All About the Holy Spirit

by Apr 2, 2014

If you’ve ever been to the Pali Lookout, you’ve had a breathtaking experience of God’s majesty. But before you can get out to the edge to enjoy the spectacular beauty of God’s creation, you’ll experience the unstoppable force of his power: the raging wind that constantly rushes up the cliff, blowing hard enough to knock you off your feet. On certain days it can reach hurricane force. When that happens, I’ve heard that a few daredevils carefully climb up on top of the railing, then slowly lean out over the edge, staring straight down the cliff. The only thing holding them up — the only thing saving them from tumbling a thousand feet down — is the wind.

I’ve never seen a better picture of our life with the Wind of God, the Holy Spirit. God expects us to lean forward in aggressive dependence on him until we get to the point where if he doesn’t support us through the power of his Spirit, we’ll fall down a cliff.

Why do I believe that? Because just before Jesus promised the Holy Spirit, he told us we need to work more, pray more, love more, and obey more (John 14:12-16). He said he’s looking for people who are weary and heavy-laden (Matt 11:28). Which means you can’t really lean on him until you’ve leaned way into life and put way too much on your plate (or until you’ve been divinely put in that position by God), so you come to the realization that you have no way of dealing with it all by yourself.

When we get to that point, we have no other choice but to do what Jesus commanded us to do: ask, seek, and knock (Luke 11:9). He wasn’t envisioning a polite and civil request. He meant asking like a man stranded in the desert desperately asks for water when he finally stumbles into town. Seeking like a one-year-old kid frantically seeks his missing security blanket. Knocking like the girl who gets stuck outside the cabin in every horror movie ever made, furiously pounding on the locked front door while the serial killer’s footsteps get louder and louder behind her. When we ask like that, God will give us exactly what we need: “How much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke 11:13).

This isn’t a manipulative way to try and get God to do our will. It’s the back-and-forth process of conforming our will to his, the way Paul the apostle did. Paul’s habit was to throw everything against the wall, to see what the Holy Spirit made stick. We know that because there were a few times the Spirit made things fall, like when Paul and his teammates “attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them” (Acts 16:7). Paul pushed hard until the Spirit either supported him or pushed back. He refused to do anything or go any place where the Spirit wasn’t undergirding him. And when we live in that kind of desperate dependence every day, we’ll experience more of the Spirit’s power every day.

When we don’t, we won’t. It’s that simple.

And there’s one person in history who demonstrated that more than anyone else: Jesus Christ. Many people are surprised to learn that Christ willingly put himself into a position of dependence on the Holy Spirit. Peter was clear about this when he said, “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him” (Acts 10:38). Based on this verse and others, Bruce Ware says in The Man Christ Jesus:

The only way to make sense, then, of the fact that Jesus came in the power of the Spirit is to understand that he lived his life fundamentally as a man, and as such, he relied on the Spirit to provide the power, grace, knowledge, wisdom, direction, and enablement he needed, moment by moment and day by day.

Maybe you’re saying, “Hold on a minute. I know Jesus lived fully as a man, but how could he be desperately dependent on the Spirit? Wasn’t he God?” Yes, but he still felt the need to spend an entire night in prayer before he chose the twelve disciples. Doesn’t that sound desperate? And what about the night before he was crucified, when he sweat drops of blood as he prayed? Observing Jesus in times like these, Paul Miller went so far as to say “Jesus is, without question, the most dependent human being who ever lived. Because he can’t do life on his own, he prays. And he prays. And he prays.”

When many Christians think about the Holy Spirit, it’s only because of the extraordinary things he might do. They’re looking to receive direct revelations, speak in tongues, perform healings, and give prophecies … or they’re looking to pick a fight and argue against all those things. But everyday life with the Holy Spirit isn’t so much about the miraculous gifts he might give you (if you have enough faith), or the hidden signs he might use to direct you (if you can decipher them), or the pulse-pounding experiences he might give you (if you’re not living in sin), it’s about the relationship you build with the Spirit.

Others view the Spirit as some kind of force that produces holiness, love, and compassion in us — almost magically out of thin air — without the need for our conscious decision and hard work. But being filled with the Spirit means taking action to be aggressively dependent on the Spirit in every area of your life, every day of your life. This might require or result in gifts, signs, or pulse-pounding experiences, but those are the byproducts, not the end-goal.

The gospel writers went to great lengths to show us that Jesus was holy, compassionate, and evangelistically fruitful not just because he was God, but because he had the power of the Holy Spirit. And the same Spirit dwells in every believer today!

Jesus said we all need to come to him like little children, no matter how long we’ve known him. Young children are desperately dependent on their parents, even if they don’t always want to admit it. Two-year-old kids can feed themselves, but if you don’t make healthy meals for them, they’ll lose all their teeth eating chocolate and drinking high-fructose corn syrup for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Four-year-old boys can get dressed by themselves, but if you don’t lay out clothes for them, they’ll go to school in whatever they find on the bedroom floor: a dirty t-shirt crusted with last night’s spaghetti and a pair of dinosaur pajama shorts with a hole in the back.

Kids are dependent on their parents for everything, and Jesus expects us to put ourselves into the position of depending on our Heavenly Father through the Holy Spirit in the same way. When you open your Bible in the morning, you won’t ask yourself, “What can I see and learn today?” but instead, “What will the Holy Spirit reveal to me today?” When you’re struggling with ongoing sin, you won’t say, “What rules and regulations can I create to make myself more holy?” but “How will the Holy Spirit make me look more like Jesus?”

As Paul said, “If you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live” (Rom 8:13). We’re desperately dependent on the Spirit for everything.