The Divine Connection

20210418 God Part III – The Divine Connection

Last week we started a series on the Holy Spirit. One of the things that I hope happens as we focus on the Holy Spirit over the next few weeks is that we start to realize and remember that the Spirit is not just some impersonal source of power or something impersonal like “the Force” in Star Wars. He is a part of the Trinity that has personality and wants to be in relationship with us just as much as God the Father and the Son, Jesus, does.

The better we understand who the Spirit is, and the better we relate to Him and stay connected to Him, the more success we will have in becoming the people who God intends us to be.

John 14:16–17 CSB

16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever. 17 He is the Spirit of truth. The world is unable to receive him because it doesn’t see him or know him. But you do know him, because he remains with you and will be in you.

Let’s Pray...

The Holy Spirit is the ultimate direct connection to God.

According to what Jesus told His disciples in John 14, if you are a follower of His, the Holy Spirit is not only with you always, He is IN you! I talked about this a little last Sunday when I mentioned how we are the temple of the Holy Spirit. The question some people ask is, “WHEN do Christians receive the Holy Spirit?” There are some Christian denominations, particularly Charismatic denominations, that believe that there is a separate event or a different kind of baptism that happens when you receive the Holy Spirit that is separate from the moment of salvation. They point to Acts 19 as their reason for this belief. Here is what those verses say...

Acts 19:1–6 CSB

1 While Apollos was in Corinth, Paul traveled through the interior regions and came to Ephesus. He found some disciples 2 and asked them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” “No,” they told him, “we haven’t even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” 3 “Into what then were you baptized?” he asked them. “Into John’s baptism,” they replied. 4 Paul said, “John baptized with a baptism of repentance, telling the people that they should believe in the one who would come after him, that is, in Jesus.” 5 When they heard this, they were baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus. 6 And when Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they began to speak in tongues and to prophesy.

These disciples in Ephesus had somehow heard about John the Baptist’s ministry ahead of Jesus where he told people to repent because God would soon send the Messiah, in whom they should put their faith. These Ephesian disciples had humbled themselves, recognized their need for repentance, and been baptized either by John or by one of his disciples, and they were ready to follow the Messiah once He arrived. BUT THEY HAD NOT YET PUT THEIR FAITH IN JESUS. They were ready to, and eager to follow this Messiah once they knew who He was. They had prepared their hearts and were looking for and waiting for the person John had told them would come after him. As soon as Paul told them about Jesus, they immediately believed in Jesus and were baptized in His name, at which time the Holy Spirit came upon them. So it wasn’t a separate extra baptism they had to go through, it was the moment they put their faith in Jesus that they received the Holy Spirit. Peter, earlier in the book of Acts, makes this clear when he preached to the crowds in Jerusalem.

Acts 2:38 CSB

38 Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, each of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

This verse is clear that if you have repented and been baptized, that the Holy Spirit is in you. There is another thing that needs to be made clear here... I don’t think this verse is teaching that baptism is what causes the Holy Spirit to inhabit a new believer. Something to understand about Christianity in those days is that when people put their faith in Christ, they were baptized right away. So the phrase “repent and be baptized” was a representation of what happened when someone made a decision to put their faith in Jesus and follow Him. This isn’t the case for most people today, when a person can make a decision to follow Jesus but doesn’t get baptized for weeks, and sometimes even months or years later. Being a Christian wasn’t easy back then. People didn’t decide to follow Jesus unless they were serious about it, and Baptism was a public declaration not just to the other believers but also to the community that they were now followers of Jesus and NOT followers of Cesar or Athena, or some other local religion. Because it was risky to become a Christian, people who made that decision were making a deeper level of commitment than what we see in many cases here in the States. So when it says “repent and be baptized” it just assumed that those two things went together. In the U. S. there is little risk and little cost to becoming a Christian, and there are some people who make the decision to call themselves Christians without fully understanding or considering the cost of what it means to follow Jesus. Not only that, they don’t make the full commitment to die to themselves and live for Christ -no matter the consequences - that people did in the days of Jesus. So we have people who have made a decision to believe in Jesus to a certain degree, but sometimes not to the same degree as other people where it might cost them their job, their safety, their position in society, or even their life.

Today in some countries it is also difficult and dangerous to follow Jesus. In those places, baptism is often seen as a person’s true commitment to their faith in Christ. It’s almost as if before being baptized they haven’t fully committed, but once that step of obedience has been taken, then you are fully “in.”

(SHARE STORY OF RAIN’S BAPTISM)

All of this is to say that there are some people who have truly put their faith in Jesus, but have not been baptised yet, but they still have received the gift of the Holy Spirit. But even though all true believers have the Holy Spirit in them, not all of us remain connected to Him. Remaining connected is actually an important thing.

Back in the Spring of 2008 I was in a Quad accident. I was on a dirt road and the Quad I was riding flipped and I broke my arm. It was a really clean break, and the doctor who treated me decided to put a rod inside of my arm to keep it from flopping. He put three screws in the rod at my shoulder, connecting it to the top of my bone, but he decided to just shove the bottom of the rod into the bottom of my humerus bone (the upper arm bone). (TELL THE REST OF THE STORY). Year and a half before the second surgery. Arm would flop. Was limited in what I could do. Weaker arm. Often sore.

The fix didn’t work because even though my arm had a rod inside of it, the arm wasn’t connected to it. Being filled doesn’t help if you’re not connected.

John 15:4–5 CSB

4 Remain in me, and I in you. Just as a branch is unable to produce fruit by itself unless it remains on the vine, neither can you unless you remain in me. 5 I am the vine; you are the branches. The one who remains in me and I in him produces much fruit, because you can do nothing without me.

We are useless unless we remain connected to Christ, and our connection to Christ happens through the Holy Spirit. Again, we need to remember that the Holy Spirit isn’t just some “force” or “power”, He is SOMEONE who has a personality, He desires a relationship with us, and He is God’s gift to Believers to help them stay connected to Christ and the Father directly.

So how does the Holy Spirit help us stay connected to God?

1. The Holy Spirit lives in a believer’s heart.

2 Corinthians 1:22 CSB

22 He has also put his seal on us and given us the Spirit in our hearts as a down payment.

First of all The Holy Spirit is not just with us but IN OUR HEARTS. We love the idea of God walking alongside of us, being our constant companion. I know many people love that poem “footprints in the sand” that talks about how God is always with us, and carries us during our most difficult moments. But even greater than God walking beside us is the fact that God is INSIDE of us. You can’t get any closer than that.

You can’t be more intimate than sharing the same space. Some people are really particular about their “personal space.” I grew up in Mexico City, and we sometimes took the subway when we lived there. Every year we had short-term missions groups come to help with my dad’s ministry, and we would take them onto the “Metro.” We sometimes had to warn them that their “personal space” was about to get violated as people crammed into these train cars like a pack of sardines. When you’re that close to someone else, you know if they put on deodorant that day, and sometimes you know what they had for lunch. With God in our hearts, He knows everything there is to know about us. He knows that about every person, but it becomes personal and relational when He is inside of your heart. There is great vulnerability there, but there is also great relief when you realize that God knows every little thing about you and still loves you just as much as if you were perfect. That’s unconditional love.

The second way that the Holy Spirit helps us stay connected to God is that...

2. The Holy Spirit teaches us the things of God.

Ezekiel 36:26–27 NLT

26 And I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit in you. I will take out your stony, stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart. 27 And I will put my Spirit in you so that you will follow my decrees and be careful to obey my regulations.

Before we had the Holy Spirit, we might read something in the Bible and not really understand it or be moved or motivated to do what it says, but the Holy Spirit makes us responsive to God and what He wants us to do. He gives us the desire to follow and obey God’s commands.

John 16:12–13 NLT

12 “There is so much more I want to tell you, but you can’t bear it now. 13 When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own but will tell you what he has heard. He will tell you about the future.

One of the greatest advantages that comes from being Connected to the Holy Spirit and having Him live in our hearts is that He helps us to learn and understand the things of God. This verse tells us that the Spirit “guides us into all truth.” He is kind of like having a personal tutor in Spiritual matters.

When I was in High School I tutored one of my classmates in Math. Math was one of those things I was good at, and I seemed to have a knack for explaining it to others, so it was a good way for me to make a little spending money. There were things that I understood that I would then help the person I was tutoring to understand. For whatever reason, having someone explain things again, and maybe in a different way helped that other student finally get how to solve the problems on the page. That’s what the Holy Spirit does for believers.

The Holy Spirit was the one who worked through the individual writers of the Bible to inspire them as they wrote. So as believers studying God’s Word, we have the Author Himself in our hearts to help us understand what we’re reading. The Spirit also helps us understand how to take what we’re learning and apply it to our lives, because God wants more than just increased knowledge, He wants us to apply what we learn and become more like Christ.

This leads to the third way the Holy Spirit helps us stay connected with God...

3. The Holy Spirit helps us build Christian character.

As I just said, when we learn about the things of God, that knowledge should cause us to change and grow and become more like Jesus.

Romans 15:13 NLT

13 I pray that God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in him. Then you will overflow with confident hope through the power of the Holy Spirit.

It’s the power of the Holy Spirit in us that helps us to have that hope, to experience that joy and peace, and to trust in God.

Galatians 5:22–23 NLT

22 But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!

We’re actually going to be talking about this more next Sunday, as we look at how the Holy Spirit helps us become more like Christ. One of the ways He does this is He changes our character and gives us the character of Christ.

As a follower of Christ, your life should look different than it did before you became a Christian. It should look different a year from now, five or ten years from now as you continue to walk with Christ and be connected to the Holy Spirit. Unfortunately, when we keep God in a box, and when we only connect with Him on Sundays and during our mid-week Bible study, that limited connection is only able to produce limited growth and change. The more we allow the Holy Spirit to be a part of our day-to-day living, the greater the change and the more of Christ’s character will be able to be seen in our lives.

It doesn’t mean we ever get to a place of perfection, but we are able to become more and more righteous and our lives become more pleasing to God as we grow in this area.

Another benefit of staying connected to God through the Holy Spirit is that …

4. The Holy Spirit empowers people to be Christ’s witnesses.

As our character changes to be more like Christ’s our lives become a witness simply by who we are, but that’s not enough. We also need to speak out and share God’s message of repentance, forgiveness, hope and salvation with others.

Acts 1:8 NLT

8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be my witnesses, telling people about me everywhere—in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

Yes, it is great that we live lives of honesty, and kindness, and that we treat others well, etc., but that by itself does not lead people to put their faith in Jesus. It might open the door for us to be able to speak into the lives of people around us, but at some point we need to speak up and share the message God has given us to share of how we are all imperfect and in need of a Savior, and how God has provided salvation freely though His Son, Jesus. We need to explain that even though the gift is free, it costs us our lives as we submit to God’s lordship in our lives, but that the cost is more than worth it because God gives us eternal life in return; He adopts us as His children, and He lets us share in the inheritance with Jesus. The whole reason that we receive power through the Holy Spirit is for the purpose of telling others this message that we call the Gospel.

Many believers are worried that they won’t know how to share that message, but part of what God does as we stay connected to Jesus through the Holy Spirit, and as we grow in our relationship with God by reading the Bible, praying, obeying God, and following where He leads, is that God uses that process so that we will be prepared to answer others when they ask us difficult questions or challenge our faith.

Mark 13:11 NLT

11 But when you are arrested and stand trial, don’t worry in advance about what to say. Just say what God tells you at that time, for it is not you who will be speaking, but the Holy Spirit.

This doesn’t work if you’re not connected to Jesus on a regular basis. If you only connect to God on Sundays, or a couple of times a month, or at Easter and Christmas, you won’t have the connection to the Spirit that will allow you to succeed in those encounters, but if you are connected to Him, then you don’t have to worry.

You don’t even have to learn any fancy jargon or try to talk in a super religious way to succeed in being a witness for Christ. Paul tried to make the message as simple and easy to understand as he could...

1 Corinthians 2:4 NLT

4 And my message and my preaching were very plain. Rather than using clever and persuasive speeches, I relied only on the power of the Holy Spirit.

Paul wasn’t out there trying to impress the crowds with big, flowery words and speeches that left people mesmerized but that they couldn’t understand, his message was simple, but the Holy Spirit filled the message with power to open eyes and change lives.

If you look at the lives of the people who were bold in communicating God’s message to others in the New Testament, you might be surprised to find out that most of these people were not trained to be public speakers, most didn’t have a high level of education, most didn’t make the list of “who’s who” in their communities. Yet when they stayed connected to the Holy Spirit, and they learned the things of God which changed their character and caused them to grow spiritually, they BECAME bold and courageous in their sharing and being witnesses of God’s love and forgiveness for others.

You don’t have to know how to use big church words or how to pray beautiful prayers or how to translate the original Greek and Hebrew text of the Bible in order to share your story of what God’s done in your life. Those things probably get in the way more often than they help. Be real, be relatable to others, let them know that the great things that have happened in your life are because GOD is great, not because you are great. If at the end of your testimony people walk away saying “so-and-so is awesome” that’s not the goal. We want to bring glory to God and show how awesome HE is.

God will give you the right words to say at the right time if you just trust Him. Instead of worrying how you will respond to each person’s questions and attacks, just worry about spending time with God and knowing His Word, and let Him give you the words for any specific situations you find yourself in. There is no shame in answering, “I don’t know the answer to that, but I’ll look into it and get back to you when I’ve found it.” That’s a whole lot better than trying to look impressive and spewing a lot of hot air and making things up to look impressive.

Last week, I talked about how the Holy Spirit has desires and a will. I mentioned that there is God’s will for all believers, like for example how God wants all believers to share their faith with others, and wants all people to live moral, righteous lives. But God also has a specific desire and will for each of us individually. He has a role for you and me to play. So...

5. The Holy Spirit empowers believers to fulfill the role God gives them.

God has different jobs for each one of us to do. We all need to learn the same basics, like sharing our faith, but then God also wants us to follow Him in specific ways. Here are a few examples of individuals in the Bible that God had specific roles for… The first person I want to mention is Othniel, son of Kenaz. He was one of the judges that God raised in Israel...

Judges 3:10 NLT

10 The Spirit of the Lord came upon him, and he became Israel’s judge. He went to war against King Cushan-rishathaim of Aram, and the Lord gave Othniel victory over him.

That was a very specific role.

Here’s another Judge, someone a little more familiar to many of us, Gideon.

Judges 6:34 NLT

34 Then the Spirit of the Lord clothed Gideon with power. He blew a ram’s horn as a call to arms, and the men of the clan of Abiezer came to him.

Again, the Spirit of the Lord had a very specific plan for Gideon. But there are also different roles God wants His people to play and function in as part of the Church, the Body of Christ.

1 Corinthians 12:4, 7

There are different kinds of spiritual gifts, but the same Spirit is the source of them all… A spiritual gift is given to each of us so we can help each other.

When my daughters were younger, we signed up Katelyn and Jessie on soccer teams for first-time players. It was Jessie’s first time ever playing, and she was out there on a team full of other five and six year olds. They were all learning the basics together, like how to kick a soccer ball. When we went to her first game, there wasn’t a whole lot of difference between what the players were doing. Basically, it was a mob of kids trying to kick the ball in the right general direction. That’s fine for six-year-olds. But can you imagine watching the FIFA Soccer World Cup and having players at that level still acting like little kids and just mobbing the ball? That would be ridiculous. As they grow, players learn different positions to play, they learn different ways to kick the ball to have the ball curve or “bend” as it travels. They learn to play differently as a goalie, defensive player, mid-fielder, or forward.

I like American Football even more. Imagine if every player decided they wanted to be the quarterback. Things would be a complete mess.

The Holy Spirit gives different people different spiritual gifts (which is different from the fruit of the spirit) based on His plan for what role He wants each person to play. We’re also going to look at this in more detail in a couple of weeks, and right now I am talking with Toni Anne about maybe doing a Spiritual Gifts class for several weeks when we bring back Sunday School sometime in the next month or two (stay tuned, we’re still working out the details, but hopefully we’ll have something to announce in a couple of weeks). God wants each of us to reach our potential, and one of the things I believe strongly is how our greatest potential is achieved when we live life in community – when we live life as part of God’s church community. God’s plan is bigger than any one person, and He knows what He’s doing as he combines different people with different personalities, abilities and spiritual gifts so that together they can accomplish His plans. Each one of Christ’s followers has a role to play, and they are all important.

One final way that our divine connection to Holy Spirit helps believers is that...

6. The Holy Spirit keeps us strong to the end.

As we grow more into Christ’s image, and as the Holy Spirit helps us fulfill the role He has intended for us, there will be times when things get hard. There will be times when we will be discouraged, or we will want to give up. The Holy Spirit helps us stay strong to the end.

1 Corinthians 1:7–8 NLT

7 Now you have every spiritual gift you need as you eagerly wait for the return of our Lord Jesus Christ. 8 He will keep you strong to the end so that you will be free from all blame on the day when our Lord Jesus Christ returns.

I tell you what, there are times when life gets hard and I think to myself, “OK, Jesus, I’m ready for you to come back so I can start enjoying the blessings of heaven.” But I know that until that time, the Spirit will keep me strong until the end.

2 Corinthians 1:21–22 NIV

21 Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, 22 set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.

The Holy Spirit is a guarantee of God’s promises to believers that we are God’s children, that we will spend eternity with God, enjoying the inheritance God promised us as citizens of His kingdom. Part of what helps us stay strong to the end is the knowledge that Heaven is our eternal destiny, and that suffering is temporary. History is full of Christians who were strong to the end. Some of them remained strong even to the point of giving their lives for the sake of their faith. Others remained strong and the difficult times passed and they were able to experience relief in this life. No matter the outcome, staying connected to the Holy Spirit during those difficult times is how we are able to stay faithful until the end. When we try to live our day-to-day lives in our own strength, or when God is someone we only turn to sometimes, then we don’t have the strength to endure through the difficult seasons in life. We need to turn to God and stay connected to Him, ESPECIALLY during those hard times in our lives.

Finally, even though the Holy Spirit is most fully engaged in the lives of Christians, He still is active in the lives of unbelievers too, although in a more limited way...

7. The Holy Spirit primarily also speaks in limited ways to unbelievers.

John 16:8–11 NLT

8 And when he comes, he will convict the world of its sin, and of God’s righteousness, and of the coming judgment. 9 The world’s sin is that it refuses to believe in me. 10 Righteousness is available because I go to the Father, and you will see me no more. 11 Judgment will come because the ruler of this world has already been judged.

The Holy Spirit convicts people of sin. Every culture has a basic morality based on God’s eternal truth. The Spirit is the world’s “conscience” to a degree, in that it convicts people of the fact that they have not lived up to even their own standard of right and wrong, much less God’s standard.

The Spirit also testifies of the righteousness that is available through Christ. This is the righteousness that Christ had in Himself, and because of that He was able to serve as a perfect sacrifice for humanity, and when He died, death was not able to keep Him, and so He rose again and ascended to Heaven to sit at the Father’s right hand.

Finally, the Spirit also declares that even though for the time being there is an ongoing battle between good and evil, and that there is a battle in the hearts of people between right and wrong, there is a day coming when judgment will take place. The result of that judgment has already been decided. The Bible tells us that the only way to Heaven is through faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Lamb who was sacrificed to pay for our sins. Only those who have put their faith in Jesus will receive the gift of eternal life in Heaven with God. Everyone who refuses God’s gift by not following Christ is choosing to pay for their own sin, which results in eternal judgment and punishment in hell. God loves all people so much that He makes His gift available to everyone. But each person must choose to follow Jesus. Pray that the Holy Spirit would speak to those people in your life who have not yet chosen to put their faith in Jesus, that He would convict them of sin, of God’s righteousness, and of the coming Judgment, and that the Spirit would then give you an opportunity to share the amazing news of how God has provided a way for them to be saved and have eternal life.

Let’s pray...

The Holy Spirit wants to do more than just “help out” a bit. He wants to completely transform you and me. If you have not yet asked Jesus to forgive you and be your Lord, with all the surrender and having counted the cost of what that really means, then that is the first step in being connected to the Holy Spirit. If you have already made that decision, I challenge you to remain connected with God. It is not something that just happens on its own, it is a daily choice we have to make. But if we stay connected God promises to help us as we seek to understand the things of God, as we let Him change our character and as we let Him use us to be His witnesses and to play the role He has planned for us to play in his great plan to redeem people to Himself.

Hebrews 13:20–21 CSB

20 Now may the God of peace, who brought up from the dead our Lord Jesus—the great Shepherd of the sheep—through the blood of the everlasting covenant, 21 equip you with everything good to do his will, working in us what is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.