When I first dedicated my life to God I heard about people experiencing miracles and the supernatural – but I was cautiously optimistic because I saw weird stuff – and it didn’t make sense to me. My journey ended up with me praying this prayer “God I want all that you have but nothing that’s made up – everything that’s real…
If you have ever been fascinated by the Holy Spirit and our ability as Christians to connect to God directly and experience His supernatural reality in your own life, this teaching is for you. We are going to go over who the Holy Spirit is, what He has done, and how He works today.
Let’s start by shedding the ideas we have…
Ideas We Have
When we say the word – Holy Spirit – it means many things to many different people.
1. Superstitious
- Much of the world is in tune with the idea of the spiritual world.
- This view sees the Holy Spirit as one of the many spirits that exist in the world that we have to learn how to work with…figure out how to harness and keep happy and get good out of.
- There are things you say or don’t say to get the holy spirit to do things for you and to get on its good side.
- Holy Spirit is a ghost – there are good spirits and bad spirits…etc
2. Naturalistic
- The Holy Spirit is a myth and completely legend – everything is in our mind.
- Since 17th century when empiricism (John Lock) and rationalism (Descartes) was introduced there was this idea that what we see is all there is and so we are not in tune with another reality.
3.Religious
- Experience based – some have had a real experience with the Holy Spirit and so they want others to experience the same thing and so they codify / formulate who the Holy Spirit is and how the Holy Spirit works.
- Sometimes it gets superstitious – “if you sing this song, the Holy Spirit will come”
- Sometimes they get naturalistic – the Holy Spirit is a silent non operating part of the Godhead. So we know about God father, God the son, but not the Holy Spirit.
- Sometimes people project own view, interpretation, perception, translation, deduction, injunction, inference, construction, induction
- People are in a church service, the music is nice, there is a tangible feeling of closeness of God – people’s response is to bark, jump around and do different non-natural things = therefore its God. then a rule is made vs. they personally did that and there is no thing written…
- There is the idea that the Holy Spirit makes you invincible – won’t get death etc.
- There is the idea that the Holy Spirit is not active today.
- Metaphors interpreted literally
- Holy Spirit as a dove (Luke 3:22)
- Holy Spirit as a wind (John 3:8)
We all have ideas of what the Holy Spirit is, how the Holy Spirit works, what certain words that we use about the holy spirit mean and more…before we begin we need to break some of these down…
Questions
What are the images that you have?
What do you believe about the Holy Spirit?
What bothers you about experiences you have had or things you have heard?