The concept of the Holy Spirit can be difficult to understand. This is especially true when we consider He lives within us. This devotion looks at how that is possible.
Nuggets
- We are dedicated to God, making us His temple.
- Being a new creation allows the Holy Spirit to take up residence.
- The treasure with which we have been entrusted is God’s Word — His Truth.
In the last devotion, we chased a rabbit to talk about how the Holy Sprit was a gift. He is such a prized gift that He comes to live with us. Well, in us, actually.
I know. Try to wrap our heads around that when we haven’t grown up in church! How can we explain if we don’t really understand it ourselves?
I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface of this, but let’s dig in and see what we can see.
Let's Put It into Context
“I will place my Spirit within you and cause you to follow my statutes and carefully observe my ordinances” (Ezek. 36: 27 CSB)
Growing up, I thought the Holy Spirit was a New Testament thing. Nope, it was Old Testament, too.
It was just prophesied in the Old. It was presented in the New.
One of the greatest gifts God gave us was the Holy Spirit. He is to be a Guide. Oh, yes. We need help following God’s laws and commandments.
Why? We need help because it is in our human nature to disobey God. Ever since Adam and Eve sinned and Satan has been ruling this world, we’ve chosen to be independent and in control of our own lives.
That isn’t how God made us. He made us not only to be in His image, but also to possess His character.
We are all made in His image. Only believers are working on possessing His character.
But it has to go more than skin deep. Hellicar reminded us that outward appearances — even mortal outward appearances — isn’t the type of obedience for which God is looking.
It has to go to our core — our heart. That is one reason God puts the Holy Spirit within us.
If we look at Ezekiel 36, verses 24 through 30 read like a covenant agreement. God is saying all of these “I will” promises.
One of them is to give His Spirit. It is a promise — a gift.
Of Course, God Is in the Temple
“Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” (I Cor. 3: 16 ESV)
The Jews were used to God being in the Temple from when Solomon built it to Jesus’ time. Really, that was par for the course for the time period. Pagans worshiped their gods in their temples.
But Paul said there was a new Temple in town.
Believers. We are the new temple. We are dedicated to God, making us His temple.
Angley might help us understand the concept better. “Man’s soul dwells in his body, and this constitutes him a real living person; the Spirit of God dwells in the Christian soul, and animates by Divine power all the living Church.”
When I read that, I read it as the Holy Spirit gets the life going. Currie gave us a list of how the Spirit accomplishes that by living within us.
Our conversion experience begins with faith. Faith is the belief that the doctrines stated in God’s Word are true, even if we do not understand all aspects of them.
This triggers regeneration — we become a new creation. Regeneration is the change in us that God brings about when we go from being spiritually dead to spiritually alive.
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has come!” (II Cor. 5: 17 CSB).
“Humans can reproduce only human life, but the Holy Spirit gives birth to spiritual life” (Jn. 3: 6 NLT).
Being a new creation allows the Holy Spirit to take up residence. One problem is, He has a lot of remodeling to do. We are still in our physical bodies, so we are still in our sinful bodies. That is where regeneration continues.
Currie also wrote that the Holy Spirit lives within us through prayer. That is logical. We are told “… the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans” (Rom. 8: 26 NIV). Where better place than from within us?
The Holy Spirit dwells in us as we are God’s possession. “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (I Pet. 2: 9 ESV emphasis added).
It is the work of the Holy Spirit to help us be obedient. Philippians 2: 13 says, “For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him” (NLT).
Have you heard about the fruits that Paul talks about in Galatians? They are fruits of the Spirit.
Guard the Treasure
“Guard, through the Holy Spirit who dwells in us, the treasure which has been entrusted to you” (II Tim. 1: 14 NASB)
Reed told us what the treasure with which we have been entrusted is. We have been given God’s Word — His Truth.
Okay, we are going to chase a rabbit a second. Remember, when we were walking through Ephesians, we did the whole armor thing? Specifically remember the Spirit of the sword armor.
We said that the sword was God’s Word. It is appropriate that the Word is the Spirit because the Spirit gave the writers the words to write. Not only that, but the Spirit also interprets those scriptures for us.
We said that the Word of God was the only weapon of attack. Only God’s Word will be victorious. We can’t rewrite scripture and expect salvation. God’s way is the only way available.
So, here we have the Spirit and the Word again. Get right down to it, both have been entrusted to us. We have to take care of both.
We take care of the Word by reading it. We learn it and put it into practice. Yes, that means we try to do the do’s and not do the don’ts.
We take care of the Spirit with prayer. Isn’t that what we do with relationships – communicate? This is no different.
But we are to guard the Word. It seems a little strange that we have to guard the weapon.
Guard is a responsibility, is it not? We have the responsibility to search for and seek God. Reed called it having “a devoted attachment to it.”
So, we don’t have to guard it for the Spirit of the sword/Word of God’s sake. We guard it for our own sake.
Making the Connections
New reminded us that “the Spirit of God is a person, the attributes of personality are ascribed to Him.”
I know. We can’t see the Spirit, so sometimes, we forget He has personality traits.
Unfortunately, sometimes, we just forget Him period.
Doubts come flying in. It would have been real easy to forget Him when He thought I could do this blog. (I mean, I’ve always been a decent end user, but I am definitely not a techie!)
There are times in my life when I have felt so cut off from God. Well, my sin was cutting Him off. He was still where He said He would always be.
There were also times when I was so thankful for that Presence in my life. I don’t know how I would have survived otherwise.
The Holy Spirit is there with us every step of the way. How else would He teach us?
Making the Connections to Self-Discipline
The Holy Spirit can be hard to explain sometimes to a non-believer — especially the living-in-us part.
We’ve been asking these questions all along so we can prepare for when we are asked. Here is the worksheet again. What would you say?
- What does the Scriptures say?
- What do I believe?
- Why do I believe the same/differently than the Scriptures?
- What are the talking points when witnessing to a non-believer?
Related Links
I have created a worksheet of the questions above. Click on the button below to access it.
How Do We Apply This?
Let’s go back to guarding the Word. How do we do that?
Searching for and Seeking God.
Searching for and Seeking God
Hearing His Word (Rom. 10: 17).
Reading His Word (Rev. 1: 3).
Praying to Him (Heb. 4: 16).
Studying His Word (Ac. 17: 11).
Meditating on His Word (Ps. 1: 1-2).
Memorizing His Word (Ps. 119: 11).
To read Has God Provided Everything We Need?, click the button below.
When we are buried in the Word, we are keeping it fresh in our minds. We are looking for ways to obey God’s laws and commandment – and ways to not disobey God’s commandments.
We are putting the priority it needs to be to make it the most important aspect in our lives – therefore, guarding it.
I read Burns’ sermon a different way than he intended. He gave signs that showed the Holy Spirit was living within us.
We also have to make sure these happen so that the Holy Spirit has room in our hearts.
- Get rid of sin — to the best of our abilities.
- Let the Spirit lead us.
- Take advantage of our free access to God — pray unceasingly.
- Expect heaven.
Bottom line I get out of all of this – we have to have the Holy Spirit inside. We can’t be just a surface disciple. We have to be actively seeking God.
Father God. You have entrusted us with a treasure – Your Word. It tells us of Your love for us. It tells us of Your Son’s sacrifice for us. It gives Your Spirit the ability to give us words that we can understand to show us how You want us to live. May we search for You if we don’t know You and continue to seek You for the rest of our days here. Amen.
What do you think?
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