The Holy Spirit is Love. The Holy Spirit is Life. The Holy Spirit… is God. “The Spirit of God made me and the breath of the Almighty has given me life.” ( Job 33:4) God is Spirit. The third person of the Trinity, God Himself, the Spirit of Christ. The Holy Spirit is our breath, our Life, the reason for our existence. He is Love. He is active. Well, what does He do? He changes us. He transforms us. He teaches us. He brings us into a deeper relationship with God. Being God He can do this. He is Himself God, and God is Love. When we encounter the Holy Spirit in our lives, we encounter God’s Love. Put another way, when we encounter God’s Love we encounter God’s Spirit. Experiencing this, by default, changes us.
Think about how afraid the apostles were after Jesus died. They stayed in the upper room hiding, afraid they would be killed too because they were followers of Christ. The Holy Spirit comes and everything changes. Now they are fearless, bold, unafraid. They now not only are brave enough to speak to the world about Christ, they also know what to say. The Holy Spirit has given them the words, the passion, the ability and the means to spread the good news of Jesus’ life and death and resurrection. Literally, just a few minutes earlier these same men were afraid of their own shadow. Talk about power. This same power, this same Spirit is still here today. He’s not a different Holy Spirit. He’s the same one that the apostle’s received at Pentecost. This same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead lives within us. He is no less powerful in us. Do you really believe that? Or do you perhaps think Jesus had a different Spirit than we do? He didn’t. There is only One Holy Spirit. There is only One God and He’s here to help us overcome our fears too and give us a new passion for living His Life.
This Spirit that gave Jesus life is the same Spirit that gives us life. But too often, we don’t ask for this life. We ignore Him. We wonder why it feels like God doesn’t help us but we don’t ask Him too. God acts when we use our free will to invite Him into our lives but we don’t do it. Why not? After all as it says in Galatians 5:22-23, “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”Aren’t we all looking for these things? This is not only what the Holy Spirit desires to give us, this is what He Himself is like. God gives us Himself, so that means He is loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, generous, faithful, gentle, and has control. He sounds great but we seem to avoid Him at all costs. We just don’t want God in our lives when He’s exactly what our lives were created for.
I once heard the Holy Spirit described in comparison to chocolate milk (bear with me a minute). When making a glass of chocolate milk – the chocolate is on the bottom – it’s there, truly and fully and completely, but it’s not being utilized to its full potential until it is stirred up. Once it is shaken up, everything changes. He’s there, truly and fully and completely, but we don’t utilize His gifts as we ought to. Sometimes we even forget that we have received Him. When we pray to God to unleash His Love within us, everything changes.
Yes the Holy Spirit may shake things up in your life but it’s all good. When we come to know God in this personal way we realize that it’s always good. The Holy Spirit is to be experienced. Just like the glass of chocolate milk, we don’t make it to just stare at it. We are called to drink it, to enjoy it, to be nourished by it. The Spirit of God is not chocolate milk. The Spirit of God is Life itself – true Life, everlasting Life! In the Holy Spirit we “live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28), and we are called to live His Life to the full, not the way the world calls us to, but the way the Spirit does, guiding us to a Life of inner peace. We go through the routine of life, figuring we are living as Christians when really – there is so much more!
So let’s not leave the Spirit sitting around at the bottom of our lives. Let’s make Him a priority, let’s stir Him up, even put Him first in our lives. Let’s ask God for this grace. Let’s give everything to the One who gave us everything – and still does today. God can breathe new life into us and give us a new enthusiasm. A fearless and powerful life of Love awaits us. Let’s shake it up and let God release His Spirit into our lives in a New Way, Today.
Submitted by Darlene Quiring of Mt. lake Minn
