Who Is The Holy Spirit? (Power Up Series) (Youth)

Announcements

Introduction

How many of you have heard of the “Holy Spirit” or the “Holy Ghost”

These are terms we use really often in Christianity, and yet, many can be confused as to what we are talking about.

Story of a woman who went to receive God and ended up with the Holy Ghost!

It’s easy to look at the Holy Spirit as that weird second uncle at the family reunion

It’s kind of foreign and weird

But there is so much that the Holy Spirit does in your life, and I don’t want you to miss that.

So we are going to do a 3-week series on the Holy Spirit, and tonight we are going to start off by answering a simple question: Who Is The Holy Spirit?

Notice I didn’t say “WHAT” is the Holy Spirit, but “WHO” is the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is not a “thing” or an “it”

The Holy Spirit is a person of the Trinity, meaning the Holy Spirit is God

Trinity

The Holy Spirit is fully God and a part of the Trinity

The trinity has been a source of confusion for many people, because it explains God in a way, that we can’t comprehend

Trinity - God is one God, who eternally exists in three Persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). These three Persons are all equally God and all equally Persons. Yet there is only one God.

God is 1 being and 3 persons

That doesn’t make sense to us because we are 1 being and 1 person

Being has to do with “what”: person has to do with “who”

A human being is what I am, Josiah is who I am

God is “what” he is: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is “who” He is.

Don’t get discouraged because you can’t fully understand that…if we could fully understand God in our limited knowledge, God wouldn’t be God

Try explaining to your dog how gravity works....your dog will have no clue what you are talking about, but it doesn’t make the fact that we have gravity less true…it just means your dog doesn’t have the mental capacity to understand it.

Let me give you an illustration that is not perfect, but that might help you conceptualize the trinity, or undertand how something can be 3 in 1.

H20 Example

Water, Ice, and Fog are all H20, but in different forms

Where illustration falls short

God does not simply take on 3 different forms like in this illustration…he is 3 different persons

He is 3 different persons all at the same time

The same water cannot be liquid, ice and steam at the same time, all the time

So this illustration used as a stand alone truth, would be heretical, but taken at face value, it can be helpful

The Holy Spirit, is a person of the Trinity, and fully God

Why is the Holy Spirit important

We are going to talk more about this next week, but I want to leave you with this:

The Holy Spirit is the presence of God in the life of a believer

Before Jesus left his disciples, this is what he said:

John 20:21-22 Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent Me, I am sending you.” And with that He breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

So just as you need oxygen to live in your human body, if you trust in Christ, you are born again in a spiritual sense and the Holy Spirit becomes the source of new life God places within you!

You no longer just relate to God as a higher power outside of yourself. God transforms you from within so that you become more like Jesus.

More about this next week, but remember The Holy Spirit is a Who not an It

Role of the Holy Spirit

The general teaching on the subject is that the Father is the head of Deity; the Son is the one who reveals Deity, while the Holy Spirit carries out the work of Deity.

ABC’s of salvation

Prayer (pray this in your heart, as I pray it out loud)Dear Lord Jesus I believe you're the son of God. I believe that on the cross you took my sin, my shame, and my guilt, and you died for it. You faced hell for me so I wouldn't have to go. You rose from the dead to give me a place in heaven, a purpose on earth, and a relationship with your father. Today Lord Jesus I turn from my sin to be born again. God is my father, Jesus is my savior, the Holy Spirit is my helper, and heaven is my home. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Sources

https://www.cru.org/us/en/train-and-grow/spiritual-growth/holy-spirit.html

Roles of the Trinity

https://www.blueletterbible.org/faq/don_stewart/don_stewart_333.cfm

https://www.christianity.com/wiki/holy-spirit/10-roles-of-the-holy-spirit-in-christian-life.html