the process of obtaining specific brain responses to different pixelized images in the primary visual cortex “is still unknown.” (Bing-Bing Guo et al, “Decoding Brain Responses to Pixelized Images in the Primary Visual Cortex: Implications for Visual Cortical Prostheses,” Neural Regeneration Research, Vol. 10.) However, specific brain activation patterns to pixelized images have been obtained above a chance level by the authors. They noted that “the relationship between visual space and cortical space is non-linear and non-conformal, so it is hard to accurately remap visual space onto cortical space.”

I offer the following question, drawing upon my previously posted blogs: Can pixelized images generate encoded waveforms wirelessly transmitted that can be “matched” with modular waveforms in the visual cortex established over a lifetime and archived in memory? If so, perhaps a synchronization of the waveforms could be achieved that would reflect the pixelized images sent to the cortical modular “detectors.” The cognitive mind of blind subjects would interpret the encoded waveforms as sight drawing upon encoded memory. If such a process would be possible it would map visual space to cortical space. There would be significant technological issues to address, but their resolution would involve the immaterial cognitive mind and its interaction with the material components of the visual cortex.

The last several posts have addressed the process by which visual spaces/images are mapped to visual cortical space of the brain so that one perceives given images. Attention has been given to a process to restore this function to sight-impaired individuals. It is a wonderful research activity that is drawing upon God’s created visual networks of the human brain. It is also my intention to suggest a process by which the Holy Spirit can instantiate neural codes directly into waveforms that are transmitted through synaptic networks to give visual information to cognitive minds.

Eduardo Fernandez and coworkers published an article in Frontiers in Neuroscience, Volume 14, August 2020, entitled “Toward Long-Term Communication with the Brain in the Blind by Intracortical Stimulation: Challenges and Future Prospects.” This very current article presents several important points that apply to interaction with neural synaptic pathways in vision. This remarkable technological application is very much in process, but to date indicates how investigators are applying some of the principles of dualist interaction to the needs of visually impaired patients. The possibility of restoring vision utilizing neural prosthetic devices is designed to bypass damaged visual pathways. We shall see that there is an absence of mention of cognitive perception by the immaterial mind, all physiological visual components reduced, it appears, to the workings of the brain itself. I will post several quotes from their article.

“All of the prosthetic devices work by exchanging information between the electronic [sensory] devices and different types of neurons. . . . several researchers are trying to develop visual prostheses designed to directly stimulate the brain. . . . a blind individual could use . . . artificially encoded neural information. . . . Although we see with the brain [the authors do not include visual perception by the immaterial cognitive mind by which neural codes are interpreted], the input information to the visual system begins at the eye, which catches and focuses light onto the retina. . . . The output neurons of the retina are the ganglion cells, which send their axons . . . through the optic nerve to the brain. This means that, in order to encode all the features of objects in the visual space . . . and the change of these features in time in the same way that the human retina does, we would need at least 1 million parallel channels. . . . Although ongoing studies suggest that electrical stimulation via multiple electrodes may give rise to useful vision . . . the device must be wireless [hence the role of the transmission of wave forms between a sensor replacing the retina where encoding begins and the neural components of the visual cortex]. . . . a key issue for the future success of cortical visual implants is related to how the brain understands artificially encoded information. [Again, no mention is made of the cognitive interpretation of neural codes by the immaterial mind.] . . . We should try to develop specific strategies to communicate with the brain of the blind in order to increase the chances of extracting useful information from the artificially encoded stimulation.”

This is exciting research, giving great promise to the visually impaired! In reading these quotations and my own comments it is my hope that one can appreciate the awesome intelligent design by our Creator God of the human visual sense! The principal question, in my view, is how encoded stimuli sent wirelessly to implanted intracortical microelectrodes will interface with neural memory codes established over a lifetime and archived in memory in the parts of the brain that function in vision. It is a daunting challenge!

I have shared what has been learned about the mechanism of synaptic transmission in my books and blog posts over the last four years. I will discuss an exciting article by Richard A. Normann and his coworkers entitled “Toward the Development of a Cortically Based Visual Neuroprosthesis” that was published in J Neurol Eng, June, 2009. The authors were motivated by the success of cochlear implants in restoring auditory capacity. The goal of their research is the creation of a visual neuroprosthesis designed to interface with the occipital cortex to restore a “useful sense of vision” in blind patients. I quote from their article, “Because retinal degeneration does not appear to spread to the neurons of the higher visual centers, a cortical approach for a visual prosthesis could provide an interventional site for virtually all forms of retinal blindness, trauma to the retinal and optic nerve, and blindness necessitated by precortical surgical procedures.”

In synaptic transmission we have seen that spike trains of action potentials carry linguistically encoded patterns of specified information instantiated within wave forms that, by quantum tunneling, are transmitted through synapses to stimulate postsynaptic action potentials that transmit the neural codes within spike trains to end points to bring about specific actions. There are both material and immaterial components to this elaborate process of dualist interaction. It is a created, designed process that provides for personal interaction between human cognitive minds and with the Mind of God through His indwelling Holy Spirit.

Let us examine the process being developed by the authors of this article and seek analogies with transmission within human synaptic networks. I quote:

“A cortical visual prosthesis, like other proposed approaches to sight restoration, would consist of a video camera [analogous with the retina], concealed in a pair of eyeglasses that generates a video data stream [spike trains of action potentials encoded with linguistic specified information] which captures the visual scene in front of the subject. This video data stream is then transformed and processed by a bioinspired retinal-like encoder [analogous to the generation of meaning and purpose within linguistic neural codes of spike trains]. This encoder would remap visual space onto cortical space and adjust the stimulus levels delivered to the implanted cortical electrodes. The digital data stream would then be transmitted wirelessly [via wave forms] to a number of electrode arrays implanted in the subject’s visual cortex [analogous to cortical modules whereby incoming wave forms transmitting neurally encoded, specified information within spike trains of action potentials are matched with wave forms within specific cortical modules to generate synchronous wave forms that are transmitted through synaptic networks with direction and purpose.]” The authors continue, “The processed digital data stream would produce a two-dimensional spatio-temporal pattern of electrical currents [analogous with encoded spike trains of action potentials] that would be injected into the cortical tissues [synaptic network endpoints within the cortex] via the implanted electrode arrays, and a two-dimension visual percept would be created in the subject [analogous to the interpretation by the cognitive mind of the meaning and purpose within the transmitted linguistic neural codes].”

I highly recommend this article to interested readers. I conclude with the following quotation from their article: “The goal of developing such a bioinspired retinal encoder is not to simply record a high-resolution image, but to transmit visual information in a meaningful way to the appropriate site(s) in the brain. Hence, the question of how the information about the external world is compressed in the retina and how this compressed representation is encoded into spike trains is of seminal importance. . . . The encoder/stimulator takes into account the irregular distribution of photoreceptors within the human retina and is able to encode the visual information in a way that is similar to the output of real retinal ganglion cells. Thus, the continuously varying input video steam is converted into neuromorphic pulse-coded signals through a circuit that emulates the function of retinal neurons.”

How human investigators are applying directly or indirectly what has been learned about synaptic network transmission to “bioinspired” medical devices is exciting and promising and reflects the awesome intelligence and design of our Creator God!

Aquiles Parodi and Jin-Woo Choi published an article in Electronics in 2019, Volume 8, p. 1344, that relates to the current consideration of waveform effects on neural stimulation. It is entitled, “A Pulse Generation Circuit for Studying Waveform Effects on Neurostimulation.” I am including a number of excerpts from their article:

“Electrical stimulation has demonstrated capabilities to alter the compound action potentials and long-term potentiation behavior of complex neural networks, even at low stimulation intensities, via an effect termed neuromodulation. Neuromodulation has been observed at all levels, from individual nerve cells to brain regions, including the synapses. . . . This effect is thought to arise from action potentials (APs) that are modulated as they propagate through individual nerve cells, depending on the nerve cell’s properties at the level of the soma, axon, and transmembrane proteins. This modulation can be enhanced or inhibited with neurostimulation. . . . Stimulation waveforms have been studied for their effects in neurostimulation. These include square or rectangular, exponential, ramp, sinusoidal, triangle and Gaussian waveforms.” These authors focused in their studies on the effects of signal shape on neurostimulation and have observed that “waveform shape has an effect on electrical stimulation outcome.”

Aspects of neural activity influenced by stimulation, in this case waveforms, have been addressed in both my books and in more recently posted blog posts on my website. I have presented preliminary evidence in previous blog posts that the immaterial, cognitive mind of humans has the capacity to generate waveforms that interact with the material components of the brain’s synaptic networks. The role of quantum tunneling has been included in these discussions, along with the recently defined potential role of quantum potential energy coupled with kinetic and potential energy in synaptic transmission. I repeat my proposal that the process of quantum tunneling constitutes the “non-material energy” identified by investigators such as William Dembski.

I am copying a lengthy excerpt from this article to show the complexity behind the generation of spike trains of action potentials and synaptic transmission that carry encoded information to effect various actions. It is our Creator God who designed these complex features with the ultimate Purpose of establishing intimate, personal communion with the crown of His creation, Man, by the power of His Holy Spirit. It is this dualist interaction that has been the focus of my own research.

“Design of stimulation waveforms is difficult, due to the diverse options and requirements for each anatomical stimulation target, the undetermined long-term effects of neurostimulation, the diversity of tissue, organ, and patient-level reactions, the unknown neural mechanisms involved [the focus of my studies], and the unknown side effects of stimulation methodology, including electrode type. The parameters of electrical stimulation waveforms, such as the amplitude, width and frequency of stimulation, have been shown to affect prosthetic sensory information in the vestibular nerve, the rate of excitation of individual nerves and nerve bundles, and the spatial selectivity within the bundles. Additionally, differences in stimulation waveforms, the polarity of current and direction, electric field shape and direction, and the temporal pattern of stimulation have been shown to have effects on the outcome of stimulation.”

We serve and worship an awesome God!

Warren M. Grill has studied the effects of stimulation waveform on the energy efficiency of neural excitation. His objective is to “understand the biophysical mechanisms underlying the effects of extracellular stimulation on neurons.” [This has been the focus of my own studies over the last 20 years, addressed in my two books and in blog posts on my website.] He continues stating that “Two important considerations when selecting or designing stimulation parameters are selectivity and efficiency. Selectivity is the ability to activate the targeted neural elements without activating the non-target neural elements. . . . Efficiency is achieving the required level of neural activation or response to achieve clinical efficacy with the minimal amount of stimulation. . . . The selectivity and efficiency of neural stimulation are dependent on the choice of the stimulation waveform.”

We see that multiple variables must be considered by the researchers to study biophysical mechanisms that exert effects on neuron stimulation. Our Creator God controls all these variables being uncovered over time by investigators to interact with the human spirit and soul! It is my judgment that God is allowing these kinds of studies to reveal to us how He communes with us! I continue:

Grill has learned that “the stimulation waveform shape can also be manipulated to increase stimulation selectivity between activation of the targeted neural elements and activation of non-target neural elements, and thereby increase the dynamic range between therapeutic effects and unwanted side effects [to the ultimate benefit of Man!] . . . . the energy required for stimulation is indeed dependent on the shape of the stimulation waveform, and highlight the importance of using an appropriately complex model to analyze the effects of waveform shape on neural excitation. . . . [there is an] optimal waveform for a particular application.”

In his concluding remarks Grill states that “the parameter space for electrical stimulation of the nervous system is extremely large, and the design and selection of stimulation parameters to achieve a desired response is a challenging problem” [giving testimony to the infinite power and intellect of our Creator God who designed these parameters for His purposes to achieve His desired responses in us!].

In previous blog posts I have cited research activities in the neurosciences that increasingly show how waveforms stimulate spike trains of action potentials that transmit encoded, specified information. Though not definitive, the data presented makes a compelling case for dualist interaction between the immaterial cognitive mind and the material neural synaptic networks of the human brain.

I am finding recent articles presenting the data of researchers in such departments as biomedical engineering that are remarkably similar in design and outcome to that being learned by neuroscientists operative within neural synaptic networks. In my next post I shall present the findings of Warren M. Grill whose article is entitled “Model-Based Analysis and Design of Waveforms for Efficient Neural Stimulation.”

In previous blogs I have shared how wave forms are involved in stimulating action potentials and that they transmit neurally encoded specified information. The nonmaterial energy has been identified as being possibly the quantum tunneling process by which synaptic transmission occurs through synchronous, coherent networks.

I now refer to excerpts from an article by Aquiles Parodi and Jin-Woo Choi entitled, “A Pulse Generation Circuit for Studying Waveform Effects on Neurostimulation.” It was published on November 14, 2019, in Electronics, Vol. 8. These will substantiate the proposals I have made that the immaterial mind, including the Mind of God, generate wave forms that stimulate spike trains of action potentials that transmit encoded specified information to bring about desired actions and purposes.

“Electrical stimulation parameters, such as waveform, amplitude, and stimulation frequency, have been shown to affect neurostimulation properties. . . . Electrical stimulation has demonstrated capabilities to alter the compound action potentials and long-term potentiation behavior of complex neural networks . . . . Neuromodulation has been observed at all levels, from individual nerve cells to brain regions, including the synapses. . . . waveform shape has an effect on electrical stimulation outcome.”

The authors refer to “the unknown neural mechanisms involved,” and this has been the subject of my research over the last 20 years, employing the neural synapse as the model for my studies of dualist interactionism. I will add additional posts that address how wave forms interact with neural synaptic networks. I will continue to search for work that addresses the generation of wave forms by the immaterial cognitive mind in addition to those I have referenced in previous blog posts.

When you open my blog site on “Minds in Communion” you will see two blogs composed by Don Olson, a fellow Christian apologist. The blog dated August 2nd precedes that posted on August 5th, but they are one unit. Please scroll down to the one dated August 2nd for your first reading, then to that posted on August 5th, the manuscript. It is long and very much worth the full read to learn how one experiences the Person of the Holy Spirit.

Stan Lennard

Introduction

In 2011-2012, I taught an Adult Formation Class on the Holy Spirit at Harbor Covenant Church.  I gathered material for the class not only from numerous books and DVDs, but also from testimonies I requested from a large sample of fellow Christians on their experiences with the Holy Spirit and how He worked in their lives.  On most Sundays, the classroom was packed with people which conveyed the message to me that Christians are hungry to learn about the Holy Spirit and how He works in their lives. For this reason, now in Oct., 2013 I decided to put the text of the class into a booklet and make it available to others.

Prompted By the  Spirit

I’d like to start by describing the process that led me to a decision to teach a Sunday School class on the Holy Spirit. It was a struggle to come to this decision and I believe the struggle involved the Holy Spirit. There was nothing extraordinary about my experience – I think it’s a common experience for Christians who have a difficult decision to make and they call upon God through prayer for guidance and listen for His voice.

Ever since I became a Christian, the Holy Spirit has been on my mind and in my heart. I see the importance of the Holy Spirit to Christianity as right up there with the resurrection. Paul stressed the importance of the resurrection in 1 Cor. 15:14, “And, if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith”.

Without the resurrection, there would be no Christianity. And, without the Holy Spirit, there would be no Christianity. Without Pentecost, the Christian church would probably not have gotten started, or would have fizzled. Without the presence of Holy Spirit at Harbor Covenant, our church would be little more than a social club. The Holy Spirit gave us God’s Word and He helps us understand the truth revealed in the Word. He bears witness to Jesus. He enables us to know God. He is our helper, comforter, teacher, guide and advocate. He empowers us, He transforms us. So, I saw the Holy Spirit as being essential to Christianity and for us to live and be as Jesus wants us to.

So, just as we want to know as much as possible about a person we want to have a close relationship with, I as a Christian have always wanted to know as much as possible about the Holy Spirit, who He is, what is His nature, how in practice does He work in our lives. When He dwells within us, how does that look, how does it feel, what should the experience be like? So, all of the years I have been at HCC, I have hoped that an Adult Formation class would be offered on the Holy Spirit. But none appeared. I had hoped that a sermon or two would be preached on the Holy Spirit, and that didn’t happen until 2011 when Pastor Michael preached a sermon series on the Holy Spirit. I didn’t miss one of them. As a member of the Adult Christian Formation Committee, I pushed for a class on the Holy Spirit. The committee agreed, knowing that there were many at HCC who also thought a class on the Holy Spirit would be great. However, we could not find anyone who felt called to teach a class. Then a little voice within me started to speak, saying, “why don’t you step up yourself and teach it?” That’s when the struggle began. Another voice popped up and told me not to risk it. It told me that to teach about the Holy Spirit you must have some experience with the Spirit, and you haven’t been a Christian long enough to have sufficient experience to talk about the Spirit. You are spiritually immature and there would be many in the class much more spiritually mature here who would ask, “what can this Christian babe-in-the-woods tell me about the Holy Spirit that I don’t already know”. Furthermore, the voice told me, you are a scientist and not a theologian, so you will be out of your element. You don’t have a good enough command of Scripture to teach this subject. To make a long story short, this struggle went on for quite a while, and during that time it grew in my heart to give this class a try.

On the positive side, the original voice reminded me of the passion I had for teaching this class. The voice also said that having made the journey from agnostic to a follower of Christ would give me a unique perspective to teach from – how a freshly minted Christian came to know the Holy Spirit. The voice also told me that I wouldn’t have to rely on my limited experience alone. I could ask fellow Christians to share how the Holy Spirit works in their lives to get a broader perspective. And, as many of you whom I have asked know, I have done that. Some probably thought I was a pest because I was so persistent.

The voice also said that there is a great deal one can teach about the Holy Spirit. While we can know little or nothing about the Holy Spirit on our own, Scripture is rich in revelation about the Holy Spirit, and in addition there is a wealth of other resources such as commentaries, books, and CDs. Finally, one day Ginny Porterfield told me about a book, The Joy of Listening to God, by Joyce Huggett in which she advised, “if you believe God has told you to do something, ask Him to confirm it 3 times – through His Word, through circumstances and through others who may know nothing of the situation”.  So I told 3 others at HCC whom I respect about my struggle and asked them what they thought I should do. All 3 gave me encouragement to teach the class. The voice which said to do the class continued to be relentless so I decided to go forward with this class.

I didn’t feel so alone in my struggle when I read that Francis Chan, an author of Christian books, went through a similar struggle when he wrote a book on the Holy Spirit. He wondered, and I quote, “how can any human being write well on the sacred topic of the Holy Spirit. No subject intimidates me more”. Yet he went on and wrote the book because he couldn’t think of anything more essential for God’s church, especially in the western hemisphere where it seems that the Holy Spirit is all but missing from most of our churches. Thus, he named his book, The Forgotten God. I’m glad he wrote the book. I learned a lot from it.

What will be covered here will be rooted in Scripture and also draw on testimony of a sizeable number of people on how the Spirit has works in their lives. While no human can explain the Holy Spirit because He is infinite and mysterious and cannot be fully known by us, we can endeavor to understand Him better by studying God’s Word, and from experiential knowledge. What I will be presenting will reflect my understanding at the point where I am in my journey.

I’d like to thank a number of people of who have been of immense help in preparing this material. First, those who answered my call to share how the Holy Spirit works in their lives. Many shared generously and I have pages upon pages of testimony that would take too long to present in their entirety, so I will weave excerpts from them into the class material. Second, Pastor Michael, Dale Kelley, and Bruce Farrington whom I have dialogued with at length about the topic. And finally, Jeanie Hagen who partnered with me in teaching the class.

 

The Trinity

A good place to start a discussion of the nature of the Holy Spirit is the Trinity, since the Holy Spirit is one of the persons of the Trinity. The Trinity is a core belief of the Christian religion. It is found in Christian creeds, e.g., the Apostles, Nicene and Athanasius creeds., The triune nature of God was first revealed to us by Jesus, but there are clues of it in the Old Testament. E.g., in Gen.1:26, it is written,

“Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, in our likeness’.”

Here, the plural pronouns are used and the Hebrew words used mean more than two. There are other places in the Old Testament where plural pronouns are used which refer to God. But it is in the New Testament where we learn that God is three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in one God. The Trinity was a mystery to the early church, and to a large extent is still shrouded in divine mystery. The word, Trinity, does not appear in the Bible. The term was coined in 215 AD by a church father named Tertullian. The first attempt to doctrinally define the Trinity was by the Nicene Council in 325 AD which used the Greek word, homoousious, to describe it. Homoousious means “of the same substance”, or of the same essence. God the Father, Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit are all of the same substance. God is one What and three Whos. The triune nature of God sets the Christian faith apart from all other religions. We see our God as a loving, relational God. In light of this, a triune God makes more sense than a God who is a solitary person. Were God a solitary person, how would He know how to love, since before the Creation he would have been alone with no one to love.  In fact, many things in our world, such as relationships, caring, family, community make more sense with a triune Creator who made us in His image. We should not look upon the Trinity as something strange. It is because of His triune nature that God wants a close, personal, loving relationship with us. It is due to the existence of the Trinity that there is a Holy Spirit to dwell within us. When we receive the Spirit, God is in us and we are in God, which makes for a relationship like no other.

 Before we leave the topic of the Trinity, I would like to bring up the question, “where in Scripture is it written that Jesus is divine?” If the divinity of Christ is in question, the Trinity is in question. The question of where in Scripture it is written unequivocally that Jesus is divine is one of the questions I asked Christians when I was a non-believer. What would you answer if asked this question by a non-believer? Now let’s make the question more difficult. Where in Scripture is it written that Jesus is divine and at the same time reveals something about God that is in harmony with the Trinity?

The verses are among my favorites – John 1:1-2.

 

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.”

 

This is such a beautiful, profound, and striking verse and so packed with revelation of the nature of God that it wouldn’t surprise me if God dictated it Himself. So let’s unpack them. Here, John is using the concept of Logos, the Greek for Word, to refer to Christ. In saying that Christ existed in the beginning means that he already existed at the beginning, i.e. he pre-existed the creation. Christian theology links pre-existence with eternality, one of the attributes of God.

 

This is the first assertion John makes about Christ in this verse. Let’s skip the second verse for a moment and go to the third. Here he says directly and unequivocally that Christ is God. So, with these two assertions, John is making it clear that Christ is divine.

 

Now, let’s go back to the second assertion, that Christ was with God; he says it again in the second verse. The key word here is “with”. In Greek, there are 3 words for “with”. The first is “sun”, which means to get together, to be “with” each other. The prefix,”syn” comes from this word. E.g., a synagogue is a place where Jews get together.

 

The second Greek word is “meta”. It means “with” in the sense of being alongside someone.

 

The third Greek word is “pros” and it is the most intimate of the 3. It conveys the meaning of being with someone in a face-to-face relationship. This is the Greek word John used in this passage. It conveys the idea that Christ enjoys a close, intimate, personal relationship with God. So John is distinguishing between Christ and God, yet we have that Christ is God. They are both the same, yet distinct from one another.  Is that not in perfect harmony with the concept of the Trinity?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Who Is The Holy Spirit?

 

One thing that can definitely be said is that the Holy Spirit is not an “it”. The Holy Spirit is a person. All references to the Holy Spirit in Scripture are with a personal pronoun. It can also be said that the Holy Spirit is neither a “he” nor a “she”, although Scripture traditionally uses “He” in referring to the Holy Spirit. Unfortunately, there is no genderless personal pronoun in the English language (there is one in the Chinese language used exclusively for God). Since we all are made in the image of God, God must have traits of both men and women. When I discussed this with one of my friends, namely Bruce Farrington, he suggested that when God made male and female in His image, He gave the female more of His soft traits, such as compassion, and the male more of His hard traits, such as judgment. When a man and woman marry, God said the two become one, and in the union the traits come back together to become complete again. That is an appealing concept. As Bruce said, this gives the union of marriage a whole new meaning.

 

Next let’s ask the question, how do we know that the Holy Spirit is God? How do we know that He isn’t an agent or force of some kind sent by God to help us? There is only one way that we can know and that is if Scripture reveals to us that the Holy Spirit is God. And, fortunately it does so in abundance. Throughout Scripture the Holy Spirit is identified with God Himself. An example is in Acts 5. The story is familiar to most Christians. In the very early church led by the Apostles, all believers shared their possessions for the good of all. If they had property, they sold it and laid the proceeds at the feet of the Apostles to be distributed to anyone who had need. Acts 5 tells the story of Ananias and his wife, Sapphora, who had sold a piece of property but in this case they secretly held back part of the money and laid the rest at the feet of the Apostles. But Peter was not to be fooled. In verses 3 and 4 he addresses Ananias,

“Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land?  Didn’t it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied just to human beings but to God.”

Here, we see that a lie to the Holy Spirit is equated to a lie to God Himself. This tells us that the Holy Spirit is divine.

Other passages in the Bible affirm over and over that the Holy Spirit is a divine person and identify the Holy Spirit with God. Here are some examples. The expressions, “God said” and “The Holy Spirit or the Spirit said” are used interchangeably in many passages in Scripture. Also, many passages describe the Holy Spirit as possessing attributes or having authority which are associated with a divine being.  In 1 Cor. 2: 10-11, Paul describes the Holy Spirit as an omniscient being.

“The Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. For what man knows the things of man except the Spirit of the man which is in him? Even so, no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God”

So we see here that the Holy Spirit knows all that God knows and omniscience is an attribute of God so it must also be an attribute of the Holy Spirit.

In Ps. 139:7-8, the psalmist describes the Spirit as omnipresent.

“Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend into heaven, You are there: if I make my bed in the depths, You are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there Your hand will guide me.

So, we see here that the Holy Spirit is to be found everywhere, in other words, He is omnipresent. No creature has this attribute, not even spiritual beings such as angels. Even Satan cannot be in two places at the same time.

Scripture also reveals that the Holy Spirit is omnipotent. He is described as being involved in special works that are of the kind that only God can perform, such as the work of creation and the work of redemption. Here are some examples. The first example is the first place that the Holy Spirit appears in the Bible, the first 2 verses in the Bible, Gen. 1:1-2.

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form, and void; and darkness fell over the surface of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.”

Here we see the Holy Spirit involved in creation. We usually think of creation as the work of God the Father and God the Son, but a close look at Scripture reveals that that the Spirit was also involved. Gen. 1 is but one example and some others will be mentioned later, but let’s first dig into these two verses in a bit more detail. There is a lot of revelation packed into these verses. One thing we learn is how the infant primordial earth looked, and it looked vastly different than the earth we know today. What science has recently discovered about how the infant earth looked is in harmony with what these verses reveal. We will return to this in a moment.

One question one might ask on reading this verse is, why is the Holy Spirit mentioned in these verses? We can be sure He is included for a very good reason. God doesn’t waste words in Scripture. And, it’s doubtful that it is simply an honorable mention in the creation process or that He was just along for the ride in the creation process. It is likely that it is because He was right in the middle of it all, deeply involved in the creation process. But how was He involved? What does it mean that He was “hovering over the face of the waters”? What imagery is God using here? What waters is Gen. referring to? We can answer the latter question from a passage in Job. Job, by the way, is loaded with information on creation. One passage tells us that the infant earth was completely covered with water, one global ocean. So the Spirit was hovering over this entire global ocean, or over the entire earth. Next we have to ask if the word “hovering” has any special meaning. The word is used in only one other passage in the Bible, in Deuteronomy, where it describes an eagle hovering over its chicks nurturing them in their growth and development to maturity. So, perhaps the verse means that the Spirit is nurturing the infant earth as God develops it from a primordial planet into a mature planet that can support the plants, animals, and mankind that He will create later.

Let’s look at how the infant earth appeared at the time described in Gen. 1. The heavens and the earth had been created. Since the earth was in place, the solar system was also in place. The Holy Spirit is now describing the earth and describing it from the perspective of an author on the surface of the earth. The earth is without form, which means it had a featureless surface. It is void; this is generally interpreted to mean it is void of life. And then, darkness falls over the earth. Incidentally, there is a companion verse in Jeremiah 4:23 which also speaks of darkness, but from the opposite perspective. In this verse, the Holy Spirit is speaking,

“I looked at the earth, and it was formless and empty; and at the heavens, and their light was gone.”

The formless and empty earth places the time precisely where the earth was in Gen.1:2. The Spirit is on the surface of the earth and looks up and the light from the heavens has disappeared; in other words, some event has occurred that has blocked out the light coming from the heavens and so darkness falls over the surface of the deep.

The fourth condition of the primordial earth that we mentioned earlier is that it is completely covered with a global ocean.

This is exactly the description modern science gives for the infant earth. The infant earth was formless because it had been molten on the surface, it was dark because a mantle of dust and dense steamy clouds around it blocked out all sunlight, it was completely covered with a global ocean, and it was void of life. We couldn’t have lived there because of the presence of a toxic atmosphere, high temperatures, and other conditions hostile to life. So, the Spirit is hovering over this infant earth and His task is to nurture and develop it into a mature planet which could support a Garden of Eden teeming with life, a home for Adam and Eve and mankind, much like the eagle cared for her chicks as they grew into mature eagles. Science knows fairly well the steps which the earth went through in this process from a primordial to a mature earth and they are in harmony with the order of steps described in the rest of the Gen. Creation story. I would love to go into the science of this process but don’t want to get off track from the topic of this class so let me return to the role of the Holy Spirit in creation. I will mention a couple of other examples of Scripture which tells us that the Holy Spirit was involved in creation. First, Ps. 104:30

“when you take away their breath, they die and return to the dust. You send forth your Spirit, they are created; and You renew the face of the earth”

This passage sounds as if it is describing the mass extinctions of life that are known by science to have occurred several times over the past 300 million years.

A second example is Job 33:4:

“The Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life.”

So far, we have seen that the Holy Spirit is a person who is omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, and a Creator. What else does Scripture tell us that teaches us that the Holy Spirit is a person? The Bible describes numerous acts of the Holy Spirit that identify Him as a person and not a force of some kind.

Rev. 2:7 tells us that He speaks:

”He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”

Rom. 8:26 tells us that He intercedes:

“And in the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness: for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words”

John 15:26tells us that He testifies:

“When the Helper comes, who I will send to you from the Father, that is the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, He will bear witness of Me”

 Rom. 8:24: tells us that He leads:

“For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God.”

Acts 16:6 tells us that He commands:

“And they passed through the Phrygian and Galatian region, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia”

John 16:13 tells us that He guides:

“When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak, and He will declare to you the things that are to come.”

We see here again that He speaks, and that He hears as well.

Acts 20:28 tells us that He appoints:

“Be on guard for yourselves and for all of the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood.”

Heb. 10:29 tells us that He can be insulted:

“How much severer punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the  Spirit of grace?”

Matt. 12:31 tells us that He can be blasphemed:

“Therefore, I say to you, any sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven men, but blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven.”

Eph. 4:30 tells us that He can be grieved:

“And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.”

All of these verses teach us that the Holy Spirit has intellect, power, will, and emotions, all of which are attributes of a person. So the Bible makes it crystal clear to us that the Holy Spirit is a person.

The Work of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament

While looking at how Scripture teaches us that the Holy Spirit is a person, we have touched some on the work of the Spirit. Next we’ll look at the work of the Holy Spirit in more detail. First we should note that the Father, Son, and Spirit perform some distinctively different tasks in God’s plan, and we can see from the Bible that each seemed to have a leading role in different eras of God’s plan. Although the Holy Spirit is mentioned numerous times in the Old Testament, the work of God the Father is emphasized in this era. In the New Testament, it is the work of God the Son that is emphasized up until the Pentecost. From Pentecost until current times, we can call the era of the work of the Holy Spirit.

The work of the Holy Spirit with a few individual people in the era of the Old Testament was more limited and selective than it is in the current era. In the Old Testament era, He either came upon certain selected men or rested on certain men, and sometimes filled certain men. Often He departed them when their task was finished. Sometimes He would depart when the chosen one disobeyed, e.g. Saul and Samson. David was even worried that this would happen to him.

Having mentioned these general comments on the work of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament, I would now like to take a quick journey through the Old Testament and briefly into the New Testament highlighting some specific works of the Holy Spirit which foreshadowed the post-Pentecostal era of the Holy Spirit. Let’s call it connecting the dots. The first dot is the very first time in the Old Testament that someone was filled with the Holy Spirit. In fact, there were two people in this event who were filled with the Holy Spirit. They were craftsmen named Bezaleel and Aholiab. Exod. 35:30-34 tells us the story:

“And Moses said to the children of Israel, “See, the Lord has called by name Bezaleel and He has filled him with the Spirit of God, in wisdom and understanding, in knowledge and all manner of workmanship, to design artistic works, to work in gold and silver and bronze, in cutting jewels for setting, in carving wood, and to work in all manner of artistic workmanship. And He has put in his heart the ability to teach, in him and Aholiab.”

As a result, Bezaleel and Aholiab must have been two of the most gifted and versatile artists of human history. They were silversmiths, goldsmiths, jewelers, stone-cutters, and woodcarvers, and had the gift of teaching and wisdom as well. What this event shows is how when the Holy Spirit fills us He can empower us to be and do what we cannot be and do on our own.

To continue with some selected works of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament, we will connect some dots in the Old and New Testaments which show a progression of events which foreshadow the post-Pentecost era of the Holy Spirit. The 1st dot is a story which comes from the Exodus and is told in Numbers 11. Moses has just led the Israelites to a location a good distance north of Mt. Sinai on the way to Canaan, the promised land. In verse 21, Moses says, “Here I am among 600,000 men on foot”. This is men alone- if you count in women and children, there had to be well over a million people. Now we know that the desert cannot sustain a horde of over a million people. So, with a sparse supply of food from the desert wilderness, God had to provide another source of nutrition and this we know was called manna in the shape of thin flakes which fell every evening from the skies and was gathered up by the people. This was the primary source of food. They ate manna morning, noon, and night. If someone wanted a midnight snack, guess what it was – manna. They probably prepared it in every creative manner they could think of – baked it, fried it, grilled it, boiled it, toasted it. As you might imagine, good as it might have tasted in the beginning, they eventually got sick and tired of manna, manna, manna. In verse 4 we hear,

“again the Israelites started wailing and said, “If only we had meat to eat. We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost – also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic. But now we have lost our appetite; we never see anything but this manna.”

The people even crowded around Moses’ tent and whined about the manna.

When the Lord saw and heard this, He became angry. Moses must have felt like he was between a rock and hard place. Surrounded in his tent by a mass of people wailing about the food, and God above angry about the ingratitude of His people that He had saved from slavery. So what did Moses say to the Lord? We find it in verse 14, “I cannot carry all these people by myself; the burden is too heavy for me”. Moses was dead serious; in fact, he felt that without the help of God he might as well be dead. So, he appealed to God for help. And God did help Moses in the manna crises and in carrying the burden of the people. In verses 16 and 17, we see what God said to Moses.

“Bring me 70 of Israel’s elders who are known to you as leaders and officials among the people. Have them come to the Tent of Meeting, that they may stand there with you. I will come down and speak with your there, and I will take of the Spirit that is on you and put the Spirit on them. They will help you carry the burden of the people so that you will not have to carry it alone.”

This is the first time in the Bible that we see the Holy Spirit distributed upon a large group of people. Now, what happened next is interesting. When the Spirit came upon the 70 elders, they were seen manifesting that power by prophesizing in the camp. This alarmed Joshua and others. He hadn’t yet grasped what was going on, and he spoke up, protesting to Moses in verse 28:

“Moses, my lord, stop them!”

But Moses replied, in verse 29:

“I wish that all the Lord’s people were prophets and that the Lord would put his Spirit on them.”

This is another first in the Bible – a mention of the idea of the Holy Spirit coming upon all of the followers of the Lord. If this was just wishful thinking on Moses’ part, little did he know that his wish would come true 1500 years later. But God doesn’t waste words in the Bible. This comment of Moses is in there for a purpose. It was a foreshadowing of what was to come.

Next, we leap ahead about 800 years which takes us to the second dot, to Joel 2:28. Here, what Moses wished during the Exodus became a prophecy by Joel. What God said in this verse was this:

“And it shall come to pass afterward that I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh.”

In this verse Joel prophesized that God would pour out His Spirit on all people. Later in the passage, He seems to qualify this by adding that God will pour out His Spirit on all who call upon the Lord. For the next dot that we are going connect to in our Holy Spirit journey through the Bible, we will leap forward another 800 years into the New Testament where what was prophesized is promised by Jesus.

The Holy Spirit in the New Testament

We enter the New Testament at the time when Jesus was with his disciples at the Last Supper shortly before he went to the cross. He is giving them final instructions to prepare them for his death and resurrection, which were events that would change their lives forever. In the Gospel of John 14:15-17 we see what Jesus said 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 – 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.”

The Spirit of truth that Jesus promised was none other than the Holy Spirit. The Scripture tells us that the Spirit was already with the disciples and they knew Him, but later He would dwell within them, not just for a finite time, but forever. He would care for and guide them after Jesus was gone.

A few weeks later, what Moses wished for, what Joel prophesized, and Jesus promised, came to pass. The event is called Pentecost. Pentecost is one of 3 major annual feasts of Judaism. The other two are Passover and Tabernacles. All 3 foreshadowed events in Jesus ministry. The Feast of Pentecost was called the Feast of Weeks because it was celebrated the day after the passage of 7 weeks from Passover, or the 50th day after Passover. Thus, the name Pentecost, which is Greek for 50th. It celebrates the beginning of the harvest, or as Numbers 28:26 puts it, “the day of first fruits”. In the New Testament Pentecost, it was the beginning of God’s harvest in this world, to be completed when Christ returns. It was when the Holy Spirit first poured forth from heaven upon the Apostles and became available to all who come to Christ. It was the birth of the Christ’s church.

So, let’s recall what happened at Pentecost. Ten days after Jesus ascended into heaven, the twelve Apostles, Jesus' mother and family, and many of His disciples gathered together in Jerusalem for the Jewish Pentecost.  While they were indoors praying, a sound like that of a rushing wind filled the house and tongues of fire descended and rested over each of the Apostles’ heads.  This was the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on human flesh promised by God through the prophet Joel that was mentioned earlier.  In fact, there were two events of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, first to the Apostles, and second to converts.  Here is how it is described in Acts 2:1-4

“When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place.  Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting.  They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them.  All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.”

They went out into the streets of Jerusalem and began preaching to the crowds gathered for the festival.  Not only did the disciples preach with boldness and vigor, but by a miracle of the Holy Spirit they spoke in the native languages of the people present, many who had come from all corners of the Roman Empire.  This created a sensation.” 

Acts describes what happened next. The Apostle Peter seized the moment and preached a sermon to the crowd about Jesus’ death and resurrection for the forgiveness of sins. He told the crowd to listen carefully to what he said.  He reminded them of God saying through Joel that in the last days He will pour out His Spirit on all people and that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Finally, at the end of his sermon as recorded in verse 38, Peter said:

“Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.  The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call.

“With many other words he warned them; and he pleaded with them, ‘save yourselves from this corrupt generation.’ Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day.”

This was the second outpouring of the Holy Spirit to about 3000, and a promise that all who accept Jesus Christ will receive the Spirit.

What an awesome and powerful experience the Pentecost event must have been for Peter and the other Apostles. For one thing, to see a prophecy of God made 800 years before come to pass before their eyes. And, to see a physical manifestation of the Holy Spirit in the form of tongues of fire. To experience the feeling of being filled with the Holy Spirit and the powers it gave them. With this, the Holy Spirit transformed the Apostles instantaneously. In the second event 3000 were baptized and this gave birth to Christ’s church.

Now, a question that I asked myself when I read about the Pentecost experience in Acts, and I’m sure many Christians have asked the same question, is - what should we experience when we are filled with the Holy Spirit? In particular, should non-believers who decide to accept and follow Christ expect to have this experience? Should they instantly feel and be empowered as the Apostles were? Should they speak in other tongues as the Apostles did? Is this passage in Acts intended to describe the normal experience for us Christians? If you have not had this experience, does that mean that you have not received the Holy Spirit?

One can find a range of answers to this question, even amongst people within our church. On the conservative side, some say that Holy Spirit inspired speaking in tongues and prophesizing ended with the Apostles. On the other end of the spectrum, some say this is the normative experience on receiving the Holy Spirit. In between, there are some Christians who say they have spoken in tongues one or more times, or know someone who has. I know a good number of people at our church who have said they have spoken or prayed in tongues and some who still do. I know one person who says she has prophesized. But certainly, tongues and prophesizing are not common occurrences. I know little about this topic but from what I have heard and read, all Christians do not all have the same experience with the Spirit and I believe this does not indicate that they do not all have the same Spirit. 

 

 

Do We Need the Holy Spirit?

Now, I’d like to turn to another question. Do we need the Holy Spirit, or is He an option? This may sound like a strange question for a Christian to ask, but even though we know the answer is yes, we do need the Holy Spirit, we often don’t live and act as though we do. We often act as if He is an option.

I can relate to this from the early days of my Christian faith. When I became a Christian, I didn’t know much about the Holy Spirit and there didn’t seem to be any opportunities to learn about Him at church. It appeared to me that our church didn’t pay much attention to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit didn’t seem to be a topic of conversation that Christians I knew were interested in. As I mentioned earlier, there were no classes on the Holy Spirit, and the pastors didn’t preach sermons on Him. There were no prayers to the Holy Spirit during services. Prayers were said to the Father and the Son. Every prayer ended with Jesus. But, it was rare to hear the Holy Spirit mentioned in prayers. How nice it would have been for me if there had been a mentor program as there is now where I could talk to someone about the Holy Spirit.

However, I did read about the Holy Spirit in Scripture. I read in Paul’s letters that when we accept Christ as our savior the Holy Spirit comes to dwell within us. The Holy Spirit will then empower us to say no to sin. For some time I didn’t think I needed the Holy Spirit for this purpose. I could handle this myself. I obey the law, I don’t murder, steal, lie, cuss, or chase women. I believe in being good and doing what is right. I was raised that way and all of my brothers and sisters live that way. So, although I never considered myself perfect or sin free, I thought I was as good as other Christians I knew who supposedly were empowered by the Holy Spirit, and I was doing this on my own. I also noticed that there were some non-believers who were as law abiding and good, and in some cases better, than many Christians. So, I saw the Holy Spirit as an option that I didn’t really need.

 In addition, I didn’t know how empowerment by the Holy Spirit worked. If a sin tempted you, did you say or pray to the Holy Spirit to empower you, and suddenly you felt the power to overcome the temptation? I actually tried that a couple of times, and I did not get a feeling of empowerment. So, that discouraged me. I asked other Christians how this worked for them, and didn’t get an answer, or a satisfactory answer.

I did learn, no doubt with the help of the Holy Spirit, that this was the wrong attitude, and I’ll speak to that later. With this introduction, let me now turn to the many reasons that we do need the Holy Spirit in our lives.

First of all, we need the Spirit, because Jesus said we do. He told his disciples in the Upper Room that he was sending a helper for us as we already saw in John 14. Jesus wouldn’t have sent the Spirit if we didn’t need Him. It is interesting that Jesus called the Holy Spirit “another Helper”. Jesus meant, of course, another Helper besides himself. But in Greek, the word used for another has a special meaning; it means a helper like Jesus, of the same kind as Jesus. Someone divine who comes not to draw attention to Himself but to draw attention to Jesus. In another verse, Jesus said it was better that he sends the Spirit than if he stayed himself. Why would he say that? Probably because, having a physical body, Jesus could not dwell within us. He could not be in two places at the same time. He could not be in Jerusalem, Galilee, and Rome at the same time. Think how ridiculous it would be if today there were 2 billion Jesus walking the earth, one beside each believer. But the Spirit can dwell within billions, or any number, of believers and He like Jesus is a divine person. And He is with us at all times forever, in contrast to the few in the Old Testament with whom He came and went. He is our helper, teacher, guide, and advocate. He empowers us and transforms us. If we operate only with our own strength, we will accomplish only human-size results. The Spirit wants an intimate relationship with each of us. Think what a wonderful gift the Spirit is. We should embrace this gift with all of our hearts, minds, and souls.

Even Jesus himself needed the Holy Spirit. He did not start his ministry before the Holy Spirit had come upon him. After Jesus’ baptism, the Spirit led him into the desert to face temptation by Satan.

One question I pondered for a while was whether the Holy Spirit is necessary for salvation. This was a good question to ponder, because in the process of answering it, I learned what a critical role the Spirit played and plays in our salvation. It is through faith in Jesus that by grace we are given salvation. So, faith is critical to salvation. But where does faith come from? Eph. 2:8 tells us:

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—"

This verse tells us that the faith through which we are saved is a gift from God. While the verse says God and not specifically the Holy Spirit, whatever is a gift from God is a gift from the Holy Spirit. In fact, at least one leading evangelist, Billy Graham, interprets this verse to mean that faith is a gift from the Holy Spirit.

I believe I experienced this gift on my journey to God and Jesus. To make a long story short, over a period of a few years studying a body of evidence in modern science on the nature of the universe and how it came into being, and seeing the harmony between this evidence and the Bible, I became convinced that the universe and life were made by a Creator, i.e. God, and I felt drawn toward Him. Convinced, however, is not certainty. I knew I had to take a leap of faith to believe in God. But I didn’t know how to do it. You can’t just tell yourself to do it and it happens. But not too long after that I suddenly realized it had happened; I had that faith. The next step in my journey was a similar one from a belief in God to a belief in Jesus, and the same thing happened again. These were a new inner experience that I find difficult to find words for. It is like a new knowledge that goes beyond the cognitive (risky for a scientist to say). I like to call it a knowing, that seems to involve both our heart or spirit and our mind. I asked a few fellow Christians if they felt that they had a knowing that God exists, i.e. they simply know absolutely that God exists without the need for a proof. All but one said yes; one said his belief was based on evidence. So, this small sample indicated to me that this is a common experience.

 John Wesley, founder of the Methodist church, tried to put what sounds to me like this kind of experience in words when he wrote,

“It is hard to find words in the language of men to explain the deep things of God. Indeed, there are none that will adequately express what the Spirit of God works in His children. But… by the testimony of the Spirit, I mean, an inward impression on the soul, whereby the Spirit of God immediately and directly witnesses to my spirit, that I am a child of God; that Jesus Christ hath loved me, and given Himself for me; that all my sins are blotted out, and I, even I, am reconciled to God”.

What Wesley is saying here is a bit astounding. He is saying that the Holy Spirit communicates directly with our spirit. Not with words, but with what he calls “an inward impression on the soul.” This may be a good way of describing it. I don’t need words for my “knowing” that God exists. I know that I know that God exists without the need of words.

One has to ask if there is any Scriptural basis for what Wesley said. There is; I found some Scripture he must have drawn from. More accurately, I should say the Scripture found me. It was one of those cases where, even though you’ve read the Scripture before, on a new reading the true meaning just seems to jump out at you. Here are the passages - Romans 8:16 and 1 Cor. 2:11-14.

Rom. 8:16: “The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.”

1 Cor. 2:11-14: “For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man’s spirit within him? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. We have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom, but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words. The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.”

In Romans, Paul makes one of his bottom-line type statements. In Cor., he goes into more detail. The key word in the Romans verse is “testify”. Wesley uses the words testimony and witness in his passage. All of these words convey the same meaning. They convey the meaning of “inform” or “confirm”. When an attorney puts a witness on the stand, he intends for the witness to inform the jury of new facts or knowledge, or to confirm facts or knowledge that was earlier presented. So, Paul is saying here that the Holy Spirit dwelling within us is directly informing our spirit of new knowledge. This would mean the communication is not coming in via the normal channels of our senses and intellect or mind. What the Holy Spirit is telling us in this case is coming in directly Spirit to spirit.

 By this direct Spirit to spirit communication, the Holy Spirit might also be confirming some knowledge we got from another source, such as Scripture. E.g., we read some Scripture, and suddenly a light goes on and we are enlightened about its meaning.

The Romans verse tells us that the Holy Spirit informs us that we are children of God. Of course, this means we also know that God is our Father, and in turn we then know that God exists. So, here we have the “knowing” that God exists that I spoke about earlier.

The Cor. verse broadens the scope of knowledge we are informed of to that which God has freely given us. Now, what is it that God has freely given us that we know? Wesley lists some of these – that Jesus is our Savior, that Jesus loves us, that our sins are forgiven, that we are reconciled with God. Later in the passage, Paul broadens the scope even further to “spiritual truths”.

There’s even more revelation in this passage. Paul tells us that only we who have the Holy Spirit dwelling within us can know God and the thoughts of God and this happens through a Spirit to spirit communication. He adds that those who don’t have the Holy Spirit think that our beliefs are a bunch of bunk, or foolishness. The reason that they don’t get it is because they depend on their mind to discern, whereas this knowledge can only be discerned by the spirit. Our spirits have access to discernment of this knowledge only directly from the Holy Spirit.

I’m sure all of us have a friend or relative that thinks our beliefs are foolishness. I have an older brother who believes the Bible is mostly fairy tales. He has a granddaughter whom I communicate with quite a bit on Facebook and she is a pagan. We’ve had lots of discussions on her pagan beliefs and my Christian beliefs. She believes in reincarnation in a process in which you are given the opportunity in each lifetime to move a step or more higher in becoming a better person. With enough lifetimes and a lot of struggle, according to her belief, you can reach an enlightened level which is something like heaven within. One day, I told her Jesus has a better deal for her. What she believes she has to struggle for over many lifetimes, Jesus offers in this lifetime and she doesn’t even have to earn it. I don’t know if that was the right thing to tell her, but since then she talked more and more about Jesus and how she likes his teachings.

I can’t help but wonder how broad is the scope of what God tells us by direct Spirit to spirit communication. E.g., there have been occasions where I knew for certain that there was something God wanted me to do. Yet in my mind, I wasn’t so convinced and in fact at times resisted it by finding reasons that I shouldn’t do it. Did God inform me in these cases of His will by direct Spirit to spirit communication?

Now, let me add that Spirit to spirit is not the only way the Holy Spirit communicates to us. It is but one of many ways, and we’ll cover the others later in the class.

One additional conclusion we can get from the Cor. passage we just covered is that a relationship with God, which is what true Christians seek in this life, is impossible without the Holy Spirit dwelling within us. This relationship is what non-believers, sadly, are missing. I can relate to this since I was a non-believer for most of my life and I had no idea of what I was missing in the wonderful relationship I have with God now. I can’t express how grateful I am that the Holy Spirit brought me into this relationship.

Sealed by the Holy Spirit

I’d next like to touch on another important role the Spirit plays in our salvation. We are told about it by Paul in Eph. 1:13:

“Having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise.”

What does this mean? Sealing with the Holy Spirit is one of those words in the Bible which has multi-faceted meanings. A book could be written on it and maybe one or more have. Lots of commentaries have been written on the topic.

One of the meanings is that it is a mark of ownership and a mark which sets someone apart from others. Here it has a similar purpose as circumcision of the Jews. Circumcision was a mark that set the Jews apart as God’s people.  Matthew Henry, an 18th century pastor well known for his commentaries, summed it as follows: “By the Holy Spirit, believers are sealed; i.e separated and set apart for God, and distinguished and marked as belonging to Him”. Put simply, the Lord is our God and we believers are His people.

The Greek word for seal also carries a meaning of security. Here it means the moment we believe in Christ, our salvation is secure, i.e. guaranteed with a seal of the Holy Spirit Himself. The Holy Spirit puts His mark on us; we are secure in Christ. Nothing can touch us or take away our salvation. Paul expresses this powerfully in Romans 8:38-39:

“For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

We can see this as a promise from the Holy Spirit that we can count on our salvation. In fact, another verse by Paul in 2 Cor1:21-22 links the seal with a pledge by God.

“Now He who establishes us with you in Christ and anointed us is God, who also sealed us and gave us the Spirit in our hearts as a pledge.”

When I ponder this, I can’t help but feel joy for this wonderful gift. At the moment we accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we are given the Holy Spirit as a seal which makes us a member of God’s family, gives us eternal life, and guarantees us a place in heaven to spend eternity with the Lord. None of which we deserve or earn; all through God’s grace. As Paul said in 2 Cor. 9:15,

“Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift”

 

Justification and Regeneration

We’ve mentioned two events which take place the moment we receive Christ as our Savior, indwelling of the Holy Spirit and sealing by the Holy Spirit. There are two more that occur instantaneously at this same moment. First is justification. Justification is an act of God in which He forgives us our sins, past, present, and future, and including the big, fatal one that good old Adam and Eve committed that caused the death of our spirit. With justification, God declares us righteous. The second event is regeneration in which our spirit which was previously dead comes alive. This in more common terms, in Jesus’ words, is called being born again. I’d like to spend a little time on the regeneration step to help us understand what happens to our spirit at this time.

 Paul speaks about it in Eph.2:1-3.

“And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among who also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh and of the mind, fulfilling the desires of wrath, just as the others.”

What Paul is saying here is that before we accepted Christ, before regeneration, we were spiritually dead. After regeneration, we are spiritually alive. What does he mean by spiritually dead and spiritually alive? Spiritually dead doesn’t mean that we had no spirit, or that our spirit was a corpse. We did have a spirit, but it was dead to God. Let me try to explain it using an analogy I found in Dallas Willard’s book, “Hearing God”.  Take a head of lettuce. It is alive, but only in a limited realm. It is alive to the soil, but not to playing with a ball of string. It is dead to play. Now let’s go up a level to a kitten. It is alive to a broader realm. It is alive to playing with a ball of string. But it is dead to doing arithmetic. Going up another level to a human, we are alive to doing arithmetic. And, we have a spirit. But in the unregenerate state our spirit is dead to God. Before the fall, Adam and Eve’s spirits were alive to God. But when they disobeyed Him, he closed the door. When we are born again, God opens up the door and His Spirit comes through the door and gets together with our spirit; our spirit then becomes alive in another, higher realm, the realm or Kingdom of God. The Holy Spirit and our spirit are now, so to speak, “roommates” within our bodies, or as Paul calls it, the Temple of the Holy Spirit. Within us, He touches our spirit and lets us know that we are children of God as we saw in Romans 8:16 last Sunday. This is a radical change, far greater than extending the realm of a head of lettuce so that it can play with a ball of string. We are, as Paul said in one of his letters, a new creation. This picture shows how great God’s love is that He would do that for us.

Sanctification

Next we turn to another role of the Holy Spirit in our lives. We have seen that when we are born again, we are justified, regenerated, our salvation sealed, and the Holy Spirit dwells within us, but is the Spirit’s job with us then finished? We are safe, but are we sound? Is His seal a stamp of approval of what we are and how we live so can we now sit back and relax and go about enjoying our worldly life? The Gospel may be good news, but there is also what may seem to be some bad news. The bad news is that the answers to the questions I just asked are no. We have been forgiven for our sins, past, present, and future, and the big one Adam and Eve left us with. But we still have our sinful nature and we have to do battle with that, but it is a new kind of battle and I’ll get into what is new about it in a moment. A great saint said many years ago, “Sin no longer reigns, but it still fights”. And a theologian and pastor well known for his sermons and books, Horatius Bonar, put it, “While conversion calms one kind of storm, it raises another which is to be lifelong”. Paul wrote about this storm or battle at length in his letters, coming at it from different angles. Peter and James wrote about it as well. Paul wrote about the “old self” and the “new self”, the “old life” and the “new life”, the “old man” and the “new man”, the “old nature” and the “new nature”.  Our battle, or journey as I like to think about it, is nothing less than a transformation from our old sinful self to a new self that is a Christ-like person. This is a radical change for us. It’s called sanctification by theologians and the church. It doesn’t happen on conversion, or overnight for that matter. It is a process that lasts a lifetime and probably doesn’t reach completion until after we have passed on to the Lord. What’s new about it, and I think is joyful about it, is that we are not in the battle alone; the Holy Spirit is within us to help us. Jesus said he was sending a helper, and this is what he meant – a helper in this battle. Inner transformation is a specialty of the Holy Spirit. It’s number one on His agenda for us when He comes to dwell within us. But we have to do our part as well. Sanctification is a synergistic process between the Holy Spirit and us, and for me it has been a source of joy when I recognize when and how the Holy Spirit worked with me and helped me.

Sanctification is such an important process in our Christian lives that I’d like to spend a good deal of time on it, looking at both what scripture tells us and how it works in practice in our lives. Both Paul and Peter characterize the sanctification process as a battle, using military battle metaphors. Paul spoke about putting on our spiritual armor. Peter put it a different way which seems a bit strange. In 1 Peter 1:3, he wrote:

“Therefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and rest your hope full upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ; as obedient children, not conforming yourselves to the former lusts, as in your ignorance; but as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, because it is written, :Be holy, for I am holy”.

Notice the metaphor, “Gird up the loins of your mind”. That is a strange sounding metaphor. What does it mean? The expression, “gird up your loins” is one which describes what ancient soldiers did before going into battle. Ancient soldiers wore robes which fell to ankle length. When the bugle sounded for battle, to assure agility and avoid tripping over the folds of their robes, the soldiers hitched up their robes above their knees and put on a secure belt to hold them there. This was the action of girding up the loins. So, Peter used this image to say that once a Christian is born again, he must prepare his mind for battle.

So, what does the process of sanctification look like as we fight this battle? Let me try to diagram it; we can put down a starting point and a goal point. This should be a good way of looking at it as Paul called it a race in one of his letters. I’ll label the starting point as BA and the goal point as C. I use “BA” to stand for “Born Again”. “BA” is the state we were in at the moment we accept Christ as Savior, still with the baggage of our sinful nature, collateral damage from the sin of Adam and Eve. This initial state is not the state God wants us to stay in; He wants us transform to state C, which stands for Christ-like and the Holy Spirit is within us to help us get there and the journey is the sanctification process. Getting from BA to C is not a straight line. In real life it is not like barreling down the freeway at 70 mph. Much of the time it’s like crawling like a baby. There are lots of crooks and turns in the path and even some loops back when we slide backwards.

We should probably spend a little time better defining what the states BA and C look like. Paul devoted a lot of space in his letters to what we are like in state BA. He liked to use the word, “flesh” to describe us. By this, he means our human nature, or more accurately our sinful human nature. With the birth of our new spiritual self, the old sinful self or nature does not leave town. It stays within us and takes up battle with our new self. Notice that in the Eph. passage I just read it refers to the “prince of power of the air” who influenced us to “conduct ourselves in the lusts of our flesh and of the mind”. This, of course, is Satan and he didn’t leave town either. He stays around and continues to do his dirty work.

In Rom. 7:18, Paul describes our old, sinful nature at work:

“I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do – this I keep on doing.”

I don’t think I’ll say any more about the starting point as we have all been there and are familiar with it. But I don’t think any of us has reached state C, so let’s see what that should look like.

I know of two verses that Paul wrote, both in Phil, which I think best describes state “C”. In Phil. 2:5, Paul wrote,

“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.”

So, in state “C”, we have a renewed mind, a Christ-like mind.

In Phil. 2:15-16, Paul wrote that we would be,

“Blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life...”

In other words, as was mentioned earlier, we will be Christ-like.

Now, let’s turn to the sanctification process and see not only what Scripture says about how we should reach the goal point but also try to understand how it works in practice.

 In Gal. 5:16, Paul tells us what we should do.

“So, I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature.”

So, Paul says we should live by the Holy Spirit within us to win the battle with our sinful nature. But, in practice, how do we live by the Spirit? This is a big question. Hopefully, during the rest of this class, we’ll get some answers that will be useful to you. One place we can start is to say that it has a lot to do with where we direct our attention. This is nicely illustrated by a story I found in Billy Graham’s book on the Holy Spirit. Here is the story:

“An Eskimo fisherman came to town every Saturday afternoon. He always brought his two dogs with him. One was white and the other was black. He taught them to fight on command. Every Saturday afternoon in the town square the people would gather and the two dogs would fight and the fisherman would take bets. On one Saturday the black dog would win; another Saturday, the white dog would win – but the fisherman always won. His friends began to ask him how he did it. He said, “I starve one and feed the other. The one I feed always wins because he is stronger”.

Like the two dogs, the nature within us which we feed most will be the stronger and will win. If we feed our spiritual nature and allow the Holy Spirit to empower us, we will do what our spirit wants to do. If we starve our spiritual nature, and feed the old sinful nature, the sinful nature will dominate.

To live by the Holy Spirit, as Paul tells us to do, we must have a relationship with Him. Let me share with you how the Holy Spirit first touched me and how my spiritual life and my relationship with the Holy Spirit began. l’ll start at the beginning, when I accepted Jesus as my Savior several years ago, when I was born again.  When a non-believer like me is born again, our newborn spirit is like a babe in the woods; at least, that’s how I felt. In Cor., Paul calls us an infant in Christ. And he also uses the feeding image, saying our spirit must be fed like an infant, first with milk and later solid food. I remember vividly during this period the first time that the Spirit touched me. Something emotional which to me was odd started happening at church services. I say odd because I’m not an emotional person. Sometimes during worship or prayer or a certain hymn, I would experience a feeling or sense of blessedness, a sense of intimacy, a warming of the heart, an upwelling of love that sometimes brought tears to my eyes. Somewhere I read that tears can be pearls of the Kingdom of God, and I agree with that. About the third time this happened, I began to wonder if it was the Holy Spirit touching me letting me know He was there within me.  Later, I came across the verse in Romans 8 that I mentioned earlier and it sort of clicked when I read it. “The Holy Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.” I thought, perhaps the Holy
Spirit was getting my attention and communicating with my spirit that I am one of God’s children.

Later, as I pondered these experiences, and wondered how I could be sure it was the Holy Spirit speaking to me, I had a new kind of experience. Right out of the blue, one time when I was driving down the road, a wonderful feeling of joy radiated within me. I had what I thought was a definite feeling of the presence, love and connectedness to God. No thought or event triggered this joy. It came suddenly out of nowhere and surprised me. Afterwards, what came to mind as the best description of what I experienced was a lyric from an Eagles song, “I get that peaceful, easy feeling that you won’t let me down” Later, it happened a second time but it hasn’t happened again since then. I feel that I am still not much beyond an “infant in Christ” so I’m not sure what to make of these experiences, but I find it easy to believe that this was the Holy Spirit letting me know He was there within me and was there to help me whenever I needed help. In fact, I do believe that.

I wondered if other Christians experienced the presence of God or the Holy Spirit as well, and after my survey, I learned that they do. In fact, it appears to be a common experience. Let me give you some examples from testimonies I collected.

“Since then there have been other times where I have felt with intensity the presence of the Holy Spirit”

“Often I sense the Holy Spirit when I am praying or worshipping with music.  I've been in a roomful of people where we ALL sensed this presence. There is just something very holy and powerful in the moment that forces me to pause.  Sometimes these moments happen when I'm reading scripture as well...with a particular passage or line or word”

“There have been numerous times when I have felt the presence of the Lord in a strong way, as well as times when it has been peaceful and quiet.”

“I had a sense of excitement, of God’s presence, an intimacy and closeness with God, a feeling of peace.”

“I feel the presence of the Holy Spirit in my life daily.  I feel the active presence of the Holy Spirit giving me the right thought, words, and sometimes just comfort with silence”

“While I was sitting in church I felt a very tangible  “presence” come upon me and a voice speak to me saying I should grieve over the loss of a loved one. I can remember vividly the feeling of a presence come over me and a physical interaction with that presence – it was not a mental or emotional “feeling” – but something much more tangible.  Also, I felt the presence/spirit speak/communicate to me that things were going to be OK.    I actually spoke up from the pew and told the pastor that I had just experienced this incredible interaction with God/ Holy Spirit.   I really believe this was God speaking to me through the Holy Spirit.”

“By His grace though, I do experience His presence more often than not.”

 

“I do feel the presence of the Holy Spirit daily – same as knowing my wife is standing nearby without seeing her. It is unmistakingly real.”

“I experienced a sense of God's presence in praying alone at times and with others at other times. I also experienced His clear presence when I taught and in sharing with people.”

“I have had a number of experiences that I can only characterize as the presence of the Holy Spirit. .  I have probably more often felt moved by the Holy Spirit to do or say something.  Hard to quantify”

Let me now return to a discussion of the sanctification process.

St. John of the Cross, a medieval monk who wrote a great deal about the journey of sanctification, used climbing a ladder as a metaphor for the journey.  He took his metaphor from the story of Jacob’s ladder in the Old Testament. But here the ladder is not one God expected us to climb by ourselves to discover Him in heaven. On the contrary, He came down the ladder to us. The Father sent Jesus down the ladder to become one of us, to bring us the truth, to reveal God and His plan to us. As John wrote in his Gospel in Chap. 18, when Pilate asked Jesus if he was a King, Jesus answered that he was, and added that he came to earth to bear witness to the truth, i.e. to inform us of the truth. In fact, elsewhere in his Gospel John tells us that Jesus is the living Word of God; he is truth itself. Pilate didn’t get it. Pilate’s response showed that he viewed truth as relative, a view which, unfortunately is becoming increasingly prevalent in our country, i.e. there is no absolute truth, everyone has his/her own truth. When Jesus ascended into heaven, he didn’t leave us without a source of truth. He, in turn, sent the Holy Spirit down the ladder to dwell within us and continue teaching us the truth. When we receive the Holy Spirit, He takes us to the foot of the ladder and helps us climb.  At times we slip back. But if we climb more than we slip, we will advance up the ladder. Let me read a translation (St. John wrote in Spanish) and commentary on how St. John describes the end of the journey up the ladder.

“Finally, all this ascending and descending stops. The soul reaches God and attains perfect stillness. God is at the end of the ladder. The ladder rests in God. It is God that the ladder is leaning against. This is the ladder that Jacob saw in his sleep, on which angels were climbing up and down, from God to human and human to God, with God Himself holding the whole thing up. The final step on the ladder of love does not belong to this life. Through the clear vision of God that the soul attains here, she is instantly and unequivocally assimilated into Him. The soul departs from the body. Everything is revealed to the soul. The soul finds God resting at the top of the ladder and merges completely with Him and nothing remains hidden from her. Christ said, ‘On that day, you shall ask me nothing’.”

There are two things here that St. John is telling us that are noteworthy. One is that the final step of the journey, the union with God, does not happen until we die. Second, when the union occurs, all those questions and mysteries we’ve had about God in our earthly life won’t even need to asked of God to get the answers. We’ll know the answers immediately.

Let me briefly discuss a few characteristics of this journey. Mostly I will be drawing on what I have read in books on the Holy Spirit and the testimonies that were shared with me. There’s not much I can draw on from my own experience since I’m probably not far out of the starting gate of this journey so my experience is limited.

 We may look at the journey of sanctification as occurring in 3 phases of our relationship with God.

Communication -> Communion -> Union

In the first phase, we learn to communicate with God through prayer and speaking to Him and listening for His voice. God communicates to us in many different ways which we will cover later. During this phase we become increasingly God-aware. We learn to sense and feel His presence; earlier, I read testimonies from a number of people who described how they experience His presence. Over time, a relationship with God develops which eventually leads to communion with Him, which can be defined as an intimate relationship with God. Finally, at the end of the journey, we enter into a union with God as described by St. John of the Cross.

Let me mention a characteristic which changes as we transition from the communication to the communion phase. In the communication phase, we tend to recognize God’s or the Holy Spriit’s hand at work in our life by looking back at events which have occurred. As we move into the communion phase, we tend to recognize those events as they occur. We become tuned into the Holy Spirit. As a friend of mine put it, we’re tuned in to the God channel. We can recognize some people in the Bible who were tuned into the Spirit in this way. Paul is one of them. For example, when he was on one of his mission trips working his way through what is now Turkey, known then as Asia, he at one point wanted to turn north to some new territory. He had spent so much time in Asia, knew their culture, and had had success in this region that it probably made sense to him to continue his work there. However, we are told in Acts that the Spirit was with Him on this mission and instructed him not to turn north but to sail across the sea to Macedonia and bring the good news to Greece. It’s possible the Spirit spoke to him in an audible voice or sent an angel with the message, but it’s more likely it was through Paul’s inner voice or an inner prompting. Paul recognized at once that the Spirit was giving him instructions and changed his route. He didn’t act on a hunch and later look back and realize that was the Holy Spirit was at work in changing his itinerary.

Let’s look deeper into the sanctification process. As I mentioned earlier, sanctification is not a simple, short term process. It is a radical, long term transformation. It is not a makeover of our old self to a better new self. It is more like a metamorphosis from a not so attractive caterpillar to a butterfly which is beautiful in God’s eyes, except that we are not referring to our physical self but to our inner self, our spiritual self. It is a journey of the spirit from its bodily home to its union with God.  God wants us to empty ourselves of ourselves that is controlled by our sinful human nature, and replace it with the likeness of Christ controlled by the Holy Spirit. This can take a lifetime. For me, who got a late start, it seems daunting.

Is there evidence in the Bible that this is a slow process? I think there is. Consider Moses. God spent years preparing him in the desert when he lived with his family in Midian to lead God’s people out of Egypt. Still, at the end of this period, when God called on him to confront the Pharaoh, he said he was incapable; he did not have the trust in God that He would provide the power he needed. Even during the 40 yrs. of the Exodus, he had more growth to make. We saw that he tried to bear the burden of his people by himself instead of calling on God for help until it reached a crisis state, the manna crisis we discussed earlier. Later, he defied God when he struck a rock in the desert with his staff to get water.  And Moses had the benefit of direct person to person, face to face communication with God during most of this time. Consider also the disciples. They spent 3 years 24/7 with Jesus. Daily face to face communication with God, Himself. Opportunities galore for asking questions and gaining understanding. Was their transformation complete after these 3 years? Were they Christ-like after all of this training? Hardly. They abandoned him during and after his crucifixion. It took the mighty power of the Holy Spirit swooping down on them at Pentecost, infusing them with the power they needed to launch and build Christ’s church. But the 3 years of discipleship with Jesus did prepare them and make them ready to receive the power of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. So, it isn’t unreasonable that the process is slow for us.

Why is it a slow process? If you like poetry, and have time to read and ponder a poem that books have been written on, you can find some answers in a famous poem called “Dark Night of the Soul” by the same St. John of the cross I spoke about earlier. His poem describes the journey of the spirit from its bodily home to its union with God. The journey occurs during the night, which represents the hardships and difficulties the spirit meets in detachment from the world and reaching the light of the union with God. But, it would take too long to cover this poem, so I’m going to start with a much shorter passage by John Wood Oman which captures the essence of why it is a long journey. Let me read the passage.

 To deliver the soul from the sin which is its ruin

And bestow on it the holiness which is its health and peace,

Is the end of all God’s dealings with His children;

 And precisely because He cannot merely impose,

but must enable us to attain it ourselves, if we are really to have

the liberty of His children, the way He must take is long and arduous.

In the first 3 lines, Oman defines the purpose of the journey God wants to take His children on in this life. As we have already discussed, it is to take our spirit out of a self-centered destructive world of sin and bring it to a God-centered state of holiness. In the last line he says the journey must be long and arduous, and in between lines tell us why. It is because of the way God does it. He doesn’t impose Himself on us. He doesn’t force us with orders. He reaches out and enables us to do it with Him at our side. This is why Jesus called the Spirit a Helper, and not a Sargent, or Centurion. It is a joint venture with the Holy Spirit as our Helper. It looks a lot like how we would like to raise our children from infants to mature, responsible, good adults able to make the right decisions in life. We would prefer not to do this by ordering them around and punishing them for wrong behavior. We would prefer to guide them, make them understand why they should do what we know is best for them, and learn to do what is right. Of course, it never works out perfectly that way, but God is much better at it than we are. God makes clear in Psalm 32:9 that He wants us to act on understanding gained from what He caringly teaches and shows us, which He contrasts to animals which He did not give the ability to understand. Here’s what the verses say:

“I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go;

I will counsel you and watch over you.

Do not be like a horse or a mule, without understanding, whose temper must be curbed with bit and bridle.

Or they will not come to you.”

God will reach out to us, but we must close the final gap to receive Him and His love, teachings and counsel. This is magnificently captured in the fresca of God and Adam that Michelangelo painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. As John Ortberg, in his book, “God is Closer Than You Think”, describes the painting and the message Michelangelo is trying to convey.

 

.

“If you look carefully at the painting, you notice that the figure of God is extended toward the man with great vigor. He twists his body to move it as close to the man as possible. His head is turned toward the man, and his gaze is fixed on him. God’s arm is stretched out, his index finger extended straight forward; every muscle is taut. God’s entire being is wrapped up in his desire to close the gap between himself and this man. He can’t wait. His hand comes within a hairbreadth of the man’s hand. God is as close as He can be. But having come that close, he allows just a little space, so that Adam can choose. He is only a hair-breath away. He waits for Adam to make his move.”

Now take a look at Adam in this fresca. Adam represents mankind. In fact, Adam means mankind in Hebrew. Although Adam’s arm is extended toward God, he is reclined in a lazy pose with a continence that seems to say he  isn’t sure whether he wants to make the connection. All he has to do is lift a finger. Maybe he is thinking God should close the gap. Maybe he doesn’t want to get involved with God because it would time away from other things he likes to do. Maybe he’s wondering about the cost of making a connection with God; God might ask him to water the plants every morning and he wants to sleep in till noon. Maybe he is thinking that he has such a comfortable and pleasure filled life with Eve in the Garden that he doesn’t need God. Maybe he thinks he himself doesn’t have the strength. Maybe to him the gap looks much bigger than it really is and he doesn’t think it possible to touch the Creator. There could be a lot of reasons and I think we all struggle with them daily.

One message the fresca certainly conveys is that God is not attempting to impose His will upon Adam. The story in Gen. on the Tree of Life episode gives us the same message. God did not yank the fruit from Adam’s hand when he was about to take a bite and order him to take a time out under the tree. He was given the freedom to make his own decision, and unfortunately for him and the rest us he and Eve made the wrong decision.

So it is with us and the Holy Spirit. Dwelling within us, He is only a hair-breath away; He is only a prayer away. But we have to make the move to close the gap, not just once, but daily. We have to do our part.

Let me tell you a little story about my paternal grandparents. Their names were Blixt and Kristina. They emigrated from Sweden in the 1880s and built a homestead in the wilderness in the NE corner of Washington State where they raised their family. After a long day’s work, they liked to sit on the front porch of their log house and discuss how the day went and the struggles that lay ahead of them. They were deeply religious, and family lore has it that Blixt would sometimes would turn to Kristina and say, “Ma, God will take care of us”. And Kristina would reply, “Yes Pa, but we have to do our part”. Both were right, but I think Grandma had a bit more wisdom than Grandpa on how it worked. Next, we will discuss what is our part, how we do it, and what hinders us in the process.

First, let’s take a look at what hinders us from doing our part in making the sanctification journey. I believe that one of the primary reasons is the cost. To make the complete transformation from our born again state to a Christ-like, holy state, the cost is nothing less than giving up our will to God’s will. We must surrender our will to God’s will. It is our resistance to doing this that hinders the pace of our transformation. It’s summed up very well in the title of one of Frank Sinatra’s most popular songs, “I did it my way”. Why was it such a popular song; because it expressed so many peoples’ attitude – that they want to live their life their way. God doesn’t want us to do it our way. He wants us to do it His way.  One place where our resistance is the strongest is in giving up our attachments to our human nature and things of this world. We are attached to this world and our ways of doing things with superglue, and these bonds don’t break, they dissolve slowly with time and then only if we ourselves really want them to dissolve. As I said earlier, the Holy Spirit doesn’t force, coerce, or twist our arms to live our life God’s way. But He will guide us in that direction. Listen to what God tells Ezekiel in 36:26 about what He will do for his people:

“I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.”

God doesn’t say the Spirit will cause us or order us to do His will. He says He will “move” us, in other words, motivate us. But we must ask Him. The Spirit is inconspicuous, subtle, and quiet within us. He helps when we allow Him to help. He works with us when we truly, in our heart, want Him to work with us. He watches us to see if we are serious.

Testimonies which were shared with me reflect this manner in which the Holy Spirit works with us. Let me give you a couple of examples:”

“He executed His work in a gentle and persuasive manner that left me feeling engaged in the process.”

“His dove-like personality does not allow Him to enforce His will.  Rather He takes the circumstances that are created by my choices and weaves them together to mold and shape me into the person that He wants me to be”

Another big hindrance to the process of sanctification is our comfort zones. We all have comfort zones which we want to stay within. We build walls around our comfort zones. God calls on us to leave our comfort zones and we often hesitate or refuse. If we want to leave, we generally don’t shatter a wall or push it down, we chip away at it and that is a slow process. Some of these walls are phantom walls, i.e. we create them because we think we can’t do something that we actually can. There is a good illustration of a phantom wall on a Youtube video, a phantom wall that a cat created. This guy had a cat which liked to sit at a glass door leading out to his patio. If the cat wanted to go out, it would meow loudly and the owner would open the door and let it out. We have a cat named Moya that does this. One day the glass in the door broke leaving only the frame. The Youtube shows the cat sitting at the door now with no glass in it meowing to get out. The owner walks thru the door frame to show the cat there’s no glass there. The cat doesn’t get it. Only when the owner opened the door frame would the cat go out. To the cat, there was still a door there – but it was in reality a phantom wall.

Most of us have phantom walls as well. I know I do. They hinder and even prevent us from doing what God calls us to do. Let me give you an example from a lady who responded to my survey on Holy Spirit experiences. Here is exactly what she said.

“I was praying for someone’s aunt who had cancer. Suddenly, a vision of a stream of letters started appearing in my mind along with the sounds of a typewriter typing out each letter. (the letters even made a clicking sound) The message that the letters spelled out was “When you take the church job, the first class that you will organize will be called Exercise Your Prayer Power and it will consist of vigorous exercise, a meditation and prayer.”  And then it clicked off. It was probably a short vision, but it seemed long. It left me with a feeling of amazement, and a lot of questions. First, what job was the message referring to? The only job opening was Coordinator of Christian Education. I knew that three highly qualified people were interested in that position. I knew the message was from God and I said to Him that this job wasn’t for me and I then put it out of my mind. Later, I got a call from the nominating committee telling me that they had interviewed the three candidates and would like me to come in and speak with them as well. I asked God to explain what is going on here. With no answer from Him, I went in to speak with the committee. They described the job, showing a list of responsibilities on a poster board, and asked if I could handle them in a part time position.  I said no, and that I was not sure that I even wanted the job.   Nevertheless, when the committee took a vote they selected me. I was shocked, so my next move was to go to the Pastor and tell him that I couldn’t take the position because I thought I lacked the background and skills. The Pastor said, with a big smile and a teasing demeanor, “Just shut up and take the job.!” So I went home and prayed and took the job. After about 2 weeks I realized that the position was a perfect fit and I thanked God for guiding me in spite of myself. The job was providing Christian Education classes for all ages, but loving people, listening to them and praying with them was the most I held the position for 12 yrs. and one of the classes that I taught was the exercise class which appeared in my vision.  That class exists today, many, many years later.”

There are a number of things to learn about the Holy Spirit, how He works with us, and how we should work with Him from this experience. First, we see that one way He speaks to us is through visions. It may be rare, but it does happen. We’ll talk about this later. Second, He calls on us to do things that are important to our growth, our transformation, and important to God’s Kingdom. That was the case here. Third, this lady can discern the Holy Spirit when He speaks to her, a sign that she was well along the path of transformation. Fourth, when she turned Him down, He didn’t come back with anger or a command to do what she was told. It was up to her free will to decide. Instead, He guided her to the right decision thru the Committee and Pastor much as we would guide our child to do the right thing. Fifth, we see that the reason she turned down the calling was because of her phantom wall; she didn’t think she had the background or the skills for the job. Sixth, she did the right thing in talking to God and praying to Him and came to realize her wall was a phantom. She closed the gap between her and God. Seventh, we see that God has patience with us as He waited an extended period of time for her to come around. And eighth, I would venture to say that this experience and the experience of the job over the following 12 years brought her a long ways along her transformation path, bringing her closer to God. It made her more Christ-like. I think the whole experience teaches that we should trust God when we know he has called on us, but also that He is patient and won’t give up on us.

Another reason the transformation is slow is that we don’t hunger as much for God as we hunger for the things of this world. Our spiritual appetite doesn’t match our physical appetites. We don’t feed the white dog, which we heard about earlier and represents our spiritual life, as much as the black dog, our sinful nature or appetite for things of this world. When a person is starved of food, the stomach shrinks and appetite disappears. That is what can happen to our spiritual life if we don’t feed it daily.

Next I will turn to a couple of other factors which influence the pace of the transformation process. One is how wholeheartedly we embrace the process. In turn, this depends on how well we understand the process and how aware we are about what’s going on. In the beginning of our journey, God may keep what is going on hidden from us; it might freak us out if we knew. He lets us in on things as we are ready for them. Some people don’t want to know; they say, just let God take care of it. With regard to being aware, often things that happen in our lives that seem accidental, coincidental, meaningless, or insignificant are not. They can be the work of the Holy Spirit. How tuned are we to recognizing that and to recognizing the voice of the Holy Spirit when He speaks to us in one way or another? To become tuned to the Spirit, we must heighten our awareness and attention to what is going on daily in our lives and gain experience in recognizing the work of the Spirit. I have to admit I am one who is still grappling with this process and how it works in practice. But I have found it has helped in gaining understanding to have a couple of good friends I can talk with about spiritual experiences and questions. How the Spirit works with us differs somewhat for each person as the He tailors His work to each person’s inner make-up, needs, and capacities. I think it would be good for Christians to dialogue with each other on this and as a result better understand our own spiritual lives and how the Holy Spirit works with us. In fact, I think this is what the Spirit wants us to do. I don’t think He wants us to live an isolated spiritual life. He wants us to make spiritual connections with fellow Christians and share with each other because this will enrichen our spiritual lives. This was a common practice with Jews during the time of Jesus. It was common to have a spiritual buddy, or more, to get together with on a regular basis to discuss spiritual and theological questions and experiences. These spiritual buddies were called haverim. How many of us meet at coffee shops regularly to discuss what the Holy Spirit is doing in our lives? The Spirit is right there with us at the coffee shop, but we generally keep Him hidden.

Let’s next discuss one of the most important parts we have in the sanctification process and one of the most important dynamics of our partnership with the Holy Spirit. I’m talking about being filled with the Holy Spirit. I’m sure most of you at one time or another have wondered what that means and how it works in practice. We see the phrase, “filled with the Holy Spirit”, throughout the Bible. E.g., we saw how the Apostles were filled with the Holy Spirit at Pentecost which empowered them to launch the church and spread the Gospel. There are a lot of questions associated with this phrase and there are numerous answers with different interpretations Here are some examples of questions: what does it mean to be filled with the Holy Spirit? Is it the same or different from the indwelling of the Holy Spirit? Does it happen just once and we stay full or does it come and go over our lifetimes? How do we get filled with the Holy Spirit? Do we do it or does the Holy Spirit do it? How do we experience it? Is it required or an option?

First of all, being filled with the Holy Spirit and indwelling of the Holy Spirit are not the same, although they are associated. Indwelling of the Holy Spirit happens only once at the time of regeneration and it is permanent. It is a gift from God to all believers and is an act of the Holy Spirit alone, i.e. we do nothing. Filling by the indwelling Spirit on the other hand occurs innumerable times over our lifetime and it is a co-operative act between us and the Spirit. One meaning I don’t think the term has is a volumetric meaning, e.g. filling a glass with a certain volume of water. The Holy Spirit is omnipresent, so He is already in every cell in our body. He already fills our body so there would be no need for Scripture to say we are filled with the Holy Spirit in this sense; it’s already a given that we are filled in this sense.

To get a better understanding of the filling with the Holy Spirit, let’s look at one of the most revealing verses by Paul, Ephesians 5:18:

“Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit”

In English, it doesn’t seem to be very revealing. However, in Greek, a lot more meaning emerges. I haven’t interpreted it in Greek as I don’t know Greek, but I have read a lot of commentaries on the Greek meaning of this verse. First of all, it is in the imperative so it is a command. It is something God is telling us that we should do. So we have a role. Second, it is in the passive. If we are on the passive end, i.e. being filled, then someone else is on the active end, i.e. doing the filling, who of course is the Holy Spirit. So, this is a co-operative act between us and the Spirit. So, we are allowing the Holy Spirit, or consenting to be filled, and the Spirit is filling us. In Greek, the sentence also refers to a continuous process, not one that is completed. So, God is commanding us to continuously be filled with the Spirit. Now we have to decide what “filling” means. There are a number of ways to look at this. Paul gives us a good clue in the first sentence of the verse.

The two sentences are analogous, but each leads to a different outcome. If we take in or drink wine, it influences or controls us in a bad way. If we take in or drink of the Holy Spirit, we are allowing the Spirit to influence or control us, but with a good outcome. So, filling here means to allow the Spirit to influence or control our lives. A good way to look at it is not how much of the Spirit we have, but how much the Spirit has of us.

How much filling of a person by the Spirit that occurs depends in part on the spiritual capacity or maturity of the person. For those who have just received Christ as Savior, who are infants in Christ, their spiritual capacities are often very small. They may allow the Holy Spirit to influence our lives as best they know how. Knowing how takes a great deal of experience. There will be areas of their lives that they are unaware of that need to be surrendered to the Spirit’s control. So their filling by the Spirit will be small at this stage. As they grow in understanding and knowledge of Christ and the Spirit, their spiritual capacities grow, and their filling will enlarge. At Pentecost, the Apostles no doubt had a huge spiritual capacity for filling by the Holy Spirit. We know from Scripture that following that filling, their lives were controlled by the Spirit.

I will tell you about my personal experience with growth in spiritual capacity. I mentioned a few Sundays ago that when I became a Christian I believed I was a good person without any sin going on in my life to worry about. I even went to a friend whose knowledge of Scripture I respect and asked him how the verse in Romans where Paul says no one is good, not one, could possibly be true. Part of the work of the Holy Spirit is to convict us of sin, to make us aware of our sins and call on us to repent. That is what happened to me. I discovered, I’m sure because of the work of the Holy Spirit, sins that I was previously unaware of. E.g., envy, pride, love of money, trusting myself more than God, doing things my way. Having dealt with these over time with the help of the Spirit, I now have a closer relationship with Him. Having gone through all of this, I now almost daily have an awareness, a sense of, the presence of the Holy Spirit. When I was an infant in Christ, I only occasionally felt the presence of the Holy Spirit. This, I think, was a growth in spiritual capacity for me, which as I mentioned earlier, gives one a greater filling, i.e. a greater influence or control of our lives by the Spirit.

So, what is the ultimate goal of filling with the Holy Spirit? It is nothing less than total control of our lives by the Spirit. When I first read that, I thought that doesn’t sound very appealing; it doesn’t sound like a loving God. Why would He want to enslave us? That’s not something that an all-powerful God should need. After pondering this for some time, I began to see it differently. God wants us to be holy, because He is holy. He wants us to be perfect because He is perfect. I can’t think of anything I’d like more than to be like God. But we can’t get there on our own, with our own control. We can only get there under God’s control. We need abundant Divine aid. As St. John of the Cross said, “However greatly the soul itself labors, it cannot actively purify itself so as to be in the least degree prepared for the Divine union of perfection of love.”  That God wants to purify our soul so that we can have that perfect union with Him is not enslavement, it is love for us. Now I don’t mind if He has total control of my life. Remember the verse from Ezekiel that I quoted earlier where God said He would put His Spirit in us to move, or motivate us. To my mind, this goal of God for us is in itself enough to motivate one to embrace the sanctification process wholeheartedly.

But, as I said earlier, it is not easy to know how to give God control of our lives. It is something we have to learn how to do and it’s not easy. Total control means He decides everything we do in our lives. But, we can’t just say a prayer one night at bedtime, tell God He can take total control of our lives, and the next morning when you wake up God tells you what to do with the hundreds of little decisions you have to make that day. If you ask Him with each decision you face, it’s highly unlikely you’ll get any answers and you won’t get much done that day if you wait for answers. So, what do you do, or better, how do you do it if you want God to have total control? To be truthful, I don’t know what is the right answer. I can tell you what I do, but I’m not sure it is the right thing to do. First, I don’t think God cares about controlling all the trivial decisions we make each day, such as what time to get up, what to eat for breakfast, what route to take to work. He gave us a brain to make those decisions on our own. But the more important decisions, whether they are spiritual or not, I think we should bring God in on our decision making and seek His will. We should listen for His will on these occasions. A prayer I use frequently for making decisions, big to small, is this: Lord, show me the way to go, and the way not to go, and give me the wisdom to discern the way that is Your will. I find that I hear Him some times in one way or another, but many times I don’t or am not sure. So, what I do is, in a prayer tell God what my decision is and that I will wait for a day or two to hear from Him before implementing the decision. I tell Him that if I don’t hear from Him, I’ll take His silence as a sign of His approval of my decision. This seems to work. But I still struggle sometimes with hearing or knowing what God wants me to do when it doesn’t involve a spiritual decision. For spiritual decisions, we can generally find an answer in Scripture and that is where we should look first.

Hearing God

We will now turn to a new topic, listening to and hearing God. This is a challenging topic, and it’s also a challenge to know how to hear God.  I’m going to be referring to both God and the Holy Spirit now because we rarely know for certain which person we are hearing from, but I believe in most cases it is the Holy Spirit. Many Christians think that God seldom, if ever, speaks to them, but Dallas Willard, a theologian and Prof. of Philosophy at UCLA and an often quoted author believes that God speaks to all Christians often, even daily.

Willard recently wrote a book entitled, Hearing God, which I highly recommend. In his book, he says that God speaks to us in many different forms. Let’s begin out discussion on hearing God by making a list of the different ways we know of that God speaks to and has spoken to His people.

God’s Word (Bible)

Burning bush

Creation - nature

Visions

Dreams

Angels

Inner voice

Voices of others

Prompting

Events

Media, e.g. books, articles, lectures

Circumstances

Empowerment

Music

Let’s look at some of these in more detail and as we move thru them I’ll share excerpts from testimonies which show the many ways people hear God. We’ll start with the Word of God. This is far and away the primary way God speaks to us. It is critical to the sanctification process that we have been covering. Sanctification is done by the power of the Holy Spirit operating through the knowledge and understanding that the Word gives us. It is the Word and the Spirit and us working together that causes sanctification to occur in our lives. When I say the Holy Spirit and us working together, let me add that the Spirit does the vast majority of work. Our part is to consent and allow the Spirit to work with us, and act on what He wants us to do. Remember the passage from Psalms cited earlier where God tells us that He wants us to act from understanding of the way He wants us to go. This understanding and knowledge comes largely from God’s Word. If we want to know what God wants us to do, we should always first search in the Bible for an answer. Not only that, we should study the Bible on a regular and frequent basis through personal reading and participation in small Bible study groups. If we want to be good at hearing God, we must first be at home with the Word of God. If we want to have a renewed mind like Christ’s, we must know and heed the Word of God.

Paul describes the function of the Word in another way in Eph. 5:25-27 where he is speaking of the church. Paul wrote that Christ

“gave himself up for her, in order to make her holy by cleansing her with the washing of water by the word, so as to present the church to himself in splendor, without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind – yes, so that she may be holy and without blemish.”

While he was speaking about the church, we are the church, so he was speaking about us. Paul was using the imagery of water, or in modern terminology we could use detergent, permeating fabric and carrying away the dirt embedded in it, or in case of the Word, it permeates our minds and hearts and purifies them.  Now, here again we see the sanctification goals of holiness and perfection. As the water, or detergent, cleanses the fabric to make it without spot, wrinkle, or blemish or anything of the kind, so the Word should purify us to perfection.

Let me turn now to another medium in which God speaks to us, His Creation, or nature. While God’s Word is known as special revelation, His Creation is known as general revelation. God reveals Himself through His Creation. We see this all around us, in the beauty and design of nature, a majestic mountain, a gorgeous sunset, a beautiful orchid. This is beautifully expressed in a few verses by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

“Earth’s crammed with Heaven,

and every common bush afire with God:

But only he who sees takes off his shoes.

The rest sit around it and pluck blackberries.”

It’s interesting to see the contrast in the first three verses and the last. Believers

can see God in a blackberry bush. All non-believers see are some berries to pluck.

Modern science allows us to look even deeper into God’s Creation, from the mighty cosmos to the tiny living cell allowing us to see even more wonders of His Creation. I wish I had more time to speak about the details, but then we’d get off topic.

Let me turn briefly to visions and dreams. We see many instances in the Bible where God spoke to people in visions and dreams. But does God still speak to people through visions and dreams today? I personally don’t know, but I found a comment by a panel member on the simulcast “Unpacking Islam” interesting. He is a Christian who has been involved in discipling Muslims for many years and he said from a survey he did that 60% of Muslim to Christianity conversions involved a vision or dream as a key event. Steve Cochrane, a member of our church, has also said that he noticed this is a common experience with Muslim converts in his missionary work. Visions and dreams are part of the Muslim culture. If this is the best way to reach some Muslims, why would the Holy Spirit not use it?

Now let me turn to God’s speaking to us through voices of others. I’m sure most of us have experienced this multiple times. I’m not referring to God using the mouths of others to speak in robot style; I’m referring to God using an individual person to communicate a message to us. In such a case, the message is both that of God and of the person speaking. According to Dallas Willard, this is a very common way in which God speaks to us. In his book, Hearing God, Williard wrote:

“I believe I can say with assurance that God’s speaking in union with the human voice and human language is the primary objective way in which God addresses us. That is, of all the ways in which a message comes from outside the mind or personality of the person addressed, it most commonly comes through a human being.”

We see this throughout the Bible. E.g., God confronted David through the prophet Nathan. He encouraged Esther through her Uncle Mordecai. He blessed Joseph and Mary through an old man named Simeon. He gave advice to Moses through his father-in-law, Jethro. He addressed the Pharaoh of Egypt through Aaron. With us in today’s world, it might be a Pastor who said something in a sermon that seemed to be directed specifically to you; it might be a friend who recommends a book that turns out to answer some questions you have been struggling with; it might be a mentor who speaks truth into your life. The person speaking likely is not even aware that God is speaking through them, and often the person listening doesn’t realize it happened until later when he/she looks back and ponders.

Next I will turn to events and circumstances. One of the most common ways the Spirit works in us, shapes our lives, and shapes us is through circumstances and events. While He isn’t directly speaking to us in these instances, when we recognize what’s going on, a message comes through on where and how the Spirit is leading us. Most of the time He works silently and invisibly as he walks alongside us. If we could actually see Him, we would probably see Him busy as a bee doing hundreds of things for us that we normally miss. Generally, we see how He has been at work in our lives by looking back and recognizing points in our path where the Spirit has been at work. This is one of the most common themes I noticed in the many testimonies that were shared. In John 3:8, Jesus compares the Holy Spirit with the wind. This is an excellent metaphor. The wind is moving air. Air is in every cell of our body and gives us physical life. The Spirit is in every cell of our body and gives us spiritual life. Both air and the Spirit are invisible. But when air moves and makes wind, we see the effects of the wind. When the Spirit moves in circumstances and events, we see the effects of His work in our lives.

We will next share a number of testimonies and excerpts from testimonies on how the Spirit works and speaks in our lives. A couple of things that stand out in these testimonies is that they have something in common, yet they each have differences. What they have in common is that you can clearly see the Holy Spirit at work in each of them. The differences arise from how the Spirit is at work with each individual. People are like snowflakes; no two are identical. That is how God intentionally created us, each of us is a unique creation. As C.S. Lewis wrote, “God makes each soul unique. If He had no use for all these differences, I do not see why He should have created more souls than one. If all experienced God in the same way and returned Him an identical worship, the song of the Church triumphant would have no symphony, it would be like an orchestra in which all the instruments played the same note.“ So the Spirit works with each of us in a unique way, tailoring His work to our needs, capacities, inner makeup, personality traits, learning styles, spiritual pathways, even how we are shaped by culture and environment. E.g. we saw how the Spirit uses visions and dreams to speak to Muslims because that is part of their culture. God never grows two people the same way. We should ever keep that in mind as we make our spiritual journeys. So, we should not envy how the Spirit works in some other peoples’ lives, e.g. wonder why we don’t have the experience of visions. Instead, we should rejoice in how He works in our lives.

I’d like to start out with a couple of testimonies where the Holy Spirit worked and spoke through circumstances and events. The first testimony I’d like to share is my own, which involved a string of circumstances and events over a number of years. When they started, I was an agnostic and at the end I became a Christian. I decided to share this because the journey shows how the Holy Spirit chooses a spiritual pathway that uniquely fits the individual.

The first event was meeting a person named Graham Marshall at the University of Washington. The circumstances were that he was there as a visiting scientist from South Africa and I was there on a mission for Shell, the company I worked for as a scientist. We met because we both worked in the same area of analytical technology. The second event occurred when we met again a couple of years later in Johannesberg, South Africa. The circumstances were that I was there to speak at an international conference and he was one of the organizers of the conference. During the 10 days I stayed there we got to know each other well and to learn about each other’s work in the same field of analytical chemistry. The third event was that I retired from Shell a number of years later after 30 yrs. of service. The fourth event was that after three months of retirement I decided retirement wasn’t for me so I founded a sole-proprietary technology company called Global FIA. It was essentially a one man company. The company turned out to be a success and business grew to a point the circumstances told me that I needed help. My first thought turned to Graham, so I offered him a partnership in the company. To my surprise he accepted it. This was event number 5 which was a huge event for Graham since he had to leave a secure, well paid, Director level position in a large company to join a one- man start-up company and move his entire family and household from South Africa to WA state. Fortunately, it has worked out well; our company has grown to 8 employees and it is thriving. Now it turned out that both Graham and I liked to discuss both science and spiritual topics. He was and is a Christian who knows and understands his faith well and I, as I mentioned, was an agnostic. So the circumstances that played out were many deep discussions on science, God, and Christian beliefs. To make a long story short, these discussions put me on a path which eventually led me first to a belief in God and second to accept Jesus as my savior and Lord and to commit to follow Jesus. I like to say the Holy Spirit sent Graham to me to change the direction of my life toward God, and Graham likes to say that the Holy Spirit sent me to him to get him and his family out of South Africa to America where they have a much better and safe life. They are now all American citizens and they feel blessed to be able to live in America. So, actually there were two journeys that God was leading, Graham’s and mine. What did I learn from this experience? One, that when the Holy Spirit guides our lives, He can take us where we would never have dreamed of going. He can be full of surprises. Another is that I am amazed that God has such love and patience and puts such value on a mere person that He will go to such lengths to bring that person into a relationship with Him. I too, have been blessed.

In the second example, the events and circumstances dramatically shaped the person’s life. The events occurred during the person’s boyhood. Here is his testimony.

“From the time I began to speak, I had a stuttering, stammering tongue that was to dramatically affect my whole life. I could not say two words without stuttering and stammering! My father, who was very sympathetic, did everything in his power to assist me. This included severely reprimanding anyone who teased me, - putting a marble under my tongue,- getting me to speak slowly and anything else he could think of, but all to no avail. Of course, children being what they are, teased me mercilessly and this caused me to become very aggressive. I would fight anyone who teased me, no matter who they were or what their size was. This meant that I sometimes came off second best in these encounters. Our family usually went to Durban, which was a popular holiday resort for our Annual Vacation and when I was 12 years old, we as a family made our way there. Although at home, we attended the Germiston Baptist Church, because the Pastor of the Durban Full Gospel Church was a friend of my parents, we went to his church when we were in Durban. In that church, in bold letters on the front wall, facing the congregation, were the words,

“Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. -                           .                                                               Matthew 11:28

I could not take my eyes off that text. I must confess, I did not remember a word of the sermon, but those words were engraved on my heart and mind! I knew that my stuttering and stammering was robbing me of peace and rest of spirit. As was the practice in that Full Gospel Church, after a Salvation message had been preached, an appeal was made for anyone who wanted to give their life to the Lord Jesus Christ, to come forward for counseling. I went forward and the Pastor’s wife led me to the Savior. From then, my stuttering gradually left me.”

This is a beautiful story. When this person grew up, he became a Pastor and impacted the lives of countless people in his several decades of serving the Lord.

Let me add a few excerpts from my survey of other examples where people have looked back and recognized the Spirit at work in their lives.

”On occasions I have just sensed God’s hand in leading and guiding – the topic for a lesson, a word of encouragement, an idea, a solution to a problem, a decision or course of action.  By this I mean I have taken one course of action for no other reason than that seemed like a good thing to do and afterwards I have looked back and seen how God has weaved it together with the actions of others to make something more beautiful than I could have orchestrated if it was left solely up to me.  When this happens I feel a deep sense of engagement with the Holy Spirit which brings joy and satisfaction and even a thrill.”

I’m sure most of us can relate to this description of the Spirit at work. We look back and see how a number of events, circumstances, and actions of others have amazingly come together to make something good happen in our lives or lead us through some difficult times. It’s so improbable that we know that the Spirit had to be behind it. But it can also be a singular event. Let me give you an example, an event that happened to me last August when I was preparing for this class. I had read several books on the Holy Spirit, but still felt that I didn’t know enough. One downside of books is that you can’t ask the author any questions. As I was fussing over this for the next few days, an envelope arrived in the mail from a school called the Covenant Bible Seminary located in a neighboring town. I had never heard of this school before. I opened the envelope and inside was a flyer on several public classes they were offering beginning in Sept. One was a 60 hr. class on the Person and Work of the Holy Spirit. I thought to myself, what perfect timing. This sort of coincidence has happened so many times in my journey that I was convinced that the Spirit arranged to have that flyer put in the mail. I signed up and attended the class.

Let me read a couple of other excerpts of testimony on looking back.

“As it is with most times that God moves through the Holy Spirit, I didn’t really recognize it was Him until sometime later.”

“When I look back I see with awe how I was being led through some very difficult times.”

These are but a few examples of the looking back experience. It is a very common experience.

Now let’s turn to how God speaks to us thru our inner voice. I left this till last but not because it is least. It is, in my opinion, the most important way we communicate with God on a daily basis. It is also one of the most difficult ones to put into practice, or perhaps better described as tuning in to or developing a consciousness for. As I mentioned earlier, Dallas Willard in his book, Hearing God, believes that God speaks to us every day through or with our inner voice, but many do not know how to hear Him, how to discern His voice. So, I’d like to spend some time on the topic of how to hear God’s voice.  Although I speak to God daily and now and then hear Him through my inner voice, I by no means speak as an expert on this. Most of what I write here I learned from Willard’s book, which I highly recommend. I will also draw on the testimonies I gathered.

First of all, let me say a few words in general about the manner in which the Holy Spirit speaks to us. If we take the Bible as a guide, the Spirit is the quietest person in the Holy Trinity. Throughout the Old Testament, we see God the Father speaking to His people, often in long discourses and sometimes with a strong voice. In Jeremiah e.g., we frequently hear Him tell Jeremiah, “Say to them: ‘this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says:” or some variation of that, followed by a long message. In Ezekiel, God often says, “Son of man, this is what the Sovereign Lord says,” again followed by a long message. And, of course, in Job, the Father gives long lectures to Job.  In the New Testament, we see God the Son speaking throughout the Gospels. But the Holy Spirit doesn’t have much to say in the Bible. Throughout the entire Bible I could only find a few passages where the Spirit spoke directly to people, one in Ezekiel, one in Revelation, and a few in Acts.

Now with regard to how the Holy Spirit speaks directly to us individually, it is generally through our inner voice, and Willard as well as every other author of a book on the Holy Spirit says, he speaks in a still, small voice. This characterization of His voice also comes out of Scripture, 1 Kings 19:11-12, where God is speaking to Elijah.

“And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake into pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake: and after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.”

This is the KJV. The NIV translates His voice as a gentle whisper. In the NIV commentary on this passage, they write, “Elijah knew that the sound of the gentle whisper was God’s voice. He realized that God doesn’t reveal himself only in powerful, miraculous ways. To look for God only in something big may be to miss him because He is often found gently whispering in the quietness of the humbled heart”. So, Elijah is one person in the Bible that we know was tuned in to the voice of God.

Another Biblical person who was highly experienced in hearing God was Job. In Chap. 26:14, Job wrote about God:

“And these are but the outer fringe of His works;

How faint the whisper we hear of Him!

Who then can understand the thunder of His power?”

Does it make sense that the Spirit prefers to speak to us in a whisper? I think so. If He spoke to us in a loud voice in our heads, we would probably be rattled or terrified. We might think we are schizophrenic. We might think He is shouting at us or giving us orders. Instead, He prefers to be unobtrusive and subtle. He wants us to learn to pay attention and tune into Him if we want to hear Him.

Now, let’s take a look at the 1 Kings passage from another perspective to see if we can get more insight into the nature of the still, small voice. First, let me step back to a verse we looked at earlier in Romans 8:16. We saw that this verse tells us that the Spirit sometimes communicates to us directly Spirit to spirit. Not through our senses and intellect, but directly from the Holy Spirit to our spirit and it then becomes expressed through our inner voice. I called it a “knowing”, something we know without need for proof. E.g., we know that God exists without need of proof. One person who wrote on took it further and said, “you know that you know it”, and another took it even further to “you know that you know that you know it”. That may sound redundant, put ponder it and you’ll see it makes sense.

With this in view, let’s now look at the 1 Kings passage. We’ll first look at all the verses up until the still small voice is mentioned. Elijah writes about a great and strong wind which he would have seen, heard, and felt. He would have seen and heard the wind breaking loose the rocks and the rocks tumbling down the mountain. Then an earthquake, which he would have felt and heard. And then a fire which he would have seen and probably felt its heat and smelled its smoke. What does all this have in common? They all are information that Isaiah is taking in through his senses. God is right there before Isaiah, and He is saying in effect, in this instance, I am not communicating to you through your senses. I am communicating to you through your still, small voice. What is the still small voice? I think it is the direct Spirit to spirit communication expressed thru Isaiah’s inner voice. Certainly, our inner voice could be described as a small voice, a whisper in our minds, and coming from the Spirit it would be a gentle whisper. Isaiah was tuned into this voice and discerned it as God’s voice without any question.

Let me now read you some testimonies shared with me from which you’ll see other people experiencing the still, small voice of God.

“I have found that still small voice to be a regular part of my life. Still now, after many years of walking with Jesus in the power of the Spirit, it is a daily discerning quest to know when it is His voice and not my own.”

“It amazes me the insights I receive from God during those quiet times of just listening for that still small voice within.”

 

“I find that Still small voice speaking to me concerning the choices I make and the people I meet with.  This relationship grows daily. In my own life, I have had that still small voice leading me and speaking to me.  So much so that I make decisions based on that  voice”

“I frequently find a natural sinful response to a situation welling up and I feel the Holy Spirit prompting me to do the right thing and sometimes I obey and sometimes I silence that still small voice and my sinful nature wins.  It usually is quite clear who is talking. .  When it is the Holy Spirit the outcome is honoring to God when it is me the outcome brings shame to God and my witness”

“I cried out to God, ‘Where were you?!’   I said, ‘my friends came out of the wood work, but where were you?’ This still small voice said, ‘I came to you through your friends.’  I learned a lot through that.  I learned to look for God in new and different ways.  And I am still looking for new ways today”

Now let me return to Dallas Willard’s book on how to hear God speak in His still small voice within our minds. No one can give a formula for listening to God through our inner voice. Each person has a unique personality and thought patterns and must learn how to do this by experience. It is much as Jesus said in John10:2-4, 14, 27-

“The shepherd of the sheep…calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. He goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me. My sheep hear my voice. I know them and they follow me.”

 While no one can give a formula, Willard gives some guidelines and tips which may help one to learn to recognize God’s still small voice. If this is something you want to learn more about, I highly recommend that you read his book. There is too much material to cover here. The book helped me a great deal. Before going on, let me mention Williard’s bottom line. He says that we should have a regular and intelligible plan for living in a conversational relationship with God. We should pray and talk with God daily and listen for His voice continuously. As G. Cambell Morgan has written, “wherever there are hearts waiting for the Voice of God, that Voice is to be heard.”

Before I leave this topic, let’s hear from the testimonies I received on how some fellow Christians discern the voice of God:

“This is a vitally important question. We have to test all of our ‘musings’ against Scripture. God is not the author of confusion   The Holy Spirit will never “guide” us in a direction that contravenes His own Word.”

“It's not that hard, frankly.  I know that it is the Holy Spirit because of the affects it has on my heart. These are so profound and typically contrary to my own natural instinct or reasoning that I cannot deny the presence of the Holy Spirit in them.  I would also add that these experiences tend to be around the truth of the scripture and never contrary to the revealed word of God.   My own voice usually tries to justify my thoughts and behaviors.”

 

“Distinguishing the Holy Spirit or God's voice as I would say, vs. my own voice is always a challenge for me. I have never heard Him audibly, but I have sensed Him saying something.” 

“How do I know whether it is the Holy Spirit’s voice or just my inner voice?  In the past this was only known in hindsight.  I now think I can recognize His voice as He speaks and it is usually counter to my inner voice, calling me to do God’s and to trust Him alone.”

“When He does speak to me through my inner voice, I know it was Him speaking when later what I was told is confirmed by reality.”

“How do I know an inner voice is the HS speaking and not my own? I test it. E.g., I look to see if it jives with Scripture. And, if necessary, I test it by engaging the body of Christ, other Christians. In most cases, it requires a leap of faith.”

“In my experience the difference between the Holy Spirit and my inner voice is that the Holy Spirit is relentless.  I cannot get away from what he is saying to me.” 

“Sometimes I just don’t listen.  Sometimes I don’t seem to know how to listen, but God has always been faithful and I keep learning how to hear him.” 

“Most of the time the Holy Spirit seems to speak in quiet ways.  He nudges gently, uses friends or strangers, or just directs my thoughts when I am mentally at rest.”

“I desire for my “inner voice” and the “voice of the Holy Spirit” to become one and the same voice.  This requires submission of my inner voice to His will.”

“I can distinguish between the HS speaking and my own inner voice because the Holy Spirit’s voice (while having the same ‘sound’ as my inner voice) is honest and needs no justification for what it is saying.  It is true and good by nature.  Furthermore, when I consider the things being said to me by the Holy Spirit, I feel considerably more peace about my situation than when I consider my own inner voice.”

There is another side to the coin of God’s still small voice. The other side is the noisy chatter that seems to involuntarily and constantly fill our conscious mind. It is difficult to hear God’s still small voice through all of this background noise. We need to learn to quiet our mind to hear God. Even Scripture tells us that. In Psalm 46:10, God says:

“Be still and know that I am God.”

For conversations with God, it is best to find the situation and time in your day which works best for you to pray and talk to the Lord and still your mind and listen for His voice. I have a friend who does this first thing after he gets up in the morning. For me, it’s when I jog. I jog for a hour a couple of times a week. I think the regular rhythm of my feet hitting the ground helps still my mind.

I’d next like to tell you about an experience I’d had, a personal story about a struggle I had trying to hear God and understand what He wanted me to do in a certain situation. In 2008 after hearing about Doug and Linda Hay’s mission experiences teaching science and other classes at the Oasis college in Pingliang, China, I pondered the idea of participating in the following year by giving some science lectures on how the universe came into existence and how it functions. I had already taught classes at HCC on the topic so I was already familiar with the material. I posed the idea to Doug and Linda and they concurred. As the months went by, for some reason I began to have doubts about making the trip. First, I questioned my motives. I wanted to make the trip in service of the Lord, since our modern scientific understanding of how the universe came into being and was fine-tuned from the first moment to support life clearly points to a Creator. This could catch the attention of non-believers and strengthen the faith of the few believers. But then I began to wonder if my motive was simply because I have a passion to teach and I was looking for a new audience. That motivation would not be good enough to make such a long and difficult trip. Then I wondered how much the students would understand when English was their second language that they were still learning. And finally the difficulties of the trip began to weigh on me. It was a long trip; a flight to Korea, a second flight to Xian, China, and then a 5 hr. car ride to Pingliang, which was located deep into northern China. I would be travelling in a strange country where a language I didn’t know was spoken. For a person my age, would I be in good enough shape when I arrived to give any lectures. I was also worried about getting diarrhea from the food and water. I could picture myself trying to lecture to a class with a case of diarrhea and having to run to the john every few minutes. I struggled with these doubts and prayed to God for guidance. Later things started coming together which made my doubts evaporate.  First, my son, Collin, who had taught economics in a university in China for 2 years and spoke Chinese, told me he would like to make the trip with me and give a couple of lectures on the global economy. With him at my side, the trip in China would be much easier and we could spend time together as well which we don’t have much opportunity to do since he lived in Chicago. Second, I visited an organization called Passport Health in Tacoma which specializes in medical advice for overseas travel and got briefed on preparation for travel in the part of China I was going to. The main preparation was to take a supply of the antibiotic Cipro as well as some Imodium and electrolytes, all for diarrhea. Third, by chance, I came across someone on the internet who was an engineer living in Denmark who was a Christian and had already made a couple of trips to China for exactly the same type of mission I was planning. He had given lectures at Chinese universities on the scientific understanding of the creation of the universe. He not only had a lot of useful advice to give me, but also a set of slides with titles and text both in English and Chinese. What blew my mind was that his set of slides had almost the same material as the set of slides I had prepared. This set of slides turned out to be the most effective teaching tool I had for the class. I couldn’t help but think the Holy Spirit had put this guy in my path.

But, the struggle wasn’t over. Doug and Linda and I had agreed on a date in the spring of 2010 for our visit which would be ideal timing for their schedule. It would work also for Collin. However, sometime later Collin had to change the date due to a new project schedule he had to commit to at his work. This was not the best time for Doug and Linda for us to arrive, but they said they could accommodate the timing. Then, a few days before our scheduled departure, a medical problem came up which got resolved but my Dr. said if it came up again while I was traveling I would need expert medical attention and facilities, something Doug had told me earlier could not be depended on in Pingliang, especially with the language difficulties. I wondered what was going on here at the last minute. Was God telling me not to go? I had two inner voices in my mind. One said to play it safe and cancel the trip; the other said go. There was a difference in the nature of the two voices. The negative one kept arguing and giving me all the reasons that I should cancel. The other simply said, “Go”. It had a quality of authority. So I followed it and trusted that God would take care of me.

It turned out that I had followed the right voice. The entire trip went smoothly and was actually a joy. I experienced very little jet lag, was full of energy the entire time, and didn’t get even a trace of diarrhea or any other medical problems. The Chinese were very friendly and surprisingly pro-American. The students considered me an elder, so I got special attention and care. The lectures went well, especially Collin’s. He did far better than I did. I never knew he had such outstanding teaching talent. Chinese students are very shy and seldom ask questions or even answer one from the teacher in class. But Collin had developed techniques and patience to draw them out of their shyness and they slowly but surely became responsive to questions and discussion. He knew their culture and how to communicate with them.  They clearly warmed up to him. He was a total hit with the students.

Then Doug told me something that had been a total surprise to him and Linda. The timing of our visit had been so perfect that he called it a “little miracle”. Just before we arrived, the Director of Oasis had fallen seriously ill. So Doug and Linda had to suddenly take on some of her responsibilities and duties. This took them away from their teaching classes. But with Collin and I there at just the right time, we filled in for them and school went on smoothly. Remember we had to change the timing of our visit due to a change in Collin’s work schedule. Was this a coincidence? I don’t think so.

Another experience happened that I hadn’t expected. On a Saturday, a group of the students took us on a tour to a local tourist park called Kong Tong Mountain. The Chinese were very proud of this park because three different Asian religions had neighboring temples on it and the three temples had long existed in harmony. On this mountain was a path called the stairway to heaven which passed by the temples on the way to the summit. It was a long, steep path with 1000 concrete steps that ascended into the mist. I hadn’t had much exercise during the visit so I said I’d like to go on a hike up the mountain. This was where being an elder didn’t work well. The students advised me that it was a strenuous climb but there was a rest area a short distance up where I could catch my breath and then come back down. I said no, I was going to the top. I wanted to see what Chinese heaven looked like. They must have respected that as they didn’t press me to change my mind, but also must have believed that I would need assistance because five of them offered to accompany me. So, up we went and eventually reached a rest area a few feet from the top. Heaven was little more than a shrine on the summit. The students were right, it was a strenuous climb, but I made it. At this point, one of the students asked, since the hard part was over and the rest of the walk was downhill, could they depart and explore some of the park on their own. I knew that the most difficult part for me was ahead because at my age my balance is not as good as it used to be, and going down steep, narrow, wet concrete steps with stretches without railings would be dicey to say the best. Nevertheless I said OK. To my surprise, one of the students stayed with me. He must have sensed my anxiety as he said he would stay with me on the way back and he knew of another longer and less traveled route that was not so steep. I felt relief. We had a nice visit on the way back with some surprises. First, I learned he is a Muslim. Pingliang is about 30% Muslim. But most surprising was that he had been reading the Bible and he wanted to discuss a comparison of the Bible with the Koran. So we had a nice discussion of this topic on the way down the mountain from heaven. When we got back to the van, I felt that I had made a good friend. Over a year later, I got an email from him and he filled me in on what had happened in his life since our walk together. He had graduated and landed a good job in a big city in eastern China. He mentioned he remembered what he called our religious conversation on Kong Tong Mountain. He said he would like to keep in touch so we have exchanged emails.

I have thanked God many times for this journey. I learned a lot about God from it. I got experience not only in discerning His voice when He speaks to me but in recognizing where He had spoken to me in the past by looking back at what events followed and how they unfolded. And I learned that what you think He is up or the reasons He wants you to do something may well not be what He really is up to or wants. What a joy I get when I reflect on the experience. It brought me closer to God.

Another manifestation of the Holy Spirit using our inner voice is what some call His dropping thoughts into our minds, or prompting us to do something or take a course of action. Let me give a couple of examples from my survey:

 “I often pray that the Holy Spirit will keep eternity in my sights and He answers this prayer by dropping thoughts into my mind at opportune times.”

“When I am called on to make a decision, or offer advice, or choose a course of action, I will shoot a telegram prayer to God (the Holy Spirit) to guide and provide input.  Sometimes, a new idea or thought will “pop into my mind”.  Often this idea has no connection with what I was thinking and has to have come from “elsewhere”.    

 

“I generally believe the HS speaks to me by influencing my thoughts.   - there were lots of times when I would re-read what I had typed in and wonder where it came from.”  

We have been discussing the sanctification process at length, so let me now make some concluding comments. One question that came to my mind is whether anyone ever completes the process and reaches a Christ-like state in a lifetime. No one can say for certain, but my sense from what I have read is that it is highly unlikely that anyone does. Billy Graham in his book, “The Holy Spirit”, commented that he wasn’t sure that he had. In her later years, Mother Teresa was not satisfied with her spiritual state. She said to a spiritual advisor, “I look and do not see,—Listen and do not hear—the tongue moves [in prayer] but does not speak ... I want you to pray for me—that I let Him (God) have [a] free hand."

One might ask then why make the journey? If we are saved by accepting Jesus and will go to heaven when we die, why struggle with the sanctification process? What are the benefits? I think the answer is that wherever we are in the sanctification process, we are living a better life than when we started – a life closer to what God designed us for and intended for us. Billy Graham said in his book that even if there were no heaven he would still prefer to live the life of a Christian. Another person who wrote about it was Brother Lawrence, an often quoted Carmelite monk who lived in the 17th century and is most commonly remembered for the closeness of his relationship with God. Here is a quote is from his book, “The Practice of the Presence of God”.

“There is not in the world a kind of life more sweet and delightful than that of a continual conversation with God. Those only can comprehend it who practice and experience it.”

N.T. Wright has a novel view, or perhaps insight, on this question. Paul tells us in Romans 8 and other places in his epistles that during our transformation we are becoming a new creation, i.e., a part of God’s future world, even as we continue to live within the present old creation, in what Paul calls ‘the present evil age’. Thus, we are at a place where heaven and earth meet. We are getting a foretaste of what the new world will be like. We are part of the new creation in advance. That is an exciting thought. Maybe this is what Paul is trying to tell us in his letters.

Finally, let me quote Pastor Michael when I asked him this question.

“The more we become like Jesus, the more we experience the fruit of the Holy Spirit.  Life becomes better, richer, more fulfilling.  We know God.  Those are all good things and are worth pursuing and experiencing - think of how many people desperately seek peace..

With those thoughts, I will conclude this manuscript.