How Can We Know If God's Spirit Lives in and Directs Us 07202022

How Can We Know if God's Spirit Lives in Us And Directs Us? I would rephrase the question to meet the methodological constraints of the field--in this case, orthodox, reformed, Evangelical Christianity. How can we know if God's Spirit is within us and directing us? Fortunately, God has given us several tools that we can use. The First Way. The first way is to rely on the strength and surety of God's word, oath, and promises. God does not lie. God has promised the Holy Spirit as a guarantee of our salvation to all who (1) will repent of their wrongdoing and turn away from them, (2) will accept Christ atoning death on the cross, and (3) will accept Christ Jesus as their Lord and Sovereign over their whole being. ["Promise Bibles" and "Fulfillment of Prophecy Bibles" are good supplements. See also the list in the "Appendix" to my "Assurance of Salvation" document for a list of resources on informational Bible Study and in the body of the text for the list dealing with the inspiration and authority of scripture and messianic prophecies of Scripture.] The Second Way. God has given us the smell, see and taste test. "You will know him or her by their fruit." Since we know what the "fruit of the Spirit" is supposed to smell like, look like and taste like, we can test whether we are growing into Christ's likeness by comparing our level of maturity with the Spirit's ripeness scale by size, color, texture, smell and taste. It's alright to be an non-ripened, but maturing fruit; however, rotten or insect infested fruit-no matter the size, color or texture-just won't pass the smell and taste test. We must also remember that God has made us unique. Some of us are tomatoes plants; some of us are Redwoods; some Macadamia trees. We don't judge the maturity and yield of the previously mentioned plants by using the measures designed to measure an Apple tree. In this way, maturity is relative to the type of tree. But all trees and plants (men and women) still must be judge by the standards of maturity that God has set. The length and timing of our maturation are relative, but not the requirements which is that we grow and mature. That we grow and mature to the standard that God has called us is absolute. [Here is where C.S. Lewis' Book 4, "Chapter 10-Nice People or New Men" in Mere Christianity can be brought into the discussion (p. 207ff).] The Third Way. God has given us a way to triangulate our position and location as we journey from our pre-regenerated selves to our regenerated and sanctifying selves. Since we know where our journey will end and what that smell, see and taste like (see the second tool above), we can use the Bible, the Holy Spirit, the Church and Nature. The blue field or background represents the Holy Spirit overall control of our lives. I have represented the Holy Spirit as an electrical grid or ground pad as well as our map. (For the electrical grid and ground pad, think bumper cars or a third rail for a subway train. You need to be connected to the grid or third rail for the power to move.) The green square represents signal tower #1, and it represents our journey's end-to be like Christ. We know we are closer to our complete perfection by whether the maturation of fruit of the Spirit is observable to ourselves and to others. The light blue square on the left represents signal tower #2. This is the Holy Scriptures or the Bible. The orange square represents our signal tower #3. This is metaphorically the Church and the saints where we get the accumulated traditions and teachings of the saints (words of admonition and admonishment, encouragement, and edification-the great cloud of witnesses) and where we find and experience the gifts of the Holy Spirit. It is here that we find accountability partners and spiritual advice, teachers, pastors, and those with the gift of encouragement or healing, and etc. Here we find the gifts and offices that God gives for equipping and maturing the saints. The red square represents our signal tower #4 and our past lives before Christ, that is, our past ways of thinking and acting and living. We should all know how far we have come and how far we have to grow. The black X marks the vehicle in which we are traveling (i.e., our metaphorical bumper car, computer mouse, or subway train) and our present location while the white arrows represent the direction of our progress. We know where we are by using the signals from all four towers and staying within the boundaries of the grid (analogously staying in the Holy Spirit or keeping the Holy Spirit within us). The Holy Spirit will give us our "maturation longitude and latitude and altitude". [Here is where the analogy of flying a plane by instrumentation or by sight comes in. Who are you going to trust: the Holy Spirit or your own five, human senses?] The Fourth Way. The way of analogy and human relations is the fourth way. It is a dead end, but people still try to use this fourth way. Why is it a dead end? It's like trying to determine if your parents love [present] or loved [past] you or if your spouse loves or loved you scientifically and empirically. It's even more like determining whether your parents had or have or spouse has or had loved you in healthy and mature ways or unhealthy and immature ways. Such assessments don't compute scientifically, empirically, or logically. In some ways, it's undeterminable and experimentally unbelievable. Why? Such things involve experiential knowledge, not empirical or scientific knowledge. How does one convince a boy of three that one day he will love some woman more than his mother and move away from and leave his mom? How does one convince a girl of three that one day she will love some other man more than her father and move away from and leave her father?. (I am talking love and not sex.) Some things don't compute until you experience it. We may know a fact, item, event, or entity existed conceptually, but we may not know deeply and experientially what those things really mean and how they affect us until we experience the same. Until we have experienced Christ's love and are in a salvific relationship with Christ, we will not have the experiential and relational knowledge to understand and experience Christ's love for us and our love for Christ as the ultimate love relationship and the ultimate measure and definition of true love. We may know this intellectually, but not experientially. This fourth way via analogy is like thinking you can reverse engineer a working vehicle (car, train, or plane) from a miniature, steel replica or model of a car, train, or plane without ever having seen a real car, train, or plane. While you can understand the lesser (humans, model cars, trains, and planes) by comparing it to the greater (God, real cars, real trains, and real planes), you can not understand the greater (God or real vehicles) by comparing it analogously to the lessor (humans or miniature cars, trains, or planes). You cannot reverse engineer an understanding of God by studying humans and then analogously creating Yahweh, the God of Israel, as a supersized or supped-up version of humanity like the gods in the Greek, Egyptian, Canaanite, or Babylonian pantheons were described and depicted as being. "God's ways are not our ways." In short, you cannot understand the infinite analogously by examining the finite. The infinite must reveal or unveil itself and illuminate us and impart knowledge of the infinite to us. The power to see God's self-revelation and to act on the same is called actual and prevenient Grace. A good Bible dictionary or encyclopedia of Christian history or beliefs will have articles on Grace and our need for it. Trying to get across how we know whether God loves us and how to experience God's love is no longer a simple proposition. Why? Because our society and people, in general, are not able to tell healthy, mature, and Biblical love from unhealthy, immature, and destructive human love. Second, healthy human love falls short of the glory of God's love. These are huge problems which will take more time to explain and understand than I can give here. I instead must refer you to read Cloud and Townsend's How People Grow, Blackaby et al. Experiencing God, and/or Piper's Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist. One should also read books on Christian Worldview and how to reach people and Christians who have a secular worldview rather than a Biblical Worldview. People need a whole lot of help on this one.